Celebrating NCTE and More

Well, that was an unplanned break! I hadn't planned on taking two weeks off, but during the NCTE/ Thanksgiving season, these things happen. That makes me especially grateful to join Ruth Ayres and her celebration community today. You can find Ruth's blog and more celebrations linked up HERE. 

This week I am celebrating...

NCTE
My friend, Donalyn, calls NCTE "plaque removal." Many friends remarked that they wouldn't be teaching anymore without this conference. I think both comments are a testament to the power of this conference. I travel to NCTE and am immediately surrounded by friends who are as passionate about teaching as me. I am beyond grateful for a district and husband who support me attending this conference each year. What a blessing it is to listen to so many presenters and friends inspire me and want me to return to the classroom that minute and teach? A powerful experience. 

A photo for my students with Melissa.
Our classes have connected this year from Maine to Illinois. 

Authors
I love that so many authors attend NCTE. I imagine writing to be a lonely job at times. Being able to share the impact their writing has had on my students (and myself) is important to me. To me, authors are part of a partnership with teachers and librarians. We work together to hook children into reading. Getting to know authors, hearing their stories, gives me an added conversation to share with students. I was grateful to celebrate books, authors, illustrators, and publishers with my students when I returned from NCTE. We did some "speed dating" with many of the ARCs I brought back. To see the excitement in the room while the kids previewed books was exhilarating. 

My students are crazy over Phil Bildner's A Whole New Ballgame.

Nerdy Book Club
I've long been a member of the Nerdy Book Club, even before there was a club. I think anyone who grew up as I did with an addiction to books was too. I love that Donalyn Miller and Colby Sharp took this concept of loving books and created a blog. Along with those two and Cindy Minnich, I now help run that blog by scheduling posts. It is a great resource. But NCTE each year reminds me that Nerdy is more than a blog, it is this entire community that we are a part of. Presenting with the Nerdy panel this year was powerful. My students know that presenting stresses me out, but this one didn't. I felt good about it. Attending the Nerdy party on Saturday made me smile. All of these teachers, authors, illustrators, publishers, etc gathered together - what an amazing community! Long live Nerdy! 

Our fabulous Nerdy Book Club panel for NCTE.

My Students
Man alive, my students rock. I've known this, of course, but traveling away from them reinforced it. I created a Padlet for them to comment on, if they wanted, when I was gone. For my part, I promised to add photos. Many had never been on a plane, so I said I'd take a photo out of the window. I also promised I'd take a photo with some authors for them and post them there. I had no idea that it would be my students posting comment to me that would move me to tears. They knew that flying and presenting made me nervous and felt compelled to write me notes. Such cool kids. I think I will set up a Padlet for us to communicate over Christmas break as well. It was an awesome experience. 

Created with Padlet

Family
NCTE takes me away from not only my students, but my amazing family. I am grateful they understand why I feel compelled to go to these conferences and not only tell me to go, but encourage it. That also makes coming home all the sweeter. Spending time together this week over Thanksgiving break is a blessing I don't take lightly. My boys are growing far too fast, Chris and I try to step back and simply enjoy it on a regular basis. 

Hoping you all had a wonderful week! 

Letting My Students In

Yesterday, it happened. That point in the year where you realize that you’ve clicked as a teacher and a class. Not that great things haven’t been happening all along this year, just that yesterday we reached the point where I knew something special would happen this year. That our relationship as a classroom family is now strong enough that we can achieve great things.

My former principal used to tell me that I could ask my students to reach for the moon and they would try their hardest to do just that. I always told him that the reason for that was simple; I worked hard to build relationships with my students. The more that I share of myself, the more they trust me. It is a dance we perform all year long. But always, every year, I hit the turning point. The point where I know we are there and then it’s all uphill from there.

Yesterday was nothing special. I felt horrible. A head cold and stomach bug were enough to make me want to stay home, but to school I went. (Today, however, I am typing this at home on a sick day.) Our language arts lesson was a read aloud of one of our Mock Caldecott nominees, Peter Brown’s My Teacher is A Monster. As I read it to the first class, one student immediately asked if I knew Peter and if he was nice. I stopped immediately to tell them what I knew: that Peter Brown is one of my absolute favorite authors and one of the kindest folks I’ve met. I moved to the back of the room to our picture book display and grabbed every book I owned by Peter. Then, they asked if I had a photo of him. I quickly went to my blog and shared this video from NCTE last year:

By sharing the video, we began to talk about NCTE. Why I go, what is important about it, why I would bother to fly and present when both are things that trigger my anxiety. We had amazing conversations about what is important to me, why I respect the teachers and authors I see there, and more.

Impromptu Author Study

This is not a part of a lesson that could be tied to any Common Core State Standards, but I would argue it is likely more important than most of the lessons I will teach this year. It showed me how much my students already knew about me and how connected we are. In watching the video, each class shouted out when they saw their favorite authors and began to create piles of their books on the table in our room doing their own impromptu author studies. Each class asked if I could find a list of the authors that would be there and take photos with their favorites because, and I quote, “It will be like we are there too.” I promised to tweet them from the conference, they promised to teach my mom (who is my substitute while I’m gone) Twitter.

Yesterday was an amazing chance to reflect, it was a moment where I got to see what we have accomplished already in twelve weeks. And today? I get to sit at home, watch them add their thoughts to Padlet, approve their comments and blogs, read their Tweets, and reflect in what an amazing job I get to have. Hopefully I will also rest and recuperate so that I am 100% healthy for that amazing conference next week. I am truly blessed.

The snow falling outside made our day even more magical.

Thinking about Formative Assessment

Last Sunday NCTE held an amazing chat hosted by Franki Sibberson and Antero Garcia on formative assessment. I’m embarrassed to share that it has only been in the last four years that I have even thought about formative assessment. While my elementary education program was good, there are definite gaps in my learning. We talked a lot about assessing students, but it was never broken down into formative and summative assessments. It was only in getting my second masters to be an administrator that I heard the two terms. Wow. I remember sitting in the class thinking of how powerful it was. I clearly remember reflecting that so much focus is on the summative assessment when, in my mind, formative is the critical piece.

I am now constantly reflecting on assessment in my classroom. Sure we have the “big” assessments that loom over us – ISATs (our state test), benchmarks, etc. – but in my mind they don’t create the picture of who the children are that fill my room. It is the daily assessments that do. This week I reflected on all of the ways that I “assessed” my students and what those assessments told me. I thought I would share just a few here today.

Status of the Class

In reading class we begin each day the same. Kids enter, pull out their assignment book, and fill it out. One student walks the room and initials each book to ensure it is filled out while I call out their names. They tell me what book they are reading and what page they are on. (I began this after reading IN THE MIDDLE from Atwell.) This is just a quick check in to see where my students are in their books. What I love is the comments:

Owen checking in with Bomb by Sheinkin told me his page number and said, “You were right, I love this book.” Several kids immediately swiveled in their seats to check it out.

Leah shouted her page number for Paperboy and said, “When am I going to learn his name? This is making me crazy.” The kids who had read it began to whisper excitedly.

Madi looked up from When the Butterflies Came and said her page number before looking back at the book. Lexi and Sari looked at her and then me, “She’s at the part!!” Madi looked up and grinned.

The buzz of excitement, the titles being shared, the comments about books let me gauge the pulse of our reading community.

Read Aloud

My three reading classes meet for fifty-five minutes each. In my mind, that time is far too short. As a result, I don’t do novel length read alouds often. (Novel length read alouds are read by homeroom teachers instead.) For my current poetry unit, however, I do. Sharon Creech’s Hate That Cat gives me the opportunity to teach figurative language embedded in a text that they love. It works beautifully for this purpose and the kids love it. On Wednesday I was reading to them and we reached a poem that said,

This is just to say

That Skitter McKitter has run away.

In all three classes a gasp rose from the collective group, a clear sign of engagement. When I finished the poem, I closed the book. That was our stopping point in each class so we could finish on Thursday and take our unit test (summative assessment) on Friday. The outcry that rose upon the book being closed made me smile. Many comments were shared about how I left them at a cliffhanger. As we moved to independent reading and conferring, I heard whispered conversations – would Creech let Jack’s cat leave and not return? Someone said no, she wouldn’t be that mean. Another child said, “But remember Sky…” J These kids are invested in the book and it is amazing.

RTI

I teach six students each day in our reading intervention class. We do a variety of things – work with short texts, check out websites like Wonderopolis, read alouds, work with fluency and comprehension, etc. Friday was one of those days you dread as a teacher. I didn’t feel great before school, but thought I’d be fine. I arrived at school and knew that I had been wrong. My stomach was rolling, by lunch I had a slight fever. At that point I knew that I just needed to push through. By the time I could get a sub, it would be time to go home. With that thought, my RTI class came in.

I looked at them and confessed, I felt horrible. I didn’t think I could teach an entire lesson. I asked each to grab an iPad and said I thought we could work on reading comprehension. I wanted them to think of a topic they were interested in – any topic. For the next 15 minutes they were to research that topic and monitor their comprehension. When they learned something they thought they would want to share with us, they needed to jot it down so they could remember it later.

What followed was possibly the most amazing fifteen minutes of RTI this year. Each child was beyond engaged. They researched a variety of topics, from Kazu Kibuishi to whether cheerleading is considered a sport.

They were far from silent, shouting out cool facts as they went and having conversations as they read. The text they were reading was far above their reading level, yet they all were understanding what they read. I sat back, tears pricking at the corners of my eyes, and was amazed. When I called time they immediately began to buzz about the information they learned. Several shared that one article led them to another, and another. My favorite comment came from Simon (who previously did not enjoy reading),

 

  

While I had created the lesson on the spot as a time filler when I couldn’t “teach”, I gleaned more formative assessment data than I had ever dreamed. When engaged with a subject matter that was important to them, all six students were highly successful readers. When allowed to talk without reminders for quiet, without admonishments to get back to their reading, they deepened their comprehension. Amazing.

Formative assessment is part of our daily lives in our classrooms. If you would like to continue your thinking on it, please check out NCTE’s amazing position statement on it HERE. 

Also, be sure to check out Franki Sibberson's blog, A Year of Reading, for more posts about formative assessment next week. I think this is a conversation we need to continue. 

Slice of Life - NCTE 2013

Slice of Life is sponsored every Tuesday by Two Writing Teachers

NCTE. To encapsulate all of the awesomeness of the four days would be next to impossible. Any type of summary I will attempt will be inadequate. My friend calls this conference “plaque removal.” I would agree. NCTE has become one of my favorite weekends of the year. It reminds me I am not alone. It reminds me of how much good there is in education, despite what the media portrays, and it reminds me of just how blessed I am.

Maybe later I will try and summarize what I learned. For today, this will have to suffice.

NCTE 2013

I won’t forget…

Dinners with friends, authors, writers.

Laughing until tears ran down my face.

Feeling inspired to write, teach, grow.

Rooming with a dear friend.

Her kindness knowing how much I usually prefer to be alone.

Laughing and talking up way to late.

Realizing how amazing our weekend had become already.

Catching up with friends over coffee.

Wondering once again

Why I have to live so far from Starbucks.

Attending sessions that spoke to me.

Learning new concepts.

Being reminded of old ones.

Affirmed in my teaching.

Favorite memories abound-

Hugs from Twitter friends.

Heinemann’s breakfast when I felt

I might be part of something greater than I knew.

Nerdy gatherings daily.

The astonishment when online friends,

Blog readers, Twitter friends, authors I’d never met

Approaching me…

You’re Katherine Sokolowski, right? I love your writing.

Wow. Thank you.

Thank you.

I have no words to describe that feeling.

NCTE13.

I have become braver than I was before.

This conference pushes me out of my comfort zone

It is completely worth it.

I tried to take as many photos as possible during the weekend. I missed many with friends – conversations were too wonderful to remember to pull out a camera. I did get several, however, and put them in the video below. (Feedly friends – you might need to click over to the blog to actually see it.) Thanks for an amazing weekend to everyone I saw at NCTE. Hope to see you in DC if not before!