Digital Reader’s Notebooks

Do you hate loose pieces of paper? Are your students’ reading logs floating in folders or getting lost in back packs? Do you love your students’ reading journals but worry about them being disorganized and chaotic? Do you have multiple organizational systems going all at once for organizing student book clubs? Digital Reader’s Notebooks can help solve these problems.

Reader’s Notebooks are one of the most important components of the reading workshop. I LOVE using reader’s notebooks with my students because they house:

1) Reading responses, reflections, and musings

2) Notes from class, charts, graphic organizers

3) Drawings/ Illustrations

4) Jots, annotations, favorite quotes, text evidence

5) Book Lists

I would NEVER abandon the physical, paper reader’s notebooks, however, I use GoogleDocs in addition to the paper notebooks to create Digital Reader’s Notebooks with my fifth grade students.

Digital Reader’s Notebooks allow students and teachers to organize the materials that students use during the reading workshop. In the image above, you can see that my students have GoogleDoc folders for each subject area. Inside their reader’s notebook they have:

1) Reading Logs and Book Lists (Titles they have read)

2) A folder filled with images of class charts, flipped classroom videos, etc.

3) Digital Bins (Digital Text Sets)

4) Digital Reading Notebook (Shared Documents, Group Annotating, Blogging)

5) A folder for their book clubs

Digital reader’s notebooks allow students to stay organized. They are an invaluable resource in the reader’s workshop! Let us know if you use them or try using them. Also, if you have any questions, please post them below. We’re happy to share how we’ve used them!

 

 

 

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Be “Word Choosy” with Word Gradients

Every literacy teacher thinks about ways to teach word choice. From mentor texts to word study, teachers search for ways to help their students become “word choosy.” This is because we want our students to choose their words with purpose. We want them to think about nuance and connotation. We want them to consider how words are slightly different from each other. For example, what makes the word lope different from bound.

I have LOVED reading Word Savvy by M. Brand; Words, Words, Words by J. Allen; and Bringing Words to Life by Beck, McKeown, and Kucan. I’ve looked for ways to strengthen my vocabulary instruction, and these resources have been invaluable. In addition, my go-to word sort activities come from the Words Their Way series.

However, it was an article I read in 2007 from The Reading Teacher journal, called “Overlapping Vocabulary and Comprehension: Context Clues Complement Semantic Gradients” by Greenwood & Flanigan, that changed the way I teach word choice. This article taught me how to use word gradients in the classroom. Word Gradients, also referred to as Word Spectrums, are like word number lines. They are one way to sort, categorize, and organize words so students can see the nuances between the words in order to be “word choosy.”

The purpose of this vocabulary strategy is NOT to teach synonyms but to teach the small nuances between words. In order to use this vocabulary strategy, choose a category of words. This category might be: “Movement Words” (i.e. crawl, walk, sprint); “Speaking Words” (i.e. whisper, shout, yell); “Red Color Words” (i.e. crimson, rose, garnet); “Names of Birds” (sparrow, humming bird, owl.) See the list below of Word Gradient categories I’ve used.

Create (or have your students create) words in these categories. Next, have your students sort these words- see example below. Discuss and debate the nuances between words that are very close in meaning. These “shades of meaning” are important, and students should discuss when they would use certain words versus others.

Generating these gradients helps students see the differences between words, and it also allows them to see how many words we have in the English language that they can choose from. Encouraging students to be “Word Choosy” helps students be as specific and purposeful as possible in their writing.

Some people have asked me, “How do your students sort color words? Or types of bread?” For color words, we sort by lightest shade to darkest (using paint chips helps!) For bread, we sort by smallest to largest, or by time of day when you might eat that bread, or by importance (common, everyday bread vs. special occasions.)

Categories of Words: Movement Words; Speaking Words; Words for Large/Small; Quick/Slow; Strong/Weak; Ugly/Beautiful; Scared/Brave; Kind/Mean; Color Words; Words for flying, falling, jumping, etc.; Types of Bread; Chocolate; Candy; Shirts/Pants; Shoes; Desserts; Vegetables; Transportation; Fruits; Seafood; Trees; Small & Large animals; Flowers. Of course, within each category, you can find sub categories. For example, you could spend weeks just sorting flowers–> Flowers you’d find in someone’s garden, large/small flowers; wild flowers, flowers at the grocery store, flowers on trees, flowers of a certain color, flowers that are symbolic, etc.

Enjoy! Have fun being “word choosy!”

 

 

The Argument Essay

My sixth- grade students are finishing up their argument essays this week. I have found the strategies and suggestions in The Research-Based Argument (Lucy Calkins, Mary Ehrenworth, and Annie Taranto) and by TCRWP invaluable.

In the past I’ve allowed my students to select individual arguments. I’m sure I’m not alone. I’m sure I’m not the only one who tried desperately to juggle 20 to 25 different topics and issues and provide feedback and support of great substance to each student. It’s an impossible task.

This year, my class chose one topic: Should animals be held in captivity. My students are doing some of the best writing I’ve seen in all of my years of teaching. Here’s why. Having one topic enables all students to engage in conversations about an issue where they each can contribute. Have you ever had to peer-review a paper and struggled because you just didn’t feel knowledgeable about the topic? Sure, you’re able to provide feedback around the basics of writing: clarity, organization, style, mechanics. But when you know the topic well, there’s just so much more you can offer.

Together, we created a digital bin that contains interviews, videos, and articles about the topic animals in captivity. Although students are working with the same topic, they are each able to research individually by selecting the texts they want to read from the digital bin. Using graphic organizers as they navigate each text, students take notes on the different perspectives the texts provide and they collect researchable evidence that supports each perspective. Each day, students work in small groups to discuss the research they’ve read. Then they write researchable facts on sticky notes that give reasons for or against the issue.

Here’s a chart I created for my classroom, inspired by a similar chart in The Research-Based Argument. This is such a helpful chart for all students, particular my novice readers and writers. As they continue to navigate the digital bins and research this topic, we are reminded that this is a complex issue and we discuss the importance of suspending judgment in order to glean as much information as we can from our resources.

This process provides a momentum and energy that I haven’t seen previously. As they finish up their essays this week and share their writing, students are able to get feedback from peers who know their topic well and can offer precise and sound advice to help make the writing stronger. Although the issue is the same, each student’s approach to constructing their research-based argument is different. And I’m able to support each of my students because we’re all immersed in common texts and steeped in a common knowledge

On The ELA Exams…

11 days totaling 7 hours and 30 minutes. That’s how much instructional time I used to help my students practice for the State ELA exams that begin today. The thought makes me quiver. What else could I have accomplished with my students during this time? And I’m one of the lucky ones. It was not mandated by administrators that my colleagues and I enact rigorous, continuous test prep for the exams. However, given the experience of last year’s tests, which seemed to be more of a measure of test-taking strategies than determining what and how much students have actually learned, I determined that this allotment of time was necessary. Last year, the ELA exams were like running a marathon: long, challenging, exhausting.

There has been much talk about students opting out of these exams. Frustrated parents and students have decided that the best way to act in response to these exams is not to act. What consequences this will bring or messages this will send to policy-makers remains unclear.

My thoughts are with all of the students who are undoubtedly experiencing some, if not, a great deal of anxiety over this testing. My thoughts are with all of the teachers who will spend the next three days trying to reassure their students that they’re wonderful and brilliant.