For anyone just tuning in now, this is the fifth week of my chronicle as I get my metacognition-focused classroom up and running. I'm taking the activities Michelle Kelley and I suggested in our book, Comprehension Shouldn't Be Silent (IRA, 2007) and sharing how the first six weeks look in my classroom circa 2012. If you are on the same journey or a parallel one, pipe up and let us know how it's going in your classroom!

Week 5

This week I focused on coaching students as they used the literacy structures put in place so far such as writer’s workshop, read-aloud and R⁵: Read, Relax, Reflect, Respond and Rap. During R⁵ as I took the status of the class, I noticed several students who were reading different chapter books each day. One of them said he finished the book he was reading the day before. He reads nonstop in class and I think he probably did finish his book.  One of the other students said she left her other book at home so she got a new one. I asked about the book she was reading the day before that and she said it was boring. I’m going to monitor her during status for a couple of weeks and step in if the pattern continues. I do have a lot of readers this year though (yeah!)

The other activities listed for this week include:

Activity:  Introduce the text feature walk structure

I did a heavily scaffolded teacher-led text feature walk through the cover story on a Scholastic News. This went alright but the students didn’t jump in and take the reins from me like I wanted them to. I wanted to show a video of former students doing a text feature walk but the DVD player on my computer is broken and I couldn’t get the sound to work in the computer lab so I may have to white-knuckle this one and just let the students try it themselves.

Activity: Begin literature circles training

I haven’t started literature circles in the first six weeks of school for a number of years. We are still perfecting all the other structures and it is a little much to add at this point. When we do start, I’m going to offer a variety of books on writing for kids like the Writer’s Notebook and How to Write Your Life Story (both by Ralph Fletcher. I might throw some author biographies in there as well. I’ll wait another month before adding this.

Activity: Continue to add to the text feature wall

We are!

This year has been a little different than others because I have all my new text feature resources from Reading the Whole Page, like real examples to show on the whiteboard and lots of interactive PDFs. Also, because all my students were proficient at predicting based on their DRA results (shout out to their former teachers!), for the first time ever I’m not starting with the unit on prediction. I’m weighing my options of what will give them the most bang for their buck. My students are already so inquisitive that I am scared to teach them questioning (only joking a little here – with this group I will have to find a bunch of new ways to say, “That’s a good question, let’s look it up!”). I am leaning towards the unit on summarizing because almost all of my students struggled with it on their DRAs. I’ll probably mull this over for a week or two!