Amelia UoS Reflection

Something I worked on due to this class was the students use of sticky notes and discussing them during conferencing.  This helped me to see the growth of comprehension in one of the students.  This student is below standard for reading but making very good progress and continuing to move up reading levels.  When conferring with him and discussing the use of sticky notes I could see the progress he was making in comprehension and relating what we were doing with our mentor text.  He was using the sticky notes accurately.  He was marking places that gave him clues to the type of person his character was, recurring objects, and mood of the story.  I was very impressed with his progress and the gains he has made.     

UoS Libby

One thing I wrote about in my reflection of the UoS was my use of assessment. At the beginning of the year I did not do much assessment, instead I just sped along and went through each session assuming all students understood. Once I started diving deeper into the UoS, I realized the importance of assessment. I started creating small formative assessments that I could use at the end of each mini-lesson. I believe this affected my teaching style because I started learning how to modify lessons based on student results. It affected student learning because they were able to show what they know and I could focus on the areas that needed further instruction. As I have started my second unit, I have really been focusing on assessment. If even two-three students do not understand something we will go back and cover the topic again. This is something I plan to do for the rest of my teaching career. I am glad I have had the opportunity to observe the benefits of observation within the UoS. 

Karie UoS Reflection

What I have enjoyed so far about using the Units of Study with the Kindergarten class, is that they are already starting to see themselves as readers. The first few days of Reading Workshop, when I brought out books and had kids actually sit with their own books in their laps and were asked to look at them, I ended up having a few of the kiddos just completely refuse to pick a book and sit with it. I am now a few weeks into the units, and all of the kiddos know just what to do and ALL of them join in and are able to sit with a book on their own. (Of course we are still working on increasing their stamina!) And not just sit with it but read and reread it. They are starting to develop this sense of seeing themselves as readers, and that's so important.

The conferring piece has been, and still is, the biggest change for me as far as how I interact with students as they read. I had previously spent student's private and partner reading time with reading groups (with older grades), so adding that component with this group has been a nice addition, Although I am being more mindful of this aspect of the workshop, I still find it difficult in that I am working with young students that have shorter attention spans so it can still be a challenge to ensure that I routinely and consistently am able to get that piece in.

Shelby - (UOS) Reflection

Since I began  using the reading units of study, I have always known that one of the most important ways I could set the scene for our workshop time is to carefully plan overarching instruction.  Through this class and developing a greater knowledge of and experience with this curriculum, I have gotten to know my students more deeply and feel more confident to make careful decisions about how best to proceed from day to day.   All of this decision making and planning is enhanced by having time for reflection.  It's always so hard to have the time for reflection and even when given the time, it can be difficult to decide  how to best go about this task. Having the time for reflection and collaborating in class has helped me to deliver a higher quality of instruction. 

I have so many different takeaways from this class, but the two that stand out the most are using the learning progressions with the students and bands of text complexity. Immersing the students in work with  micro-progressions has helped to provide suggestions for ways they can reach reading goals. Also, using writing samples helped to show them how others might have reaced similar goals. These concrete examples provided individualized and doable ways for them to make their own reading lives stronger.  

I also began using information from the bands of text complexity when working with small groups and individuals.  I specifically focused on using this with two readers who seemed stuck at their current level.  Feeling more knowledgeable of instructional focuses for teaching them to read at the next band has helped take the guess work out of planning for their guided reading group.  

UoS (Sarah)

I noticed the affect the workshop model had on a small class I had last trimester. One student in particular made such great strides in his work, and I could see the influence this success had in his belief in his abilities. Following the structure helped him and others focus on the specific work for that day. I also think reflecting on the progress they made, using conferring as a way to talk about their improvement, allowed them to verbalize and listen to themselves talk about their success. After seeing this one student grow over the trimester, and moreso his pride in his work, I’m definitely going to continue to use the workshop model and conferring with students about their progress. It was incredibly beneficial and I’m really looking forward to using this in my new seminars. 

Laurie---UoS
Even though I have used the Units of Study for three years over the past months I took a new look at the units and how best I can use them with my students.  I really enjoyed delving more into conferring.  I feel as though this is an area of my teaching that needs a boost.  I am forcing myself to try a little bit of all the ideas given so that I can find the one that works best for me and my current group of students.  I received so many great ideas about different tactics/strategies that I tried using.  I thoroughly enjoyed being able to talk to fellow primary grade teachers and share thoughts, ideas and  strategies.    

Kristina- UoS Reflection

One of the biggest take-a-ways I got from working with the UoS was the idea of book clubs instead of book groups. I have always allowed my students choice when they were silent reading and then I would put them in small book groups to meet with at a certain level to focus on specific skills. Now, I am excited to revamp my "book groups" to allow more student choice. Today, after Thanksgiving break, I reviewed some reading expectations with my students and talked a bit about some new expectations I will have for them now that we are 1/3 of the way through the year. Almost all them seemed eager and willing to rise to the occasion. They got really excited when I told them I would be going to the book room to pull out some collections of books for them to choose books from. I can't wait to start book clubs!

Amy D. UoS Reflection

Allowing students to have plenty of time to read independently in class created (and continues to create) anxiousness for me because I feel like I should be doing more word work or vocabulary and grammar teaching. The big difference is how engaged and involved in independent reading my 4th graders really are! When I introduced personal timers, students immediately began using them and polished their readers log recording! The results were students really paying attention to the amount of minutes and pages they were reading which pushed them to read a little faster. Of course, we talked about not reading too fast and forfeiting understanding for speed. One other reflection is exchanging book groups for book clubs. Students responded much more positively when given book choices (book tasting) rather than being plunked into a group with a book chosen for them by me. Taking time to help students understand levels of text complexity, rather than a letter level guided students to make good choices when offered a range of books to choose from. I will continue to use book clubs with book tastings to encourage rich book talks rather than traditional reading groups. There is so much more that I've discovered during this course, but these are a couple of things that really changed my thinking about teaching reading.

Meissa McNeil-UoS Reflection

After working with the Reading Units of Study over the last trimester, I am looking forward to starting with a fresh group and a fresh start to the unit.  I enjoyed using the lessons and believe they are valuable, but my sixth graders were not ready to tackle the rigor of  the first unit: A Deep Study of Character.

I realize that as the years pass, students will have the vertical knowledge and experience with the units; they will understand the vocabulary and be familiar with the scales.  This last trimester was challenging because they did not have the background skills and knowledge to support the lessons in the first reading unit.

It is frustrating that the middle school units of study are 6-8; they are not differentiated, so they are not leveled.  Having experience with the writing units, I anticipated that the lessons would be challenging, but in the future, I need to be mindful of how to modify for each grade level.  Not only are the lessons challenging, the anchor books seem to be inaccessable.  And...we all know what it takes to change to anchor books in a Lucy Calkins' unit...uggghh...

I am going to use the 5th grade unit for the second quarter; I am excited to fill in some of the gaps the kids have and look forward to the successes that my 6th graders will experience.  I am going to focus on giving them more time to actually read, but I also need to work on assessing them and collecting more data.

Phew...it's a lot, but it is my first time through this unit; I am not discouraged!

Eileen UoS Reflection

I have 2 big take aways from this class and studying the Lucy Calkins approach.  My first is conferring more with students and really identifying what they need.  I think this has helped create better small groups and use the time I have for small groups better.  I feel like I'm getting more bang for my buck during that time.  Also I find that I have shorten my mini-lessons to only take a few minutes like is recommended.  This has freed me up to read more with individual students and gives them more time to read. My final take away is reading responses.  This was something that I was not doing. These responses are allowing me to identify more about my students' needs as readers as well as help my students begin to think "deeper" as readers.  It also another way to assess my students' ability to comprehend. 

Liz - UoS Reflection

This is my second year using the reading UoS, and the fourth with the writing.  I feel like having a year of experience with the reading units behind me, and then coming back to them again this year has been helpful to my students. Because I already had some knowledge about each lesson, I was able to tweak and scaffold each lesson a bit better than I was able to do last year. My growing knowledge of the units and the most important parts of each have benefited all of my students, because I feel I'm able to support each one in more specific, targeted ways. Additionally, making more of an organized effort to conference with students, with more structured questions and prompts, helps to give me more information about my students' reading, and also gives them more ownership of their independent reading time. The use of assigned reading (and writing) partners has also been helpful in supporting students to always have someone with whom to share their thinking and ideas. Overall, I've seen growth in students who, at the beginning of the year, didn't really like sharing their ideas - now these students are beginning to open up during class conversations and turn and talks.

Steve - UoS Reflection

While teaching these reading and writing units, I have seen some tremendous growth in the learning of my students. The idea of choice is what stands out the most to me. By giving my students choice in texts, they are able to choose topics that they care about, all while challenging themselves to become stronger readers. What shows this growth the most is when I see a student who has struggled with reading in the past, but who is now reading texts independently and thoughtfully. It is a great feeling to know that these units are working. I want to continue challenging my students to improve their literacy, which will impact their entire lives.

Although there have been times of challenge, as mentioned in previous posts, I continue to identify  the greater benefit of this work. By conferring with my students throughout the process, I have been able to locate specific areas to work on with each. One area that has been a struggle is keeping this all in a concise record. However, the template that the middle school team is using seems to work well, which I will continue to use. I am excited to see where this work goes in the future, and I especially look forward to using the nonfiction unit!

Jess-A Fall Full of Reading Units of Study (UoS)

Since I am not teaching reading this year, I don't have a share for reading, but I do for writing b/c  I am teaching the LC writer's workshop.  Since I am teaching only writing, I have about a 55 minute block, which means once I have taught my mini-lesson I have about 45 minutes left for the students to write.  This is by far more time than I have ever had before.  Some of my students are writing for this whole time and doing well, others are having a great deal of difficulty sustaining for even half that time.  However, this gives me plenty of time to float around and confer with them.  What I have seen working well is that at least in this second unit, the reading and the writing align, in that the students are reading and writing non-fiction.  I am hoping that in the future, when I am teaching both, that I can better connect them.  The other thing that we really have down, is they now know the routine, and the ones that are invested in writing do the routine well, the ones that don't are the wanderers, trying to continuously move away from their writing.  I am working on how to get them to stick to it.

A Fall Full of Reading Units of Study (UoS)

Now that you've delved into the UoS for several months and tried out some new teaching techniques take some time to reflect on a student or students and think about how this approach (or something new you've tried if you've already been using UoS) has affected this/these learner(s). Explain what you did differently and why you think it worked (or didn't). What might you change or what will you definitely continue based on this experience.

Title: (Name) UoS Reflection

My example: Mine has to be an observation. Something I see working very well in the younger grades is the amount of time that children are focused on independent reading and then talking about their books. When I go into a room I see kids spread out with book boxes reading. When I sit down they love to read to me and tell me about their book. Sometimes they tell me it is silent time so they can't talk! More time reading text.

Units Jess-"Aha", "Uh oh", and/or "Really"

Well my Uh Oh is that I forgot to post this last week, so now I have had time to read over lots of posts and I can connect with many of them.  I am not teaching reading this year, only writing, but still have used the units in the past.  I think my first one would be "Really Lucy?!"  She has to be the queen of wordiness.  The lessons were so long, and extremely intimidating at first.  I commented on Amy's I think, noting that we spent our first year summarizing the lesson's into shorter versions, but always keeping the teaching point.

I also tend to forget about the online resources.  Last year one of my awesome teammates always printed out the posters for us to make the anchor charts. and then I laminated mine and only tape them on, so I can re-use them yearly. I file them away with the lesson they are needed for.  This year I am teaching only writing and have moved up to second grade, so everything is new to me.  I have consulted the online resources and I downloaded and saved to my own computer, the scoring rubrics, checklists and some student samples.  I need to go back on and see what else I can find for my new unit.

I think the Aha is that this doesn't always go as planned, so sometimes the lessons need tweaking.  I've learned after many years, that you don't have to follow it exactly.  You know your students, and their needs.  You may need to make modifications to lessons, or create ones of your own that supplement what has been taught or address the needs of your students; and that is okay!

Karie - Ahas & UhOh's

This is my second year using the Units of Study, but my first year using the Kindergarten / 1st grade  Units. Implementing the Units and the Reading Workshop model is the first change I wanted to make in this classroom and already I am very grateful that I have. I am loving the Kindergarten unit as I am seeing my students already identifying themselves as readers, and being excited to read books, even though they can't read quite yet. I love how Lucy put it, having students view themselves as kids that had always been read to, to being the ones that are doing the reading. Most of my students are taking to this new approach, working on their private and partner reading, marking WOW! pages and putting a "pinch of themselves" into their reading. I still have a couple of kiddos that are struggling picking up a book and sitting with it, but we are working on it!

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to read the K-2 guide as it helps put some more pieces in place for me. I enjoy doing the mini-lessons, but as a new teacher I am still trying to figure out how to put all the pieces together to ensure that I have a full reading / literacy program. When and how do you fit in word work, writing, read-alouds, handwriting, writing about reading, fluency, comprehension. speaking, listening, guided reading groups, conferring, etc. etc.? I still find it all a little overwhelming and I don't want to miss anything, but I like the structure that the LC program provides so I feel that if I am trying to follow that structure then I can't be too far off!

Shelby Units of Study

I was so excited to create additional lessons for the students to further explore the learning progressions.  I've always believed in their importance, however never really knew how to use them in an engaging way.  I honestly felt like the times when we learned about them, it was somewhat (to extremely) boring for both the students and myself.  Also,  the students did not often refer to them independently.  Then I had an "aha" moment when we watched the video and had the learning progression activity in class.  It showed me a way to make it more interactive and engaging for the students.  I was so excited to break it down and explicitly teach how to use these progressions to raise the level of their own work.

So, after spending all that extra time...I gave a formative assessment!  I was so excited to see what they could do on their own! However, after looking at the results, I once again found myself feeling like the worst teacher ever! Proficient scores were 5/20 in one class and 8/18 in the other.  I am fully aware that the progressions have high expectations for the students, but when only 25% meet the standard, I feel like it's a teaching problem more than a student one.

Question: What do you do to lift yourself up during these moments?

Eileen - Aha

The major "Aha" moment that I have gotten from this class is ways to check-in and track progress.  Reading responses is becoming  a part of my monthly routine.  I am also starting to track students better as they read. Although I'm still not finding enough 1:1 time with kiddos, I'm more aware of individuals during small groups. This is something I had stepped away from because I just couldn't find a system that worked for me.  All tracking was occurring in my head!  I feel re-energized that this can be done efficiently.  Both of these progress monitoring system is giving me a better understanding of my students as readers. 

Units of Study- Holly - Aha and Really?!

I think taking this course during my first experience with the Lucy Calkins units has been overall a huge learning experience. Even though I have been at times overwhelmed with the readings, they have been so beneficial in my understanding and development as a teacher in teaching these units. I think one the best aha's has been discovering the learning progressions and how to use those with students and their work. It has shown me who understands how to lift the level of their thinking using the progression and who needs assistance. It has also resulted in richer whole group and partner conversations. I found it really beneficial when we did the activity with the One Green Apple book and sorted our sticky notes into the progression. I have started doing this with my students, using the progressions Shelby and Merrin have created, and I can see a difference in their understanding.

What has changed has been my understanding of conferences. They do not need to be these extensive meetings where the student comes to you, but rather a brief check-in following the guidelines we have learned. I have found that in doing so, I am getting to more students during the week, have a better understanding of them as readers, and am starting to see a more positive experience when I meet with students. They want to be reading their books, so it's important to keep the conferences brief, but rich as well. That has been my biggest change in my teaching and understanding.

Units of Study - Liz - Aha! and Really?

When I switched from a district-created Reader's Workshop to Calkins Reading Units two years ago, I felt relieved that we had a planned-out curriculum, aligned with CCSS, to complement the Writing Units of Study I had started using a couple of years before the reading. The progression was an "aha' for me - the lessons made sense, and helped to guide my readers to think more deeply. I enjoy the accompanying mentor texts for each unit, and my students are generally engaged.

My "really??" moments come more often than I'd like. I alternate between teaching the reading and writing units, and I wish there were more opportunities to integrate the two.  Units 3 of each meld together seamlessly, and I would love for the others to do so more easily, as well.

I also find myself asking "really?" when I look at the learning progressions and rubrics. Sometimes I feel that the expectations are really high (which is good, of course), but that there isn't adequate support or lessons to help the students get there. At times it seems that the lessons in the units don't totally align with what students are expected to know or be able to do by the end of the unit.