I received the GREATEST text today that confirmed my belief in growth mind-set... Individuals with a growth mind-set depend on mentorship, experience, and practice over time to develop their intelligence, talents, and abilities. They are willing to step out of their comfort zone and take risks, realizing that mistakes are opportunities to learn and grow. According to Carol Dweck, a professor at Stanford University and author of the book “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success”, those with a growth mind-set persist to accomplish the following:
AND THE RANDOMNESS OF BARBARA WALTERS IN THIS POST ;) Last night I was watching the final interview with top female news correspondent, Barbara Walters. In one piece of the segment, Barbara's "go-to-questions" were highlighted. "I ask questions that make you think…questions that you haven't heard before," Barbara stated. My thought was these questions would elicit, as Barbara expressed, "…thoughtful…and sometimes surprising answers" with our 4th and 5th grade writers. These questions can be used in the first unit where students are working on collecting some initial entries or seed ideas in their writer's notebooks:
This lesson can possibly begin with a short (appropriate) video clip of famous people being interviewed by Barbara with these questions. Students can then move to their notebook for a quick write and have a chance to answer 1 or more of these questions. This seed idea might lead to a longer piece immediately or sometime during the school year. Voila! Inspiration from Barbara Walters!
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This week I stopped in a 4th grade classroom where writer's workshop was underway. Students were intently scattering from the meeting area to continue work on their feature articles. As I scanned the room, each student had a calendar with their writing work. When I asked a student about the calendar, this author let me know that with only 3 weeks left in the school year, each student had created his/her own deadlines to complete the phases of writing and publishing for this unit of study. One young author was very excited to share his work with me as he planned out the lay-out for his piece on "TS". (He informed me that TS is Tourette's syndrome, which is a condition that he has.) His goal is to build awareness of TS by printing 100 copies of his feature article to distribute. This young man's calendar included weekend work that he had set for himself to meet the target date. This student and I celebrated his hard work and commitment to this project. I was invited back to check in on his progress and receive a final copy of his publication. I gladly accepted this invitation! Less than 20 minutes had passed when this author found me in my office as I gathered supplies for a PLT meeting. He was excited to report that because today's work had been so successful, he was ahead of schedule. We shared another small celebration. I mistakenly judged that he would be able to take the weekend off and pick up with this writing piece next week. With a smile, he informed that this work was important and a break would not be in his weekend plans. He received no arguments from me…in fact, as a co-learner I was reminded of a valuable life lesson...meaningful work keeps the student engaged and increases the motivation towards success. 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! Blogging Slow and Steady!Blogging is a new experience for me. One that I am excited and nervous in which to participate. Excited to author my ideas, yet nervous to have my writing and thoughts open for all. Like students, I require mentor text to emulate. I have studied the blogs of those in this field that I trust and admire, noticing their structure, choice of ideas, and writer's craft. I have stressed over this blog I have created and ignored, and now I am ready to "get over myself" and just write!
Day 1: Sharing a Book Idea
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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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