I'm adding reading to my PDSA repertoire this year. It's time. Math's easy and under control (says the girl who has no idea which 24 kids will show up at her door next month. I may have to eat crow on that.) I'm a decent literature teacher, having spent a chunk of my career teaching middle school English, but I feel like I can raise the bar with reading by setting explicit learning goals, teaching exactly what a good response to a bit of literature looks like, and forcing myself to objectively grade the details.
Can't really do that on Classscape. :(
In my county, it's an expectation that we do the Lucy Calkins thing. (Though we are given considerable leeway to supplement material. As long as your scores are OK, you're generally left alone.)
Normally, I plan instruction from the back forward. Set my assessment and create a path to get there. When you're using someone else's stuff, you can't do that. I like the unit; it'll be a precursor to a more nuts-and-bolts lit unit on character change. I want to set goals without damaging the integrity of the lessons. How do you take hollistic, warm-and-fuzzy minilessons and create SMART objectives?
Here's an overview of the second Calkins 3-5 reading unit, Following Characters into Meaning
If you look at the minilesson titles, you'll see they're grouped. I'll set my cycle time by that grouping. That's a pain, since my math cycles are cut-and-dry, five days, start on Monday, finish on Friday. I'm just going to have to deal with the fact that these cycles will be a bit messy.
The first four minilessons are about envisioning, making personal connections (though it isn't called that), and changing the image you hold of a character once you get new information about him or her. They group together nicely. There's my cycle.
After reading the lessons, I'm going to summarize it to the bottom line:
SWBAT use the strategies 'envisioning' and 'making a personal connection' to visualize and empathize with a book's characters.
SWBAT change that vision when presented with new information.
then bang that into our school's common language.
All of us will use envisioning and making a personal connection as strategies to live within the story and understand how characters feel and behave. We will show we can do this by scoring ( / ) on a reader's response we'll write on (whatever the fifth day will be.)
All of us will show that we understand that new information about a character may change our image of that character. We will show we know by completing a 'before' and 'after' Venn diagram of a character on (whatever the fourth day will be).
Yes, I know that in each minilesson you state a teaching point, but do you really think that on Wednesday, if you were to ask a child what Monday's teaching point was, he's going to remember? Get real. Putting the goals on paper will help everyone remember the work we're doing.
Okay, now that that's done, what will the assessments look like?
There are some assessment opportunities on the first three of days in the form of notebook entries. I've got a rubric for checking those, which the kids will already have pasted into the notebook covers. I probably won't bother, but if I found myself hard up for grades, I could. They'd also serve as good formative assessments.
The fourth day has an entry that needs to be checked, since it relates to the week's second goal.
A reader's response is what I have planned for formal assessment. I'm feeling a Venn diagram as a graphic organizer to help them get their heads together, a sketching requirement, since it's envisioning we're working, and some writing to explain their thinking.
The prompt would be something like this:
Think of a story you've read or are reading. It could be The Tiger Rising or another book. Tell about a time that you have used your own memories to help you walk in a character's shoes.
Before they touch a pencil, they'll be given the grading rubric specific to the task.
The planning sheet will look mostly like this (I'm still messing with it. It needs to be prettied up.) On the right, they'll sketch a scene from the story, on the left, their memory. The Venn is for listing details.
They'll write from the stuff in the middle of the Venn.There will be two places to write, one will be "Because I remembered..." the next, "I understood..."
Once they're done, they'll use the rubric to score themselves and turn it in. I'll use the same rubric to grade. Then we'll graph it up. Some kids will need to make improvements to meet the goal, and that's OK.
Then, on to the next group of minlessons, two about predictions. It's short, so the assessment will be a quickie.
Really, it's not as bad as I'd been fearing. I thought I'd need a glass of wine (or three) to tackle it, but I got through it with a sweet tea and some spinach dip. :)
Can't really do that on Classscape. :(
In my county, it's an expectation that we do the Lucy Calkins thing. (Though we are given considerable leeway to supplement material. As long as your scores are OK, you're generally left alone.)
Normally, I plan instruction from the back forward. Set my assessment and create a path to get there. When you're using someone else's stuff, you can't do that. I like the unit; it'll be a precursor to a more nuts-and-bolts lit unit on character change. I want to set goals without damaging the integrity of the lessons. How do you take hollistic, warm-and-fuzzy minilessons and create SMART objectives?
Here's an overview of the second Calkins 3-5 reading unit, Following Characters into Meaning
The first four minilessons are about envisioning, making personal connections (though it isn't called that), and changing the image you hold of a character once you get new information about him or her. They group together nicely. There's my cycle.
After reading the lessons, I'm going to summarize it to the bottom line:
SWBAT use the strategies 'envisioning' and 'making a personal connection' to visualize and empathize with a book's characters.
SWBAT change that vision when presented with new information.
then bang that into our school's common language.
All of us will use envisioning and making a personal connection as strategies to live within the story and understand how characters feel and behave. We will show we can do this by scoring ( / ) on a reader's response we'll write on (whatever the fifth day will be.)
All of us will show that we understand that new information about a character may change our image of that character. We will show we know by completing a 'before' and 'after' Venn diagram of a character on (whatever the fourth day will be).
Yes, I know that in each minilesson you state a teaching point, but do you really think that on Wednesday, if you were to ask a child what Monday's teaching point was, he's going to remember? Get real. Putting the goals on paper will help everyone remember the work we're doing.
Okay, now that that's done, what will the assessments look like?
There are some assessment opportunities on the first three of days in the form of notebook entries. I've got a rubric for checking those, which the kids will already have pasted into the notebook covers. I probably won't bother, but if I found myself hard up for grades, I could. They'd also serve as good formative assessments.
The fourth day has an entry that needs to be checked, since it relates to the week's second goal.
A reader's response is what I have planned for formal assessment. I'm feeling a Venn diagram as a graphic organizer to help them get their heads together, a sketching requirement, since it's envisioning we're working, and some writing to explain their thinking.
The prompt would be something like this:
Think of a story you've read or are reading. It could be The Tiger Rising or another book. Tell about a time that you have used your own memories to help you walk in a character's shoes.
Before they touch a pencil, they'll be given the grading rubric specific to the task.
The planning sheet will look mostly like this (I'm still messing with it. It needs to be prettied up.) On the right, they'll sketch a scene from the story, on the left, their memory. The Venn is for listing details.
They'll write from the stuff in the middle of the Venn.There will be two places to write, one will be "Because I remembered..." the next, "I understood..."
Once they're done, they'll use the rubric to score themselves and turn it in. I'll use the same rubric to grade. Then we'll graph it up. Some kids will need to make improvements to meet the goal, and that's OK.
Then, on to the next group of minlessons, two about predictions. It's short, so the assessment will be a quickie.
Really, it's not as bad as I'd been fearing. I thought I'd need a glass of wine (or three) to tackle it, but I got through it with a sweet tea and some spinach dip. :)
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