Full Transcript for Why Building Relationships Supports Stronger Literacy Skills

you're simply going to plug lessons into this structure and routine. 00:02:38.016 --> 00:02:40.850 So let's have a quick look at what this routine can look like. 00:02:42.015 --> 00:02:47.332 If you have 100 minutes of literacy, you can start each and every day with a warm-up activity. 00:02:47.332 --> 00:02:48.576 This can be your bell work. 00:02:48.576 --> 00:02:50.264 It could be a center's rotation. 00:02:50.264 --> 00:02:52.131 It can also be independent reading. 00:02:52.131 --> 00:02:59.217 You know when you're doing your language arts and what makes the most sense here for you to fill in what your language should look like. 00:02:59.217 --> 00:03:03.216 Now the next component is going to be your 25 minutes. 00:03:03.216 --> 00:03:05.251 Now this is going to be a 25 minute lesson. 00:03:05.251 --> 00:03:12.032 Now the time can change depending on the needs of your students, but ultimately you know that this is the block where your lessons are going to happen. 00:03:13.199 --> 00:03:17.594 In my block I'm going to start prioritizing putting spelling lessons first. 00:03:17.594 --> 00:03:23.546 They're going to need spelling lessons for their subsequent centers activities, so I want to front load that material at the beginning. 00:03:23.546 --> 00:03:30.861 It also means that that spelling lesson is going to include things like a shared reading and vocabulary, which is going to be tied into the spelling lesson. 00:03:30.861 --> 00:03:37.933 So in the spelling lesson I'm going to be teaching them the rule, the sound, the morpheme that we're going to be focusing on for that spelling lesson. 00:03:37.933 --> 00:03:42.381 And then the second teacher-directed lesson here is going to be a shared reading vocabulary. 00:03:42.381 --> 00:03:47.927 This shared reading text is going to be directly tied to the spelling lesson, so they're going to be integrated. 00:03:47.927 --> 00:03:56.437 So not only am I getting spelling vocabulary but I'm also getting some shared reading activities and we can also later on use that shared reading activity for other purposes. 00:03:56.437 --> 00:04:04.149 So we're going to do this all on that first day. 00:04:04.169 --> 00:04:07.701 It's still falling into the structure where we have our 25-minute lesson, then we have a 15-minute center and then another 25-minute lesson For Monday. 00:04:07.701 --> 00:04:10.528 Our focus is going to be on spelling, vocabulary and shared reading. 00:04:10.528 --> 00:04:12.933 Then we're going to move into Tuesday. 00:04:12.933 --> 00:04:16.629 Now, as previously, I would have suggested doing your read aloud first. 00:04:16.629 --> 00:04:23.334 I now recommend doing it second, after you've already introduced your spelling and your vocabulary and shared reading texts for the week. 00:04:23.334 --> 00:04:28.276 So then we're going to choose our read aloud and we're going to focus on what it is we're working on. 00:04:28.276 --> 00:04:38.173 We have a read aloud where we're monitoring our comprehension, and we'll choose a read aloud specifically that ties in with the reading comprehension strategy that we happen to be working on in class for this time period. 00:04:38.173 --> 00:04:43.598 And then we're also going to have a teacher lesson that's going to be on grammar. 00:04:43.557 --> 00:04:47.352 Again, we're front loading spelling and grammar at the beginning of our week so that students can complete independent activities. 00:04:47.352 --> 00:04:48.557 These are going to be quick wins. 00:04:48.557 --> 00:04:54.906 They're easy tasks for students to complete independently, so we'll front load them, teach them what they need to know and then the latter half of the week they will apply. 00:04:54.906 --> 00:05:03.293 What they need in my week is where I'm going to be focusing and finishing up some text analysis, some comprehension, some whole group reading. 00:05:03.293 --> 00:05:12.857 We're going to be reusing that shared reading text if needed to talk about text analysis and we're really going to be looking at this whole group reading activity that will complete after our read aloud is complete. 00:05:12.857 --> 00:05:15.716 It also means it'll be focusing my lessons on writing. 00:05:15.716 --> 00:05:24.733 So, whereas Monday and Tuesday are going to be focused on shared reading and grammar, Wednesday through Friday are going to be focusing on writing form and style when we're talking about our writing lessons. 00:05:24.793 --> 00:05:31.256 Here we really want to move away from these standard units on specific forms and we really want to focus on the writing process. 00:05:31.256 --> 00:06:00.105 So, whereas the beginning of the year, our big focus here is going to be on teaching students how to brainstorm and generate ideas for a variety of different writing forms, Moving into the second, the middle half of the year, we're really going to focus on drafting and deepening and making more complex texts and, whereas the end of the year we may focus a little bit more on editing and revising, we can cycle through that process two times a year and do it each term, or we can also take a longer time and focus on that over a longer period of time, really digging into that process. 00:06:00.105 --> 00:06:07.540 Throughout this entire time we asking students to write a paragraph, asking students to write a story. 00:06:07.540 --> 00:06:15.704 They might not have all of the pieces of a story, they might not have a strong idea of what a plot is, but we're not focused on assessing them on that component yet. 00:06:15.704 --> 00:06:21.932 We're really just focusing on assessing them on their ability to generate ideas, brainstorm and plan and organize that content. 00:06:21.932 --> 00:06:28.514 So we're focusing on specific skills of the writing process and of different writing forms and text analysis here in this piece. 00:06:28.514 --> 00:06:31.182 But we're not necessarily doing concrete units. 00:06:32.004 --> 00:06:37.216 We also in

our schedule have two sections where we have 15 minutes of student independent work time. 00:06:37.216 --> 00:06:40.713 They will be completing one of four tasks during this time. 00:06:40.713 --> 00:06:54.403 We'll teach them the components, not of the content of this lesson, but we're going to focus in this kickoff period of teaching them the strategies to run through the routine so they might not have all of the skills necessary right yet to be successful. 00:06:54.403 --> 00:06:57.037 Remember, this is the first 20 days of implementing your literacy. 00:06:57.037 --> 00:07:00.074 It's unreasonable to expect that they're going to have all of the skills. 00:07:00.074 --> 00:07:00.776 We'll get there. 00:07:00.776 --> 00:07:06.235 It's going to take time, but our goal in this kickoff period is really to get them used to the schedule. 00:07:06.335 --> 00:07:13.026 Remember that during this kickoff period, the goal of this schedule is to teach students the routines of the schedule. 00:07:13.026 --> 00:07:26.321 The content that is being introduced is going to be introduced slowly and methodically and getting students used to the idea of building up their independent work skills, building their skill set, getting them to understand what the routine looks like so it can feel familiar, so that they understand it. 00:07:26.321 --> 00:07:39.560 Your job is going to be through this routine, establishing the criteria of what it is you're expecting for your language block, what the behaviors you're looking for, what the community feels like when you're going through your literacy block. 00:07:39.560 --> 00:07:46.632 You're going to do some diagnostic assessment, knowing full well that a lot of the tasks that you might ask students to complete during this kickoff period they might not be so strong at. 00:07:46.632 --> 00:07:55.578 That's okay, because this is going to provide you a lot of valuable information that you can use for the remainder of your year, as this is diagnostic gathering, so you might ask them to write a story. 00:07:55.578 --> 00:07:57.511 They might have no idea how to write a story. 00:07:57.511 --> 00:07:59.958 That's okay, because that's great diagnostic material. 00:07:59.958 --> 00:08:01.811 They might not be ready to write a report. 00:08:01.811 --> 00:08:03.516 They might not have a clue of what a paragraph is. 00:08:04.038 --> 00:08:18.923 The whole point of this portion, this kickoff, is that diagnostic gathering, data, building relationships, building rapport with your students and establishing routines and schedules. 00:08:18.923 --> 00:08:20.550 The important thing here is to build a schedule that works for your students. 00:08:20.550 --> 00:08:25.716 This schedule may work in my classroom, but you may need to modify it or change it to meet the students' needs in your room. 00:08:25.716 --> 00:08:32.812 Sometimes you may not have 100 minutes and you may need to modify the ideal schedule to fit what you have going on in your classroom and fit the needs of your students. 00:08:32.812 --> 00:08:34.216 That is perfectly okay. 00:08:34.756 --> 00:08:37.071 The goal here is not to have a perfect schedule. 00:08:37.071 --> 00:08:43.255 The goal here is to have a repeatable schedule, something that you can repeat and function with each and every day, each and every week. 00:08:43.255 --> 00:08:50.572 When you have a repeatable schedule, you're better able to plug in activities that you need to create into this schedule. 00:08:50.572 --> 00:08:54.692 It makes you feel more organized, more efficient and more on top of what it is you're doing. 00:08:54.692 --> 00:08:57.384 Sometimes I'm only given 80 minutes for my language block. 00:08:57.765 --> 00:09:24.313 In the event that I'm only given 80 minutes of my language block, here is what I do I take this student center activity that normally is at the end and I drop off the 10 minutes of consolidation and the 10 minutes of warm-up and instead I move this final center's activity into my bell work task, which means we start each day with a center's activity, then I move into a lesson, then I move into another student center activity, followed up by a lesson. 00:09:24.835 --> 00:09:33.831 What my students need has allowed me to adapt it so it fits what I have in my classroom, while also still maintaining the goal here of having a static schedule. 00:09:33.831 --> 00:09:40.272 We want to have a schedule that is, a routine that we can follow each and every week. 00:09:40.272 --> 00:09:49.658 How you structure your schedule and whether or not it looks exactly like mine is less important than making sure that you have a schedule that you can follow each and every day, each and every week. 00:09:49.658 --> 00:09:57.394 Doing that is where you will find the efficiencies of how to plug in lessons so that you feel more efficient, more organized and more on top of your language arts.