Being in education, summer comes roaring in like waves, some are intense and action packed, others are quiet times where a book is your best friend. This beautiful summer swept in softly, starting with a sweet winding down with half a week in Kuala Lumpur celebrating birthdays, getting massages and lunching amongst friends. The other half of the week was spent diving in aquamarine waters with my soon to be married, often traveling partner in crime, Heather Rich. The first week of summer was the perfect introduction to a summer about tuning into things I want and exploring at a leisurely pace. After the islands, I feel to Barcelona for a whirlwind week of friends, wine, and walking. It was so nice to be in the coastal climate and soaking in one of my favorite cities in the world. From Barcelona, I zoomed off to DC, diving into a week of professional development, doing more work unpacking standards and revamping our literacy units. Whereas, these last two weeks have returned to a little bit of quiet and time to do some work on aligning report card indicators and reading PD books such as Jennifer Serravallo's Reading Strategies and Kate and Maggie Roberts', DIY Literacy.
Due to my wonderfully tech literate and super ambitious colleague and friend, Erika Victor, I stumbled upon this group and since, I have drunkenly loved DIY Literacy,(meaning that I keep on getting amazing ideas from this book that I want to share and start asap) I thought I would participate in a few of the discussions.
Reflection on Chapters 1 & 2 and bonus: The first chapter really reinforced the importance of tools. Tools that help scaffold but aid in independent thinking can help make our teaching better and improve student learning. Students who use tools should be able to self-assess, goal-set, and adjust their tools to best approach their learning. As I read through Chapter 2, the book gave me a smile because it was easy for me to make repertoire and process charts on post-it notes the way it was set up, which I may be able to break down simply for my teachers who don't want to read the whole book. Every teacher knows that students learn through modelling and Kate and Maggie have done a good job modelling their tools in "how to" friendly ways, particularly for teachers who are accustomed to a workshop model. Finally, in the third "bonus" chapter, I was really struck by how all of these tools and strategies really go back to us being good teachers, which translates to: being lifelong learners, knowing our kids their academic and learning strengths, weaknesses and how-tos, and finally, being risk-takers and not being afraid to hold our students' hands as they take their own risks.
The Tools: Loved the review and clear examples and how to structure of the tools. Repertoire/ process charts are a familiar friend to me, as well as student generated bookmarks. This past year, I worked with some teachers to also work on unpacking Lucy Calkins' reading progressions. After having read a lot about micro-progressions, I am ambitious to first try to familiarize kids and teachers more with the language of her reading progressions. Once, we have achieved more familiarity with these progressions, I think teachers will be able to pull apart her progressions and write them with a more individualized tone to meet their students specific needs. In the past, I have used conferring binders to help which have been helpful in writing more than in reading and I am anxious to play around with demonstration notebooks this year, particularly in some of the units I have taught a few times.
My Big A-Ha: These days, I feel more confident conferring particularly in writing, than I have ever in my life. As a literacy coach, I have to do it across 6 grade levels but am flexible and fluid in my choices. Still the same, one thing that I have to watch myself on is the potential to cram too much into a conference. I think that the micro-progressions could be a great tool with this issue as you would have your layers of complexity on the specific targeted skill but you could not detour from what was already there. These tools are really differentiated for teachers and students. It is natural for teachers to work with process/ repertoire charts and have kids devise their own relevant learning bookmarks, however, micro-progressions and demonstration notebooks start to hold students a lot more accountable for their learning in a great way.
In closing... this book is leaving me inspired, there are post-its overflowing aside it, I am forming little repertoire/ process charts from the step by step processes Kate and Maggie have laid out. Additionally, I cannot wait to share this book with my curriculum coordinator and discuss the power of micro-progressions because I feel like they could be used authentically in a multi-disciplinary way and hope to do a back to school interactive presentation with the teachers on using them. I would appreciate any ideas on what this might look like?
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