Juli
Kendall's
2004-05
READING/WRITING
WORKSHOP JOURNAL
Entry #01
The Ideas Are Creepin' In!
This is going to be a crazy year. I can already tell. How do I know? Because my head is spinning with the ideas I picked up when I attended MiddleWeb's first Walking the Talk (fondly know as WTT) conference.
You always wonder when you head off to meet with people and talk about education. What will it be like – boring? No way was this "meeting of the minds" boring. We met in Canmore, Alberta, Canada in June for four days. While some of us had been together before at NMSA meetings or other gatherings, no one there had met everyone else in "real time." But still, it was as if we were lifelong friends. People already had an understanding of what I know, feel, and believe about how kids learn and how to teach them. A wonderful feeling of inclusion pervaded the atmosphere – even those "significant others" who were brave enough to come along were drawn into the mix. So what did I learn? My focus for going, other than getting to know the MiddleWeb folks that I email with regularly, was to get a feeling for the concept of differentiation. I've read lots, and I talk to others in my school district, but I want to know what the "nation/world as a whole" is doing to differentiate instruction for students. I carry inside of me the deep belief that what makes Reading Workshop and Writing Workshop so important is that they naturally differentiate instruction for kids. But I want to understand this so well that I can explain it to others and have it make sense. So WTT was the start of my journey to understand the nature of differentiation in workshop settings. That's one of the things I'll be working on this year. But that's not all! As I work to clarify my thinking on differentiation, my focus on content literacy with an emphasis on Inquiry and Investigation will continue. That's what I wrote about in last year's journals, and this year, I'll be using the six Curriculum Maps for Content Literacy that I developed as a framework for instruction. It's built around the idea that Reading and Writing Workshop can support literacy in content areas. Last year, our emphasis was on science. We worked diligently all year long to build a strong foundation for content literacy. This year we'll start off the first six weeks developing an understanding of how learning to ask good questions helps us develop strong concepts. Then we'll move into a unit of study about "Astronomy." After six more weeks, we'll branch off into a unit of study about "Heritage." As the year continues, we'll investigate "Building a New Nation" and finish up with "Going West." So I guess you could say that I'm taking what I learned last year about content literacy in science and moving into a new area – content literacy in History and Social Science. Should be fun! I'll also be working in classrooms with teachers who are implementing their own Writing Workshops. For some teachers, this is will be their first time with Writing Workshop. Others are very experienced. So I expect to learn lots more about writing. I'll use the Writing Workshop Curricular Calendars posted on MiddleWeb as a guide. We also have a new principal, He's just been with us for a week, and already he's talking about sending teachers to the Writing Institute at Teacher's College in NYC. This will definitely be an exciting year. Right now, an understanding of how differentiation, Reading and Writing Workshop, and content literacy can work together during this year is growing inside of me. I can feel it sneaking in. It's just like Nora Jones sings in the song, "Creepin' In," from her album, Feels Like Home. There's a big ol' holeThat's gone right through the sole Of this old shoe
And the water on the ground
Ain't got no place else it's found
So it's only got one thing left to do
Creep on
in
Creep on in
And once it has begun
Won't stop until it's done
Sneakin' in
Resources page for our Reading/Writing Project
