French Poems

I am a self-proclaimed “obsessive self-PD’er”. I spend way to many hours learning new things about how to improve my teaching. This may at first seem like a marvellous thing – but in fact, I go a little bit crazy.

This weekend (besides writing progress reports, planning my math week – including creating my weekly SMARTnotebook lessons and open-ended tasks, marking writing and reader’s notebooks, gathering evidence for an IEP, help plan a parent literacy info night, ….) I have decided to research Poetry Workshops.

I have found a number of good blogs with poetry ideas (like this one and this one). I would like to teach them free verse/open prose because I think they’ll be successful, but myself as a student always loved the challenge of following the formula for different types of poems (ie. cinquain, haiku, acrostic, concrete).

My biggest challenge (as it is with all of my teaching) is that there are wonderful, wonderful mentor texts for poetry and tonnes of websites with great sample poems … in ENGLISH. I have a couple of French poetry books at school, and I have found some basic (and sometimes lame) French poetry sites and I  can copy some song lyrics from my CDs, but it doesn’t compare with the multitude of amazing resources en anglais. I sometimes wish I taught in English for the ridiculous amount of literature there is to use with kids. It would save me a lot of time. You can search for books based on your teaching goal for the day, you can get them from the book room or the school library or the public library and even from a real bookstore (Southern Ontario has a pitiful amount of French books in their bookstores – if any! I either have to order online or drive a few hours). If you wanted to teach a mini-lesson on visualizing or good sentence fluency or inferring, you can refer to a list or a website for a multitude of titles to choose from. In French, I have to read each book I have to see if it *might work for that lesson. <end rant> So…. to TRANSLATE SOME POEMS I MUST GO.

Reader's Workshop

<another excerpt from my weekly newsletters>

Every morning as a part of our literacy block, we have a Reader’s Workshop. Reader’s Workshop consists of a mini-lesson, small group rotation, independent reading and sharing time.

Mini Lesson (5 Minutes): Our Reading Block begins with a mini lesson that lasts approximately 5-7 minutes. Each mini lesson will focus on a reading strategy. There may be times where a strategy will be studied over the course of several days, in which case the mini lessons that week will be related to that strategy.

Rounds 1 & 2 (20 Minutes):
1) Mme Wright will meet with students in two different ways: in a small group or one-on-one
2) While Mme Wright is working with the above students, the rest of the class choses one of the following:

1. Lecture à Soi (read to self): Students practice a skill or strategy from mini-lesson or small group. The best way to become a better reader is to practice each day with a “good fit” book.

(sorry for the creepiness of the blanked out faces)

2. Lecture avec Quelqu’un (read to someone): Read and talk about a text with a self-selected partner. They may be reading the same book or different books. Partner reading provides opportunities to practice strategies, improve fluency, check for understanding, and hear your own voice while sharing.

Lecture avec quelqu'un

3. Écoute (listen to reading): Students listen to books or songs on tape. Hearing fluent and expressive reading expands vocabulary, helps build stamina and makes better readers

Écouter la lecture

4. Les Mots/Grammaire (word work/grammar): Students will work with grammar and words talked about in mini-lessons in a number of different ways, including magnetic letters, white boards and pipe cleaners. Expanded vocabulary leads to greater fluency in reading, therefore increasing comprehension. Becoming a more proficient speller leads to writing fluency and the ability to get your ideas down on paper.

Vocabulaire

5. L’Écriture à propos de la lecture (writing about reading): Students turn in reading response journals each week. They talk about their thinking while they read – and strategies that we’ve been working on. Writing each day makes better writers. Writing about our reading thinking makes better readers.

Écriture à propos de la lecture

Sharing (5 minutes):
During this time the class might: Meet as a whole group to refer back to the mini-lesson and think further; Meet together to think about and respond to questions such as:

What did you learn about reading today?

What did you learn about yourself as a reader?

Meet in small groups to have a quick chat about how the reading is going

Homework

I dislike homework. Some parents want it, some parents don’t. Some kids complete it regularly, some kids never do. Every year I have tried something different, and I still get the same results. Although our board still says that the expectation is that if you are in grade 3, you do 30 minutes of homework a night, and if you are in grade 4, you do 40 minutes a night, my principal happily approved this letter I sent home to parents last week…. YAY! Not only does it save me time to focus my planning on more “important” things, it also gives students to spend time learning with their families.

The Ontario Ministry of Education has updated it’s provincial Report Card – homework completion has been removed, and incorporated into the Learning Skill of Responsibility. Students are expected to:

1. Fulfill responsibilities and commitments within the learning environment.
2. Complete and submit class work, homework, and assignments according to agreed-upon timelines.
3. Take responsibility for and manage own behaviour.

For nightly homework, students will be assigned special personalized projects throughout the term. It is also the expectation that if a student does not complete an assignment in class**, they will complete it for homework that night. Incomplete classroom work will only be sent home if the student was clearly not using class-time appropriately. It will not be sent home if they do not understand the assignment, or if they worked hard on it in the allotted time.

For regular nightly homework, students and parents are encouraged to

• READ NIGHTLY!!! Students are expected to be reading every day at home. Have students read to themselves, read to others and be read to (either by an adult, sibling or audio book). Talk to your child about what they have been reading – try practicing the strategies we work on in class. Reading in English at home will help students with reading comprehension, fluency, accuracy and the love of reading. Extra reading (in any language) will strengthen their reading/writing in French. (examples: picture books, novels, magazines, newspapers, online articles, video game instructions, etc.)

• Write together – Create stories, make books, grocery lists, emails/letters, family newspapers…

• Play Board Games. Ex) Monopoly (reading, math, estimating, probability, social skills), Scrabble (or Boggle or other word games), etc.

• Visit the public library

• Talk about your day, ask each other questions (weekly newsletter might help remind students)

• Cook or bake together- reading, sequencing, fractions, measuring

• Do ART together – painting, creating music, dancing, acting games…

• Play/Work/Spend time in the outdoors – collect things, talk, explore…

• Explore interesting websites together (try geocaching or learn about a favourite author)

Not only will the above homework ideas increase your child’s achievement at school, they will also be fun, family-oriented and expose your child to a variety of different learning situations.

Reading is Thinking

We have been talking about Real Reading. A reader can read the words right and have great expression, but they aren’t real readers unless they are THINKING about their reading. Our first strategy on our reading strategy menu is “arrête et pense” from The Café Book, Boushey & Moser. A lot of my introductory minilessons for metacognition came from Comprehension Connections by Tanny McGregor.

In an email from a parent: when I asked B if she was thinking while she was reading her book last night she said that she only had to do that at school!  Good try silly girl!

Small Group Organizer

draft #4. One day it will be sorted out.