Members of the MiddleWeb Discussion List and other interested
teachers are joining together to explore the Writing Workshop
and other ideas about supporting young adolescent writers and
readers. Juli Kendall, a reading-writing teacher/coach in Long
Beach, California, is helping moderate the discussion. Juli also
posts a weekly journal entry from her reading/writing classroom.
This year, Juli will focus on her efforts to integrate subject
matter into her reading and writing workshop approach. In her
first journal of the year, she explains
the rationale behind this move and some of her thinking about
how she hopes to accomplish this goal.
Find out more about our project at our Reading/Writing
Workshop homepage. You'll find Juli's background article here. Links to many of the tools created
by Juli and her colleagues are embedded in these journals. Most
often, when you click on them, a PDF file will begin to download.
You'll find a list of the downloads here.
If you'd like to join the daily discussion that parallels Juli's
Journals, find out how here.
Take running records of reading.
Catch up on books kids have read.
Give a writing assessment.
Observe.
Take notes.
Confer.
Do a retelling.
Any of these are fine examples of how to begin the year.
An example of what's not a good way to begin the year:
Start off the first day or two jumping right into lessons assuming
that all the kids are at the same place and ready to head into
learning.
To get off to a good start, we use authentic assessments to gain
information to make our teaching decisions about reading, writing,
and content literacy for our students. According to Fontas and
Pinnell in Guiding Readers and Writers, "Authentic
assessment involves students in activities that are the same or
as close as possible to the 'real life' tasks of readers and writers."
(p.484)
Here's how we incorporate authentic assessment into our first
days of school:
Our kids do a three-day Writing Workshop assessment. The
trickiest part for me is choosing a prompt that will get their
writing juices flowing and allow them to show what they know and
are able to do. The procedure is simple. On Day 1, they draft;
on Day 2, they revise; and on Day 3, they edit and publish. This
year we'll be using a rubric based on the Six Traits of writing
to score their work.
Writing Workshop Journal--Week #3, "We
Begin to Write," tells all about the process as well as our
search for the "perfect" prompt.
We check their developmental spelling levels. I'm still
not sure if this is actually authentic assessment. But we work
to include spelling as a part of Reading and Writing Workshop
and as such it has an authentic instructional context. We use
the assessment from Words
Their Way: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction.
There's even a section about content-specific spelling inventories
with examples for Biology and Geometry.
Writing Workshop Journal--Week #7, "How
We Help Our Writers With Spelling," describes several ways
we incorporate spelling into our workshop context.
Using running records and talking about informational texts,
we determine their reading, comprehension, and fluency levels.
Listening as kids read aloud makes understanding the strategies
they use much easier. This also gives us a way to talk with each
other about the reading work students do. Each student reads a
piece of informational text aloud as we record a running record.
Then we have a conversation with the student about the text and
ask a few comprehension questions. Finally, we evaluate their
reading fluency. How does their reading sound? Are they reading
word by word or in phrases? Do they "read" the punctuation
and use proper intonation?
Reading Workshop Journal--Week #4, "What
Does It Mean to Examine Student Work in Reading?" has more
information about how we assess reading and determine reading
levels.
While our students read independently, we observe them and
use a rubric to determine their levels of independence. This
is my favorite assessment. I love sitting in the middle of a bunch
of readers during the first days of school taking notes about
what they do during Independent Reading. Then, as we use the Independent
Reading Rubric to score their work, I see flashes of recognition
in their eyes. I love conferring with them about their reading
and watching as they realize, "I was playing the 'pretend
game!'"
In Reading Workshop Journal Week # 3,
"The Heart of the Matter: Independent Reading and Assessments,"
there's a peek into how it looks in our classroom.
After independently reading informational text, we ask them
to do a retelling. This is our best way to get a glimpse into
the understandings they get from informational text and how much
they know about the content. It's a good way to look at content
literacy since it involves both reading the piece of text and
writing a retelling. Often at the beginning of the year kids are
unsure of what a "retelling" is. They often confuse
it with "This story is about" or writing a summary.
As we work together using a Nonfiction
Retelling Rubric to help evaluate their work, they learn more
about what retelling involves.
Reading Workshop journal Week #10, "Retelling
-- and Assessing from Rubrics" discusses how we teach retelling
using flow maps.
Once we gather all this information from authentic assessments,
it's time to develop a reading and writing profile for each student.
My co-teacher and I look at all the data together and decide the
level of books, the focus for writing, and the ability to gather
information from text for each student. This gives us a good idea
of where we need to go with our instruction.
So how do our assessments measure up? We're "not taking students'
time away from reading and writing, because they continue to read
and write" as we gather the information. We're working to
"create a classroom environment that promotes authentic instruction"
so authentic assessment ties in directly to what we are teaching.
Reading and conferring with students, doing a three-day Writing
Workshop assessment, observing as students read independently,
asking kids to do retellings of informational text. This is what
fills our days. As we get underway, we look forward to a busy
year full of reading and writing.
What's up next? The Curriculum Map for Content Literacy
SEE Juli's Curriculum
Map for Content Literacy - Unit One
Read next week's journal
Read last week's journal
Read Juli's backgrounder about her work
Back to Juli's journal index
Back to the Writing/Reading Workshop Index
Page