​This week, we finished our read aloud, How To Eat Fried Worms, by Thomas Rockwell.
But instead of just talking about it... I surprised my kids with cups of dirt filled with worms! After the screaming subsided and everyone calmed down, I pulled out the chart paper and pencils- and the Shared Writing began!  Shared Writing is a a great way to model the essential steps of the writing process -while you are writing about  a common  experience that you have had together. The ideas for a shared experience are limited only by your imagination. In the past, my kids have written about everything from Building a Life-Size Scarecrow to The Perfect April Fool Surprise, which involved playing a trick on our friends across the hall! 
Top 3 things that I love about Shared Writing are:
a. You can focus on any writing skill that you are currently practicing.
b. It provides  support and scaffolding for your struggling writers.
c. Best reason of all- IT IS FUN!!
 Follow these easy steps to try it in your classroom this week! 
STEPS of SHARED WRITING
The first step of shared writing is to create a common experience for the class. This is an event in which everyone participates or observes and can later generate thoughts and feelings about and eventually write a common story.  Elementary school classrooms are full of opportunities to generate common experiences for kids. It is something that elementary school teachers do naturally. They look for ways to make the learning memorable and lasting for students. Common experiences are what children remember when they look back on the year they spent in a classroom. Lessons are easily forgotten but a shared experience is still being talked about long after the year has ended These might include a science experiment, a walk to the school garden, a visit from a speaker, a school assembly, a class party, etc. Ideas for shared experiences are limitless! The teacher can take pictures of the event to help preserve the memory.

1. Students and teacher gather to brainstorm the important events that took place during the shared experience. This list of events is known as a “jot list”. Emphasis is placed on teaching students how to sequence the events into a meaningful order that best tells the story. Students learn how to build the beginning, middle and end of the passage in a purposeful way.  This also has the added benefit of teaching summary writing.
2. Teacher leads the class in constructing a bold beginning sentence to start the story. Students will brainstorm several sentences and the teacher will lead the class in choosing the most powerful sentence that will hook the audience into wanting to read the passage.
3. Using the phrases on the jot list, the teacher will direct the students to transform each of these phrases into strong, descriptive sentences that tell the story of the shared experience. 
4. Special attention is given to the specific writing skill that is currently being learned in the curriculum. For example, if the use of transition words is being taught, the teacher will “think aloud” for students about which transition word would work best in different areas of the story. These words can be circled or written in a bold color on the draft paper to emphasize how good writers use transition words to help their story flow.
5. After all of the events on the jot list have been included in the shared story, the teacher will lead the group in writing a concluding sentence. Many students may suggest a closing sentence for the story and these are all considered by the group for the most interesting and meaningful ending.
6. Several times through the writing process, the teacher will ask individual students to read back to the class what has been written. Again, the teacher will “think aloud” and edit sentences during this process. Students will watch the writing process unfold and see the value of rereading while writing. The rough draft of the shared story will not be neat. It is full of crossed out words and sentences- demonstrating to the students that writing is a messy process!
7. Once the story has been written, students will brainstorm a title. Suggestions can be recorded on the board and students will discuss the merits of these. A lesson on title writing can take place during one of the first shared writing sessions. After a title is selected and written at the top of the draft, the shared story is complete.
8. The teacher will rewrite the draft onto clean chart paper. Black marker works best for the text and title but the specific skills that were practiced in the story, i.e. transition words can be written in another color. In addition, a list of the skills that were emphasized in the story can be labeled around the margins of the chart paper for the children to see.
9. Pictures that were taken during the shared experience can be printed and attached to the bottom of the chart paper. Students enjoy reliving the experience through the story and pictures.
10. The shared story can be displayed in the hallway for other classes to read and enjoy. As the year progresses, several stories can be hung in the hallway in chronological order as a story scrapbook of the year.
11. Each story should be typed and kept in a digital file so that the teacher has a copy of each story that was written during the year. These stories are valuable resources to use as practice sheets for many of the grammar skills that are taught throughout the year.
12. When space in needed to hang more stories, the teacher can raffle off the older stories to students that would like to take one home.
13. At the end of the year, all of the stories can be printed from the digital files for students to keep as a memento of the year.

Please send me a message if you would like to learn more about shared writing- I would be happy to share more details of this FUN writing strategy!

​And check out another source of writing that I use in my classroom:
Jeff Anderson- Write Guy
https://bit.ly/2OyA900 

I attended many amazing conferences at Nerd Camp this summer, but the one that
had me the most excited to try back in my classroom was Anne Marie Johnson’s – "What I've Learned About Conferring from Studying My Doctor”. Earlier in the summer, I had recently finished reading two excellent books on the same topic:
DIY Literacy by Kate Roberts and Maggie Beattie Roberts
Teaching Reading in Small Groups by Jennifer Serravallo. 
 
All 3 of these resources filled in the gaps and answered many of my questions about conducting powerful small group conferences. As a general rule, I understood the importance of meeting with individual students and small groups, but I was never totally confident on how to build the groups and/or how to truly use the time to remediate and  propel  kids forward on their reading path.

So this week in Room 223- I put the theory into practice and tried these strategies. Here are the highlights of what worked and what didn’t go so well…
​
Practices Which Moved Mountains in My Classroom!

• Diagnose levels of mastery during every whole group lesson to build your groups. See Serravallo ‘s Teaching Reading in Small Groups p. 43 on Assessing Comprehension. These practices are quick and easy for classroom teachers to do everyday.
• Then, group according to similar needs for the focus skill. These groups will change frequently as kids master the skill and move on.
• Have specific remediation plans on hand. It is not enough to say-

“Find the main idea of the paragraph…” Teachers need strategies and procedures at their fingertips to make the most of those small group sessions. For this strategy, I made Demonstration Notebooks and MicroProgression Charts. Both of these ideas are from DIY Literacy by Roberts & Roberts.

• Start every conference with a compliment and let kids know why they are meeting with you. Don’t hide the reason for the conference. See Anne Marie Johnson,  "What I've Learned About Conferring from Studying My Doctor” for more info on this tip.
• Create student and group forms to maintain effective records and observations for each of your students progress.  See Serravallo and Johnson for examples of conferencing forms.

• Teach the comprehension strategy instead of asking students questions about a specific book/story.

  
Beware the PITFALLS and CHALLENGES!

• Can’t do this stuff on the fly! Lots of thought and planning goes into every small group conference…. Who should I group together?  How will I remediate specific skills,?  Who is ready to move on?
• You need a serious amount of available books in different levels for your students to self select and use for instructional reading times.

 
As always, I suggest that you turn to the experts to inform the instruction in your classroom. Here are the links to the info that I referenced above.
 
https://padlet.com/ajohnsont2t/nerdcamp
 
https://www.teacher2teacherhelp.com/
 
https://www.kateandmaggie.com/work-with-us/
 
http://www.jenniferserravallo.com/blog/
 
Stay tuned for next Sunday’s blog on Personalized Reading… or how to get kids excited about reading independently!