6 Traits/VOICES and CAFE/FACE

Summer is nearing an end!

A couple days ago I went to school to help set up the annual Rummage Sale. Wow! SO MUCH STUFF! I ended up buying a few books, including an extra copy of one of my favorite kids books, The Fat Cat.

One of my fellow elementary teachers was helping too, and we had the chance to meet up with the temporary administrator to get an update on what we might be teaching next month. As of right now, if nothing extraordinary happens, I'm teaching...

*drumroll*

3rd grade!

I am so excited!

I'm already starting to hone in on ideas for what I want to do with this grade level. I mentioned before that I would like to incorporate some of CAFE for reading because it seems like a great way to let children know expectations, encourage self-monitoring, and provide strategies to improve.

But now I just discovered (amazing the things you can discover through teacher blogs!) the 6+1 writing traits! It's like CAFE but for writing, and not by the 2 Sisters.

Oooh, oooh, and the fun thing is CAFE can be rewritten into the acronym FACE and the 6 traits can make the acronym VOICES. (Or maybe I'll just stick with "CAFE" and the "6 Traits".)

So what FACE and VOICES does is create categories for what students should achieve in reading and writing.

READING
F - fluency
A - accuracy
C - comprehension
E - expand vocabulary

WRITING
V - voice
O - organization
I - ideas
C - conventions
E - excellent word choice
S - sentence fluency

The Plattsbugh City School District has provided a very helpful, free pdf overview of the 6+1 Traits of Writing that I'm going to use, though Amazon has a comprehensive book by Ruth Culham, as well as one by her on how to use picture books to teach the 6 traits.

I also really like this pinned idea of displaying the 6 Traits/VOICES:

My hope is that displaying these categories will give us focus and help us more clearly work towards improvement. And it will give me categories in which to insert my teaching! Today we're talking about synonyms and antonyms. Knowing synonyms and antonyms will help you with your WORD CHOICE when writing and may help you EXPAND YOUR VOCABULARY in reading.

See? Oh, this is going to be so wonderful! *glee*

I'm just a little optimistic, can you tell?

Meanwhile, yesterday I stopped by the local library and visited their used book store. I came home with several books, but am especially excited about these two:

And that's that for now!

Feedback - figuring it out

I have a horrible memory. So I'm going to process some of what I'm learning here so that I don't forget it, okay? Thanks!

In Coursera's "Foundations for Learning 6: Introduction to Student Assessment" the instructor discusses Hattie & Timperley's model of feedback (2007). The purpose of feedback is to reduce the discrepancy between where students are and where we want them to be.

The instructor notes 3 questions a teacher must address: 1) Where are we going? (clarify the goal), 2) Where are we now? (in reference to the goal), and 3) What next?

Those three questions tie in with what I've been reading in CAFE about reading conferences! So let me process this...

Where going: If my subject is reading, I have 4 levels of reading that we are trying to achieve - comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and expanding vocabulary. The goal? To enjoy reading and understand what we are reading.  

Where now: Following CAFE, I teach and model reading strategies to the whole group. Then, as I meet with individual students, I discuss with them where they need to improve. 

What next: Together we choose a strategy for them to try out on their own (after further modeling). I allow them to have a day or so to practice the strategy on their own time before meeting with them again to see if it's helping them reach the immediate goal (e.g. better fluency).

The Coursera instructor also notes from Hattie & Timperley 4 levels of feedback.

Task: feedback about how to do it 

Process: feedback about if they are using the right and best process skill (still haven't quite figured out exactly the difference between process and strategy) 

Self-Regulation: feedback that helps them think about which strategy they are using and which strategy would be the best one for this situation (thinking about your thinking) 

Self: feedback that lets the students know where they are in reference to the goal (not just generic praise or condemnation, but feedback that truly helps a student head towards the goal)

I really want to improve in teaching self-regulation/reflection/assessment.