Writers' Workshop

Teachers at the Sweetsir School participated in professional development with a coach, Kate Donelin, from the Teaching & Learning Alliance. These coaching and training sessions, which took place over a span of two years, focused on developing writing skills using the "Writers' Workshop Model."

At the kindergarten level, Writers' Workshop begins with oral story telling, and then drawing.  Horn & Giacobbe's book, Talking, Drawing, Writing  Lessons for Our Youngest Writers, served as a good resource for teachers. Throughout the year, teachers provide mini-lessons and model elements of writing.  Focusing on oral story telling first, helps young writers learn the skills to provide information in an organized manner, in order (beginning, middle, end), with enough details for an audience to understand.  Talking about their stories develops 'thinking strategies' which are an essential precursor for putting ideas on paper.  Kindergartners then begin to draw stories in their own special drawing pad. The mini-lessons expand to include adding words and sentences to tell the story.  

 As you can see from these photos, students are fully engaged during the writing block. Many describe 'Writers Workshop' as their favorite part of the day because they love the creative process.  Teachers' have found the lessons are easily differentiated, enabling students to move at their own individual pace.  As you can see from these pages, taken from three students' drawing pads, there can be quite a range of skills among kindergartners.

MassCue

Mrs. Sabella learned how to use Twitter
while waiting for the conference to begin.

In October, twenty educators from across the district attended the MassCue (Massachusetts Computer Using Educators) Conference at Gillette Stadium.

Workshops featured many of the latest technologies and practical strategies for implementing them in classrooms.  In between sessions, the room was buzzing with teachers exchanging ideas and sharing useful sites.

Sweetsir teachers were excited to learn about many of the free apps available to support our reading and writing programs.  Thanks to the PTO, our school recently received two new ipads.  One will be used by the Speech Language Pathologist, and the other will be shared by the grade two team.  These ipads will give our teachers an opportunity to explore using hand held devices as an educational tool.

Vertical Articulation

Sweetsir teachers spent the April 11th Early Release Day working together to review our writing curriculum.  Each grade level listed on chart paper the major teaching points and lessons they cover throughout the year (such as poetry, personal narrative, nonfiction and writing about small moments). They then presented the overview to the whole group so we could examined the flow across grade levels. This type of "vertical articulation" helps ensure all areas of the core curriculum are being covered adequately without unnecessary overlap.

Teachers left the meeting with a solid k-2 trajectory for our writing curriculum.  This time was also an effective way to acknowledge and celebrate the work teachers have accomplished this year with Kate Donelin, a consultant from Teaching and Learning Alliance. Our focus for the past four years has been on implementing a balanced literacy program that includes Reader's Workshop and Writer's Workshop.

Some of the teaching resources we utilize include:  Units of Study for Primary Writing by Calkins & Colleagues; Talking, Drawing, Writing: Lessons for Our Youngest Writers by Horn & Giacobbe; and the Wilson's Fundations Program.

How Will We Keep Up?

"The Changing Media Landscape" is a thought provoking youtube video.  After watching the clip, I was surprised to discover it was produced several years ago- 2009!

This video really drives home how vitally important it is for students to develop digital literacy skills.  Due to budgetary cuts, this has been challenging for many schools.  Across our district, for example, all the elementary library media specialists and technology teachers have been eliminated.  In fact, the Pentucket School district has only two full time staff members responsible for maintaining all the computer equipment and technology database systems used in six school buildings and the business office.  (Fortunately, Jeanne Frasch and Craig Carlson are very dedicated and talented).  

At Sweetsir, faculty members have decided to make enhancing our knowledge and use of technology a school-wide goal this year.  Teachers are sharing resources and dedicating time to help each other further develop technology skills (i.e., blogging, skyping, creating video lessons, smart board lessons, assistive technologies and using social media professionally),  We are also collaborating to create livebinders to share technology resources.