Juli Kendall's Weekly
Reading/Writing Workshop Journal
A MiddleWeb Listserv Project
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.
2003-04 Reading/Writing
Workshop Journal
Week #17
It's Noisy, It's Messy, It's Fun!
Our Kids Are Getting into Books
And the beat goes on.
If you've ever been in a classroom, you know each one has a beat all it's
own. There's a rhythm to learning that is palpable. And since we started
our unit about literature study, our classroom is alive with the sound and
rhythm of kids getting into books. It's a little noisier and a little messier,
but it sure is lots of fun. It reminds me of the song, "And the Beat
Goes On," by Sonny and Cher.
And the beat goes on, and the beat goes on.
Drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain.
La de da de de, la de da de da.
Last week we started a KWL chart about literature study. What is a K-W-L?
It's the creation of Donna Ogle and is a 3-column chart that helps capture
the before, during, and after components of a lesson or unit of study. K
stands for Know. W stands for Will or Want. L stands
for Learned. It's a group instruction activity that serves as a model
for active thinking during reading.
I also use the K-W-L teaching technique to help students activate prior
knowledge. I do this by asking them what they already Know; then
students (collaborating as a classroom group or within small groups) set
goals or ask questions about what they Want to learn; and after reading,
students discuss what they have Learned. Using this chart, they apply
higher-order thinking strategies which help them construct meaning from
what they read and help them monitor their progress toward their goals.
Here's what we've added to our chart this week:
What we're learning about literature study (building on ideas from
Guiding Readers and Writers)
Literature is something you read like books and magazines.
Literature study means:
--Reading and thinking about literature.
--Working with others to reflect on, analyze, and criticize literature by
talking back to the author.
--Developing and sharing artistic responses to literature after reading.
--Improving understandings by talking about our books.
This week our focus is on the sequence of activities we're using in our
literature study. I got the idea for this sequence from Fontas and Pinnell
in Guiding
Reading and Writers, page 253. But we've made a switch in our sequence
of activities for literature study. Originally, we were going to "self-select"
books, "form groups", and then "read, think, and note."
However, after we selected books and kids started reading there was lots
of switching of books. I guess reading the first page of a book doesn't
always let you know whether it is of interest to you.
So I changed the sequence. Here's our adapted sequence for literature study
and how we're describing the activities we've adapted from Guiding Readers
and Writers.
Self-select
Pick a book that you want to read. Look at the front and back cover, the
Table of Contents, the pictures and illustrations. Then read the first page
to see if it is interesting. If not, try again. It's your job to select
the book!
Read, Think, and Note (Sometimes people need to change their book.)
Read or reread the book. Think about what you are reading. Take notes on
Post-its. You may include: unknown words, Making Connections (t-s, t-t,
t-w), questions, important facts, predictions, inferences, etc. Don't forget
the page number. It's your job to take notes on Post-its so you'll have
something to talk about!
Form Group
3 Ways to Make a Group:
--Everyone reads the same book.
--Everyone read different books by the same author or illustrator.
--Everyone reads different books on the same topic or theme.
It's your job to form a group for literature study!
Make Schedule
The first time your group meets, make a schedule. Remember to include
how much of the book you are going to talk about at each meeting and how
often your group will meet. It's your job to follow the schedule that your
group makes!
Discuss
Here's where you use the post-its that you've been writing as you are
reading. The post-its remind you of what you were thinking when you were
reading. Use the post-its as a guide for your group conversations. This
is the time to talk back to the author. Remember to use the Rubric
for Literary Conversation. (I wrote about this rubric in Reading Workshop
Journal #17.) It's your job to use the rubric to
score your group's conversation about the book!
Response or Project
After your group is done discussing your book, you decide together what
response or project you want to do. Some suggestions to consider: art projects,
music projects, Internet projects, writing projects, etc. Every group will
share their project with the other groups. It's your group's job to decide
on a project, and then to do it!
Kids form their groups, the conversations begin, and I can tell that the
beat and rhythm of our classroom is strengthening. "I like this literature
stuff," Daniel says. "I can learn new information and it makes
reading books about science fun."
And the beat goes on
SEE Juli's Curriculum Map for Content
Literacy - Unit Three
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Read last week's journal
Read Juli's backgrounder about her work
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