When planning to model a workshop lesson for a teacher, it is necessary for me to project every piece of the lesson, from the layout of the anchor charts that will be created with the students, to explicit talking points in mentor text, to my own thinking as a reader or writer in my notebook. Projecting a lesson through a detailed process allows me to think about how readers and writers will authentically demonstrate the standards and skills that are being taught. I can perceive possible difficulties or ideas that will cause students to struggle, and I can be explicit about thinking aloud to demonstrate how I tackle these possible struggles. Breaking it down for myself, so I can break it down for students...Recently I had the opportunity to visit several 2nd grade classes who were beginning memoir units in writer's workshop. In two classes, I had the honor of "kicking off" the unit on day 1. In order to make these successful lessons, it was necessary for me to decide on the mentor text to be included in the stack to be studied, and I needed to deeply immerse myself in these text and chart my noticings. This work then framed my planning with teachers and the teaching points and anchor chart completed with students during a think aloud early in the immersion phase. Following the immersion phase, where students noticed that a memoir contains a BIG memory from the author's life…an event that may have changed them as a person or taught them an important lesson….the students closely studied the author's craft in memoirs and began generating ideas and writing rough drafts of their own memoir picture books. While conferring with students, one teacher identified that elaborating on important details was difficult for her students. I was again invited to model a lesson to help the class with this skill. Because I had closely studied the memoirs in the stack, I knew my next step was to model with my own memoir writing piece. I am a writer who relies on emulating mentors, I noticed that Vera Williams adds details to her story A Chair For My Mother (a memoir in my stack) in interesting ways. Early on in the story, the reader learns that Rosa and her mother are saving money in a jar. The process of putting money in the jar each evening is outlined in great detail. These details are a great example of "show don't tell" for the reader and emphasize the importance of this evening routine with the characters. This craft move made me consider what part of my memoir contained a significant event that needed to be detailed by explaining the steps in a process. Looking further in this mentor text, I noticed that as the character begins her flashback or memory, she describes events using short and long sentences. This technique keeps the story lively while adding details around another event. The third move that caught my eye includes opposites in a sentence to highlight details. The sentence reads, We tried out big chairs and smaller ones, high chairs and low chairs, soft chairs and harder ones. The opposites create a rhythmic sense to the story. After this work of practicing how I add details to important events in my memoir, I was easily able to plan my talking points and anchor chart for this lesson: Although this was a long process of planning to arrive at my 15 minute focus lesson, the planning did ensure that I was able to speak to the challenges of this skill through a think aloud demonstrating how, as a writer of memoirs, I stand on the shoulders of published authors to emulate techniques and persevere in my memoir writing. My work also carried me through 4 conferences and allowed me to use share time to revisit important teaching points.
The workshop ended with a celebration when one young writer shared his memoir of camping with his father. He detailed the steps in the process in his writing to help his reader visualize the tent being set up. Within the steps of the process, he also threw in a sentence of opposites as he described the size of the tent's poles. We asked him to reread this part of his memoir several times. I gushed that this second grader had taught me something new…I never thought to include 2 of the techniques together when bringing details into a memoir! His smile lit up the share circle, and my hours that went into carefully planning this lesson and projecting this unit paid off!
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Dr. Rena Hawkins
I am the Principal of Maple Elementary School in Smithville, MO, and co-host of the #ShareMOEdu podcast. I am passionate about teaching and learning while supporting a school environment that promotes a positive climate. #ShareMOEdu airs every Thursday on iTunes and PodOmatic, highlighting an educator who has a positive message to share. Archives
January 2020
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