Celebration honoured. This is the loveliest of reasons to share. Join Ruth Ayres who shares a Celebration Link up on her blog each week.
This week I am celebrating different days. Each day this week had something out of the ordinary and it made for quite a lovely week with lots to be grateful for each day. Change brings new perspectives and insights. For this, I am grateful.
On Monday, which just so happened to be Family Literacy Day, my children came to school with me. They had a Professional Day at their school and wanted to come hang out in my classroom. They were involved in lots of literacy activities and did a wonderful job supporting and connecting with my students.
Tuesday afternoon is typically quite busy in my classroom. This week, we worked on having a very calm p.m. We finished art/writing projects and everyone felt very proud about getting all of our art up on the walls. A sample of student art work – gorgeous winter castles.
On Wednesday, we celebrated outside winter play with the FunMobile sponsored by Participaction.
What fun my class had playing outside with our little buddies from Mr. Blanchard’s K/1 class. Lots of activity, much laughter and some creativity with cones . . .
@CarrieGelson Looks like the Admiral Seymour Elementary kids loved the FunMobile and had a great time enjoying all the #WinterPlay fun!
— ParticipACTION (@ParticipACTION) January 30, 2014
On Thursday we celebrated science with Lisa and Nelly, our amazing volunteer scientists from the Let’s Talk Science Program. Students learned how to use different equipment to measure liquids.
@CarrieGelson Hands-on makes science fun! Happy your class enjoyed it. Thanks for posting all the great photos!
— Let’s Talk Science (@LetsTalkScience) January 31, 2014
On Friday I had the opportunity to celebrate my own learning with an amazing Professional Development Day. Pat Johnson and Katie Keier authors of Catching Readers Before They Fall were in Vancouver for a full day of presentations and discussions.
I could write a LOT about things I took away from this session but I am going to try and limit it to my top ten takeaway comments/ideas/questions/inspirations. Note – these come from sessions with both Pat and Katie.
1. If a child is struggling with a word when reading, don’t help by prompting with the same strategy – use a different one. (i.e. if child is sounding out and not getting word, don’t say “try the other vowel sound” – instead, use a meaning or syntax prompt)
2. Be careful about our language – not “This is what good readers do” but instead ” Readers . . . ” when we talk about the habits/strategies of readers.
3. Our assessment should focus on what it is the child does when stuck. What strategies does he/she have? Which does he/she need to learn?
4. Use Reader’s Statements with your students to communicate what readers do. For example: Readers think about what they read or listen to or Readers make sure what they read makes sense I am already thinking about what statements I want to highlight with my students and where to post these in the room.
5. Think about the difference between heavy handed strategy teaching and “spotlighting” certain strategies. Integrate strategies because all readers need all of them. There shouldn’t be a continuum where certain comprehension strategies are taught at certain grades.
6. Don’t skip/rush the shared demonstrations. Children need the “do it with me” time. Some need more practice and explicit support linking back to these lessons as they are developing independence with the strategies.
7. The children who struggle (who don’t have a reading processing system happening) do not realize that other readers have all of these things going on while they read – make thinking explicit in modelled read alouds
8. Really think about what fluency means. It is not just speed and accuracy. It is also phrasing, flow, punctuation, expression, etc. Use text to show how punctuation “tells us how to read it” in shared demonstrations to talk about fluency.
9. Effective literacy programs are anchored in best practices but responsive to today’s world. Think about purposes for reading/writing when thinking about using new technologies i.e. blogging and sharing with school community, wider world, responding to comments, etc
10. When thinking about having children use technologies – think about a shift from children thinking about technology as a toy to using it as a tool. Is what we are teaching helping our students become literate? Help them be creators/producers and not just consumers.
I also loved that in Pat’s a.m. session she referred to one of my favourite blog posts on the Catching Readers blog: Signal Words This is a great post full of ideas about how to assist students learn how to read nonfiction texts.
Wishing everyone a wonderful week!
There's a Book for That 
Thank you for sharing your top takeaways! Wow! So helpful!
…Science looks like so much fun in your classroom!
I can’t take credit for this wonderful science lesson – this is all due to my amazing volunteers through Let’s Talk Science They do about 6 lessons with us this year. First lesson we extracted DNA from kiwi fruit!
Something good in every day + thoughts to take away = lovely celebration of a wonderful week.
Thanks for visiting. I feel lucky to have ended my week with so much learning.
Wow! Sounds like a busy week filled with lots to celebrate! Thanks for sharing!
It was a great week. Thanks Michelle!
Love taking a little peek at your children, Carrie, the winter castles, and all the fun times in class this week. Would have loved your pd day. Thanks for the takeaways, too. The language offered sounds like Peter Johnston, especially #2. Thanks also for the link! Have a super weekend!
Both Pat and Katie referenced Peter Johnston – you are right! Makes such a difference – how we phrase the statements that we say over and over. Important to always be thinking of the impact. We did have a very fun week! Thanks Linda.
I will have to check out “Catching Readers Before They Fall” as I loved all of your observations from your PD. Are the “Readers Statements” that you refer to in this book? Thanks for sharing!
I don’t remember them being in there – just skimmed my copy and couldn’t find. But so much in the book is so worth reading! I’m thinking about statements that work really well for my classroom – like Readers read widely to have a healthy reading diet. Glad this was helpful for you.
So much to celebrate in your classroom, Carrie. I loved all the varieties of activities!
Thanks Tara! It was a particularly interesting and varied week!
What a great week. Thanks for sharing your classroom fun as well as the your PD learning. All good reminders of working with struggling readers.
Thanks Julieanne. I got so much from this Pro D day. It was an interesting process to come home and think about what my top ten take aways would be. I sure had some great notes from the sessions!
Thanks for sharing your notes with us! It’s always a good thing when PD really does help us! Hope you have another great week ahead of you 🙂
Thanks Michelle! It was a fantastic Pro D day!
What a great week of learning and fun!
It certainly was!
Sounds like a terrific professional development day! I appreciated being able to learn from reading your takeaways. Love love love the photos from your classroom. Your students always look so happy and engaged and excited! The ones with your two children are so special! Your little ones look thrilled to have your children in their classroom for the day.
Thanks Elisabeth – it was really lovely to have my children in my classroom for the day. Positives all around. It is fun to peek into other classrooms! We had lots of fun things to share this week!
Carrie – I SO wanted to attend this workshop but was giving my own in Calgary! Sounds like it was very relevant and you captured the Mii for me! (most important information!) Thank you! Love that you share your classroom celebrations through the week. Happy to be joining in this weekly celebration! See how much you are inspiring me?? : )
I wish you could have been there too. It was a great session. But hard to go to Pro D when you so often are the Pro D! So how does that work exactly? Do you sometimes have opportunity to attend events? I missed so many days not working Fridays – enjoying all of the things I have been to this year already. I am really happy you are joining this weekly celebration. It’s nice to think all week about what to potentially highlight. Although this is only week 3 for me, I’ve been reading some of the posts for a while now.
What a full rewarding book! I love it when kids get involve in promoting goodness in the world!
Thanks for visiting Earl