TCRWP Home Grown Writing Institute (grades 3-5) Recap Day 2

Choice Session with Sarah Isaacson

Day two began with choice workshops where every participant chose what topic they wanted to learn about. The options were:

Powerful, Purposeful Partnerships: The Key to Engagement, Independence, and Achievement with Cynthia

Supporting Students to Use Mentor Texts with Gary

Our Top 5 Tips for Supporting Students Learning English as a New Language with Sarah Picard Taylor

Management & Structures with Sarah Isaacson

I chose to go to the Management and Structures session with Sarah. She broke down the management and structures of the writing workshop into four main parts:

Environment:

• Designated areas of your room- Decide where students will do and see the work (minilessons, independent work, your charts, writing center, and other tools).   
• An attention getter- Create a consistent way to bring everyone back to the speaker. Your voice matters and so does theirs. 
• Gain insights into your students by reflecting on yourself as a learner- Where do you like to work? What do you need it to sound like? How do you best feel supported? What do you do when you need a break? Unsure of an answer? Try the work yourself. 

Routines/Structures:

• Transitions- Work done up front pays off in the long run. Don't skip out on making expectations clear. 
• Materials- Make your writing center signal to your students that they are independent and can do it themselves. 
• Model- Regarding the workshop ask yourself, How do I want it to look? How do I want it to sound? What do students need to be doing?, and model that work.

Goal Setting:

• Think about "the why"- Remember the purpose of the work (tool, expectation). 
• Celebrate- Small goals, big goals, and the end of a unit all should be celebrated.
• Wide variety- Goals should be visual through charts, checklists, mini-charts, or anything that fits the needs of the student.

Curriculum:

• Engaging- Pacing is key...don't linger in any part. Show them then send them off to practice. 
• Feedback- Critical feedback (aka "stop that") rarely moves writers forward. Instead, try appreciation ("well done when you...") and coaching (well done...you're ready to try...).
• Independent Work Time- This is the most important time. If it's not going well, pull back and start over. 

Morning Session with Cynthia

Cynthia dropped some gems from her choice session as soon as we walked into the room:

• Look at on-demands to help establish partners. Ask yourself, "Who could teach their partner something?", and pair those kids together.
• If you let kids draft for too long, it'll feel like a finished piece, making it harder to revise. Be strategic with when you meet your writers so you can continue to move them forward in their writing (no matter where they are in the writing process).

Conferring Clinic

She quickly had us review the parts of a conference as well as the purpose of each part:

Research: what can the student already do?

Compliment: name what they have already done or are trying to do (approximations)
Decide: what do they need next and how will I teach it?
Teach: show the student the next step and have them give it a go
Link: reiterate the teaching point then send them off to try it independently

We got together with our writing partners and materials and circled up in the back of the room. She grabbed a teacher as her partner and we began the conferring clinic. The flow of the clinic went back and forth between Cynthia modeling each part of a conference, then us trying it with our partners. As she modeled, she really coached into each part explaining how she was intentional with how she talked to her student. We then copied the work she was doing, part by part. Pacing wasn't the goal of this session, it was all about purpose. All participants got a feel for an effective conference and how it could look in the classroom.

Using Mentor Texts as Teaching Partners

Next we jumped into using mentor texts as a tool for us and our teachers. These three simple steps help us do this work:

1. Read the text through the lens of the moves the author is making in the book.
2. Name what the author is doing.
• Writers are thoughtful about _____
• Writers ask themselves _____
• Writers consider _____
3. Ask, how can I craft this into a minilesson, small group, or conference? 

 Afternoon Session with Gary

Gary began by walking us through a session in the Units of Study. He started with the portions of the session that are outside of the actual minilesson. 

1. "In this Session" gives a gist of what that day's lesson is about. 
2. "Getting Ready" will tell you all of the materials needed. 
3. Finally there is a letter to the teacher. It will tell you about any themes and embed a bit of PD

We then moved onto the heart of the session, the minilesson. Every minilesson follows a predictable structure beginning with a connection, teaching, active engagement, and link.

Connection- Tells the purpose of teaching. The bold says what is happening, the narrative underneath tells how it could go (this is not a script). The connection always ends with the teaching point.

Teaching- This is the "I do" of the lesson. The teaching either happens through a demonstration, (let me show you), explanation (let me tell you), inquiry (what do you notice?), or guided practice (I do, you do). The wording in this part will tell you what type of teaching you will be doing. 

Active Engagement- This is the "you do" of the lesson. The students are trying out what the minilesson is inviting theme to do.

Link- This is where you invite them to try something independently and bring the skill or strategy into their repertoire. 

Tips on Speeding Up the Minilesson

• Adjust the story-lines to make them work for you.
• Shorten the connection to, "Yesterday we....Today we..."
• The teaching is you teaching them, not a time for questions. Instead use turn and talks then tell them what you want them to remember.
• The minilesson is not for mastery so don't linger in this portion of your workshop. Keep it short and then move your writers along during independent work time.

The second part of our time with Gary was all about the writing conference. Gary summed up the importance of conferring with this quote, "A writing conference can change a life." It can turn a non-writer into a writer, build confidence, and build a writing identity. Because we had quickly reviewed the conferring structure with Cynthia earlier in the day, Gary really hit on some tips to make conferring powerful.

Research: This is all about the questions. Some tried and true ways to open the conversation are, "What are you working on as a writer?", "What are you doing really well as a writer? Show me where.", "How is it going with your goal(s)?", "What else? Can I read over your shoulder?"

Decide: Think about what you learned about them as writers and what will move them forward in their writing. Try to come up with multiple entry points and chose the best one to teach into.

Compliment: Tell the students what they are doing or almost doing. This reinforces desired skills and builds their identities as a writer (which makes this portion as important as the teaching). 

Teach: Make the work you're doing visible. Model on your own writing, not theirs. 

Link: Leave them with an artifact and make sure to reiterate the teaching point (or have them tell you).

Variations of a Conference

• Compliment conference- research and compliment. This will allow you to get to know writers without the pressure of teaching right then and there. This is perfect to do when you're new to conferring or at the start of a unit.
• Table conference- visit a group and turn one student's teaching point into everyone's TP. Kids in close proximity will eavesdrop, so we might as well share the teaching with them. 

My Big Takeaways

• Your room should act as a teaching partner. Set it up in a way that promotes independence (no more "I need another pencil"). Being intentional with designated areas for minilessons, independent work, writing centers, and other imperative spaces, will have a big pay off in the long run. 
• The only way you are going to get better at conferring is to just do it. It may be messy. It may not go great. But the student will appreciate your attention and you are going to learn something about them as a writer. 
• Adding the word "but" to a conference negates the compliment. Take it out of your vocabulary!
• Mentor texts serve as a perfect companion for minilessons, small group, conferring, and independent work. It is impossible for us to teach every craft move authors make (that would also create dependency for our students). Allow the text to be an additional teacher.
• If a minilesson in the unit doesn't feel right, change the script to fit yourself and your students. The words below the bold print in the minilesson are suggestions, not requirements.