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august/september 2010Jen munnerlyn • american community school of abu dhabi
New York! New York!
As for the conference and our time in the city, I think everyone enjoyed New York.The work at the institute wasmentally draining and therewas often homework eachnight. However, some of usmanaged to visit Broadway and/or Yankee Stadium.Columbia University wasbeautiful and the subway waseasy to use. Once I figuredout the lunch situation, hittingthe grocery store across thestreet from our hotel beforebreakfast ensured I ate whileattending sessions.
NOTES FROM THELITERACY COACH
TCRWP-
Jen’s Thoughts
NYC! What a town! Find a link to my blog post(s)as well as information about the conference.
Important Dates
New ES plans and projects:On-Demand Writing, WordsTheir Way Inventories, DRA, ERDs, Meetings...
Curriculum Teams
When will we meet next?
Other...
Upcoming professional development and collaborativeopportunities.
TEACHERS COLLEGE WRITINGINSTITUTE: JUNE 29-JULY 3
1,000 participants from every state and across the world came to NYC to learn more aboutthe workshop approach. As I mentioned last week, attending Teacher’s College was well worth it. The only thingbetter was probably attending withcolleagues. There were many other international schoolsthere, however I didn’t find another school with as many representatives as ACS.Daily, the program began with a keynote address which everyone attended. These werehour-long inspirational talks from master educators and writing instructors such as LucyCalkins and Carl Anderson
❤
. From there we moved into small and large group sessions for the remainder of the day. For me, my large group session time was spent with Lucy Calkinsand the 3-5 teachers. My small group time was withprincipals and other literacy coaches and led by CoryGillette the co-author of the
Breathing Life Into Essays
book.While I wondered whether or not being with theprincipals was the most productive use of my time, I didlearn a lot about what the administration in a workshopschool should and could be doing to support learners of all kinds: parents, teachers and of course students.If you are interested in reading more about my thoughtsfollowing the conference, check out my blog posts at TwoWriting Teachers:http://twowritingteachers.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/funofhardwork/ AND on my blog Literacy Bytes atwww.literacybytes.comYour comments are always welcome!
IN THIS ISSUE:
august/september 2010Jen munnerlyn • american community school of abu dhabi
August:
August 22-26: KG2-5 On-Demand Writing:
We will only be “prompting” students to write 2x this year. Using the TCRWP On Demand Assessment Tool, we willbe analyzing each child’s writing and using it as a part of our data correlation. The “prompt” we will all be using is very open ended and encourages students to write a small moment/personal narrative:
“Write about a person, place or object that matters to you.”
TCRWP recommendations I heard included: only taking one class writing period to complete this work.Then when students are done, have them write within your unit (finish working on what you started yesterday) or havethem read. The emphasis of this assessment is on content- what they wrote, rather than on how they fixed it up. If everyone commits to completing the On-Demand during the week above, we will analyze the results together at our firstEarly Release Day meeting- Sept. 23.
September/October
ES Back To School Night: Tuesday, September 7th
Jane will be talking about
all
of our literacy initiatives as well as explaining the new “No Excuse Words” in the ES.(Plan to have your GL NEWords info ready to go home that night!) By then I will also have asked for your TA to help medisplay NEWords around the school and in the atrium.
September 19-23: KG2-5 Words Their Way Spelling Inventory
We will be giving the WTW Spelling inventory this year to track the needs of our students in grades K-5. (Thisdata will also be helpful for our data correlation work and collaborative goals. ) At one of our final meetings of last year I handed out the forms you would be using for this inventory. If you haven’t yet, put it in your assessment notebook!If you’ve lost it, let me know and I’ll get you that information again. To give the inventory, follow the directions outlinedon pages 2-3 of the document “Word Study at ACS”. We will come together to “grade” these inventories at our ERDmeeting on Thursday, Sept. 23.
September 19-23: Map Testing Grades 3-5:
MAP testing data is useful to compare with DRA and in-class data. This year we are going to try and imbed thatinformation into the Tinkerplots you are given for the DRAs. To make the data even more useful to you and your team,I’m going to ask Brian how best to get the program installed on everyone’s computer. We will discuss MAP results at ourDRA Data meeting on Tuesday, October 12 3:30-4:30.
September 23: Early Release Day!
KG2-5: This meeting will focus on tying up all the loose ends mentioned in this newsletter. Following ERDs willmark the return to our work with Regie Routman.
KG1: New this year, I will be meeting with KG1 teachers (and any other EC teachers from KG2 and G1 who areinterested) to collaborate on professional development on Creative Curriculum and Early Childhood best practices.
September 26-October 7: DRA Fall Reading Assessment Grades 1-5:
Hard to believe, but the DRA is right around the corner! Similar to the format we used last year, we will be testing over a two-week window with individual teachers and grade levels determining how best to schedule their tests. I will goover the ACS DRA Testing Guidelines and provide you with more information on that assessment at our ERD onSeptember 23. Our discussion and analysis of the results will take place on Tuesday, October 12 from 3:30-4:30.
IMPORTANT DATES
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