This is pretty much hot off the press. I gather I got the set before many people in the USA. It arrived on the advertised publication day, May 17.
I have been awaiting this package with some excitement.
Last year I began to make use of the Daily 5 as a management tool for my literacy programme. Alongside this I introduced the CAFE, an acronym tool to help children to build their awareness of literacy goals and strategies.
As I plunged into this quite fundamental change to my approach to the management of learning in my classroom, I realised that there was one aspect of the literacy programme that was underdeveloped, namely the writing.
In the Daily 5, work on writing is one of the daily choices. The children get significant time each day to write independently, outside of the normal writing time. This has merit if you subscribe, as I do, to the idea that the best way to get better at writing is by writing.
What I wanted to know about was the goal setting and the strategies.
The CAFE approach led to a class of Year 1 and 2 children who could tell me their reading goal and the strategy they were using to help them get there. Where could I find the equivalent for writing?
The CAFE approach led to a class of Year 1 and 2 children who could tell me their reading goal and the strategy they were using to help them get there. Where could I find the equivalent for writing?
That question led me to more reading. First up was No more "I'm done" by Jennifer Jacobson. This was a great start and I was very pleased with the response from my Year 1 and 2 class in 2012.
My next question arose from the hesitations our New Entrant/Year 1 teacher expressed. How can you expect independence from children just starting school?
This seemed a very valid question, so off I went again in search of an answer.
How do you get writing independence from children just starting school?
That's when I encountered Lucy Calkins and the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project.
My first purchase was Launching the Writing Workshop and The Nuts and Bolts of Teaching Writing.
The long and the short of it is I'm hooked. I feel like I'm finding the answers to questions I've had since I first started teaching. I'll have to tell you more in another post.
