It has been way too long since my last post! I have been knee-deep in some wonderful workshop teaching, I cherish every minute I get to spend with kids and teachers whether it is teaching workshop, observing workshop, or talking about workshop. Every day I feel pushed to learn more and do better. Our kids deserve it!
While I have been missing in action, I have been doing a lot of reading on assessments, goal-setting, learning progressions, and ways to encourage independence in students. Some of the reading I have been doing around these topics in from a blog that I HIGHLY suggest you follow if workshop teaching and making anchor charts are part of your world. The blog (I may have already mentioned it in a past post) is: chartchums.wordpress.com So….below I have started, what I hope to be a series of posts on charting, as I have been inspired by Marjorie Martinelli and Kristine Mraz to rethink all the possibilities charts have for our teaching and learning!
Charts and Shared Reading
- One tip suggested in this blog was to reread charts as a part of your shared reading time (especially when it is new learning). They gave the example of teachers making the bigger charts into smaller versions and including them in shared reading folders along with poems for kids to be rereading right when they come in in the morning. Of course you wouldn’t do this with all your charts but some of the routine charts might be nice to have in there so that the rereading the charts help the process become automatic for your kids. Also this way, when you retire an anchor chart at the end of a unit or when your students don’t need it posted front and center anymore, if it is one they really will use throughout the year, they still have access to it if they need it!
This is a smaller version of a bigger classroom chart that I made to put into student’s shared reading folders. I also made it into a bookmark for students to have in their book bins so they could have it out during partner time.
Charts and Shared Writing
- Another tip I gleaned from this fabulous blog is to take a piece of shared writing (perhaps a narrative written together after a class filed trip, or an information piece about something you are studying in science, or a review of some cookies you try out as a class) and then going back in to annotate it to show students how to revise their piece through specific lenses or to show examples of craft, revision, and editing found in the text or show where writing moves could be added into the text. It is important to keep the number of “points” you highlight to a manageable amount…this makes it doable for kids and also keeps the shared writing piece from getting so busy and filled that kids can’t use it as a tool anymore.
This was a shared writing piece to launch a unit on writing reviews. The pink sticky notes are labeling what we did as writers, what writing moves we did, to make our review strong and convincing. We had studied a mentor text of a strong review before writing this together so we could get an idea of what makes a review strong and convincing!
Happy Teaching!!
The Life of a Workshop Teacher 
Love it!
Rachon Miller