Launching Writer S Workshop: Genre Try-Its with a Notebook Seed

Launching ELA Workshop

Unit Overview

Draft

(Adapted from the Teacher’s College Reading and Writing Project)

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The goal of this unit is to move your eighth grade readers in to the reading practices that they will carry with them into high school and as lifelong readers. Most of the teaching points help students to move forward with agency: meeting in social reading partnerships or clubs in reading, keeping track of their reading using sustainable reading systems and creating a reading life they can keep going with their whole lives.

In this reading unit you’ll see that we suggest you weave in music videos as read aloud texts, moving back and forth from complex popular culture texts to print texts. You will be encouraging kids to get onto ‘courses of study,’ so that they choose sets of books, or books in order, that will help them outgrow themselves as readers. We also want them to begin quickly to read with others, so that they are sharing and swapping books, co-authoring understanding, and comparing interpretations. In this unit, you’ll want to get kids into reading partnerships right away, and they can adjust these across the unit, so that by the end of the unit they are all in small social reading clubs. You will be encouraging kids to read with their pencils and devices as they read, to keep track of parts of stories, to keep track of their thinking, and to develop new thinking. Across the unit, you’ll be teaching them both to take more charge of their reading life and to read more closely.

You will know that your students are reading with agency when you watch your kids choose books and get started reading, they go to familiar authors and genres swiftly, they reach for a pen to track their thinking, and turn to a friend to talk about what they are reading.

Sample texts:

Shelf Life by Gary Paulsen

Unit Learning Activity Summary

Students will:

• Read independently daily in school and at home, 25-50 pages a day, completing a minimum of 2-3 novels.
• Find a course of study--- two or three series to read in a row, or two- to three- books to read in a row.

• Keep an electronic or paper Reading Log to use as an artifact that lets them reflect on how reading is going for them
• Develop personal reading goals and create a Reading Plan
• Annotate while reading to track their thinking
• Create several Reading Response Notebook entries to demonstrate thinking
• Complete formative and summative assessment Quick Writes
• Partner and self -assess just right books
• Participate in Book Buzz
• Use a variety of retells within their reading partnership

Appendix

• Sample Mini-lessons referenced in the Sample Learning Plan ( available on the SPPS secondary Wiki in July)
• Resources in support of specific lessons
• Sample charts or artifacts
• Book Log and Stop and Jot Bookmark

Stage I. Desired Results

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Standards

• Readers get started right away thinking about a character and gathering details that seem important.

• Readers notice what the character is struggling with, internally and externally.

• Readers notice the character’s traits and emotions as they get to know the character over pages.

• Readers notice how the character changes over time.

• Readers grow theories about characters and read on to either confirm or revise those theories.

• Readers look back over the book and determine themes that show up, lessons the characters might have learned, and ask themselves, “What does this theme or lesson mean for me and my life?”

• Readers make decisions about how to retell, such as focusing on character development, or on issues and themes that are emerging, or what’s happening now and what led up to that.
• Readers imagine the scenes that happen outside the story.

• Readers think back over a story to synthesize a characters’ motivations and why things happen the way they do.

• Readers set ambitious goals to outgrow themselves.

• Readers develop systems to keep track of their thinking.

• Readers use their statistics to reflect on how reading has gone for them and set goals for how to get the most reading done.

• Readers choose books that they can read with accuracy, fluency and understanding.

• Readers set courses of study, choosing sets of books, or books in order, that will help them outgrow themselves as readers.

• Readers have a history of books that affected them.

1. Come to discussions prepared having read or researched material under study; explicitly draw on that preparation by referring to evidence on the topic, text, or issue to probe and reflect on ideas under discussion
2. Follow rules for collegial discussions and decision-making, track progress toward specific goals and deadlines, and define individual roles as needed.
3. Pose questions that connect the ideas of several speakers and respond to others’ questions and comments with relevant evidence, observations and ideas.
4. Acknowledge new information expressed by others, and when warranted, qualify or justify their own views in light of the evidence presented.
5. Cooperate, mediate, and problem solve to make decisions or build consensus as appropriate for productive group discussion.

• Readers use a variety of ways to retell with their partners.

• Readers prepare prior to talking with partners by organizing their jottings and deciding what they have a lot to say about.

• Readers work at improving their skills at writing long and talking long about books.

• Readers often talk about more than one book at a time through references to other characters or novels the audience will know.

• Readers write to prepare for conversations--- sketches, maps , charts, notebook entries, writing in books.

• Readers write to prepare for conversations--- sketches, maps , charts, notebook entries, writing in books.

• Readers work at improving their skills at writing long and talking long about books.

Enduring Understandings

• Readers who read with agency make sure they are reading and often have systems for keeping track of how reading is going for them and what kinds of books help them to read more.
• Readers increase their ability to deal with complex texts is a high volume of reading books at the reader’s level.
• Readers need protected time everyday for reading and protected time for talking to someone about what he or she ahs been reading.
• Readers make their thinking visible
• Readers make notes about ideas and themes, about characters and the places to prepare for rich partner talks and develop higher-level ideas.
• Readers write about their reading to develop thinking, to make sense of their books, and to deepen their relationship with the stories they are reading.
• Readers follow up on series, authors and genres they adore.

Essential Questions

1. How can we take charge of our reading lives, showing independence and agency in tackling challenges, reading and talking with insight, and striving to outgrow ourselves as readers?
2. In what ways do we seek out books that widen our perspectives and deepen our knowledge?
3. How can we use our reading notebooks in innovative ways, to deepen our relationship with our books, develop our thinking, and increase our pleasure in and fluency with writing about reading?

Stage II. Assessment Evidence

Performance Tasks

• Reading Benchmark using the Teacher’s College Writing and Reading Project (TCWRP) Leveled Reading Assessments

• Flashdraft literary essay
• Pre and Post Assessment Book Choice Quick Writes

Other Evidence

• Student jottings and partner conversations
• Book Logs
• Conferring
• Reading plan
• Engagement Inventory
• Anecdotal notes
• Reading Response notebook responses
• Student self-assessments and reflection

Resources in Support of Assessment

During the launch unit the checklists and assessment supports will be used multiple times throughout the four weeks.

Checklist for Choosing a Just Right Book, Sessions 4, 20 and throughout the unit as students choose new books

8.4.10.10

Checklist for Long Write, Session 17

8.4.1.1, 8.4.2.2, 8.4.3.3, 8.4.4.4

Checklist for Partner Talk, Use throughout the unit as needed

SL8.9.1.1

Checklist for Writing in Response to Reading, Sessions 7, 11

8.4.1.1 8.4.2.2 8.4.3.3

Self-Assessment – Reader’s Response Notebook, Sessions 10, 18

W8.7.9.9 W8.7.10.10

*See “Strategies to Support Partnership Talk and Reading Responses” in the Appendix

Before the Unit Begins

• Choose your anchor texts for whole group to if you choose to use texts different than the sample texts: excerpts from text where a character reads or is helped by reading, a music video, a short story and a novel.
• Create a “starter” classroom library. Order and arrange books strategically, putting authors, series and literary traditions together so it is easy for kids to read strategically. Organizing the library this way makes it easy for readers to do more powerful reading work.
• Decide your system for a Reader’s Notebook. Will students in your ELA Workshop have 2 notebooks, or will they have one Writer’s-Reader’s Notebook? Some teachers choose to have students use a two-subject notebook for this.
• Consider the systems students will use to keep reading records over the short and long term: Calendar apps on their smartphones, paper calendar, paper book log, taking a picture of the book cover and adding it to a paper file (Evernote), using Goodreads.
• Plan for some courses of study and trajectories your students might choose. (p. 9 gr 8 TCRWP)
• Look at the data points you already have MCA lll, Spring MAP. These are red flags for students who are not reading on grade level. You may want to do a running record on these students to assess their reading levels. When in doubt have students read about ½ page in their book and you can assess what they are doing as a reader. Another way to get a baseline for the approximate reading levels of your students is make available reading assessments for eighth grade, levels V, X, Y, Z and have students choose a text that feels right for them, read it and answer the questions in writing. If the test they chose seemed too easy, they could choose another one. If you have a lot of children who read below grade level, you may choose to insert a R level text ( or P) as well and you do not need to offer them the X and Z. For students reading far below grade level, you may also want to listen to them read the passage aloud, noting miscues and fluency. The reading assessments can be accessed through this link:

Stage III. Learning Plan

Sample Lesson Sequence

Eighth grade students will be returning to the Reader’s Workshop framework they participated in as sixth grade students. Adjust the sample lesson sequence to meet the needs of your students assessed through engagement observation, conferring, Book Logs and Reader’s Notebooks.

Sample Lesson Sequence by Session

• See Bend 1, Session1, Gr.8 RW TCRWP

• the work of the 8th grade standards is figuring out if the character changed or if it is the reader’s perception that changes

Appendix