A Day in Richmond

We spent a fabulous day soaking in new knowledge from Debbie Diller at her spring institute in Richmond, Virginia.  The day was focused on Adding Rigor to Middle Grade Workstations, and was held at the beautiful Jefferson Hotel. 

We learned and relearned so many valuable things from building classrooms to the five R's: routines, relationships, relevance, rigor, & reflection. She emphasized that building a classroom with high expectations first is key to establishing opportunities for small group instruction. We can do this by being clear about our schedule and objectives, nurturing independence, and "inspect what you expect" (following up on what your want to happen).

Today I re-learned that my "business is to meet the needs of my kids" and to keep standardized testing in perspective by "knowing my enemy." I also need to re-examine...who is doing all the work? I also re-learned that reflection is a step I cannot leave out. With the pressure of getting all the standards in before state testing, this seems to be the area that I struggle with most. I need to make time to ask: How did it go? What did I learn? Next time I will...

Lunch at Comfort: Cheryl ordered pimento chesse sandwich with fried green tomato and homemade chips & Mandy ordered roasted turkey sandwhich with apple mustard and mac and cheese. The restaurant was located close to VCU and completely adorable.

Supper at The Cheesecake Factory! Enough said...total calories for the day? They don't count on road trips, do they?

 

Our favorite quotes of the day:

"Think.  That's my curriculum for teaching reading."

"Do I need a level on every book?  Save your time & read a professional book."

"Assume nothing.  Model everything."

"You're always modeling, even if you don't know you are.  You're always modeling."

Dublin

Mandy and I were excited to have the opportunity to share some things that are going on in own classrooms at the Dublin Literacy Conference in Dublin, OH. "Literacy Stations in Middle Grades" was not only fun to create & present, but it was also encouraging to hear such positive responses from the participants. During this session, we shared how literacy stations run in our classrooms with our students. We were able to share sample stations, ideas for managing the stations, and correlation with curriculum standards.
We both use workstations in our classrooms. We believe strongly in them and their ability to provide students with additional independent practice with skills and strategies, provide time for reading/writing conferences, and provide opportunites to work with small groups. Inspired by Debbie Diller's, Practice with Purpose, we used the interests and needs of our students to develop additional stations to our classrooms.

COMIC STATION: gives students an oppotunity to explore another genre for reading and writing. Students can create their own comic online, read graphic novels, use inferring skills to make meaning of comics, or locate comics in newspapers. Many curriculum standards can be addressed using the activities in this station.
FAIRY TALE STATION: gives students an opportunity to explore a fun genre on a regular basis. Students can compare and contrast fractured fairy tales, write their own fairy tale, write a poem about a charater or theme, or create a wanted posted for one of the villians in their favorite tale. We toted several examples from one of our favorite collections to offer examples of books and activities in this station.
BOOK MAKING STATION: allows students another format for publishing their writing. Several online sites describe different styles of bookmaking that students can choose. One great site can be viewed at the following link: book making. We shared examples of supplies included in our book making stations, as well as, examples of student work.
TRAVEL STATION: allows students to explore different areas of interest in the world. This is a favorite! In this station, students can plan a trip, learn about a new place, explore atlases/maps, or use math skills by choosing items from restaurant menus. The best thing about creating this station is that 99% of the items in this station can be gathered for free! Take-out menus, brochures from welcome centers, maps, informational articles from museums/national parks, etc.

We were able to soak in an almost overwhelming amount of information in other sessions we attended yesterday! We are still letting it all soak in & are working on sharing that information. The conference was amazing! Thanks for all the hard work from the organizers and fellow presenters! We are already looking forward to next year.