On Demand Writing For Real

On demand writing is very stressful. The other day, another colleague and I were asked to respond to an email from a newspaper reporter about the mobile book libraries that we were organizing to help supplement classroom libraries at our school. We had no space for a book room in our two building campus of 1200 kindergarten through sixth grade students. Our solution was to utilize several carts of books at varying levels that teachers could wheel into their hallway or into their classroom to use for both small group instruction and matching readers with books for independent reading. Needless to say, this was and continues to be a huge and very expensive project. The local newspaper wanted to write a piece about the book carts and had requested a response to several questions by the end of the day. My colleague and I were asked to craft this response to the email at 3:00 pm, thirty minutes before dismissal. We knew our audience was the reporter and readers of the local paper, many of whom might be parents of our students. We surmised our purpose was to give the reporter enough specifics and quotes to add to her piece since she had already talked at length to the principal. We had no idea what the angle of her piece was going to be. We also wanted to promote our school. It was extremely hard, especially given the time limit. I plan to share this real life on-demand writing experience with the third graders I’m working with this year.

My RtI Cake

It was a stunning fall day in southeast Michigan on Sunday. Crisp air. Brilliant blue sky. Fiery colors. And what was I doing? Making a cake! Not just any cake. A wedding cake. The cake has three layers or tiers. I’m planning on using my wedding cake made from paper mache stacking boxes to explain the concept of RtI at several sessions of our countywide in-service next week. Actually, I am supposed to explain how our school uses Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) and Fountas & Pinnell Phonics Lessons for Tier 2 interventions. I needed to show how the F & P Lessons start in Tier 1 and can also be used as an intervention in both  Tier 1 and Tier 2 . I’m sick of looking at the RtI triangle and I figured, who doesn’t like cake? And I can show how things tend to tip when alignment is out of whack. Not sure if I will have the guts to wear the chef’s hat.

My husband walked in and looked at my project.

 "What the heck are you doing now?"

"What does it look like I'm doing? I think it needs some

little flowers or something for color, don't you?"

(Pause. Big sigh. Hand rubbing forehead.)               

"You have receipts for all this stuff, right?

I think I'm going to cut slots in the lids of each
box and as I talk about each card, I can slip it
into the cake tier.

This is one of the handouts I'm planning on
including in a packet for the teachers attending
the sessions.

"Mom! Hurry up! I'm gonna be late for football workshop!"

I don't know squat about coaching sports but I'm convinced that good coaches use the workshop model. They gather the players and do whole-class lessons, break up into groups, and also confer 1:1. At the end of a practice, the players are gathered up again for a re-teach. My son has had many coaches and the ones he respects and learns the most from do a lot of conferring and modeling. When he complains about a coach, it is usually because he doesn't understand what is expected of him. Yes, he would like to win but a lot of his motivation during football or basketball season has to do with his relationship with the coach. He wants to learn, feel like he is improving his skills, and contribute to the team. One of my son's coaches this year never conferred with the players during games. He rubbed his eyes while he watched the kids struggle. Mid-season, I began to wonder if this coach had deep knowledge of the sport he was coaching. In practice, they ran drills and practiced plays but the coach didn't seem very responsive to what his players were doing. It was like he was unable to see how to use the strengths of the players on the team to design instruction or create plays based on those strengths. Like I said, I don't know squat about coaching sports but I can usually recognize effective instruction when I see it.

I've seen a similiar workshop teaching structure used by my daughter's best dance teachers. My daughter thought I was watching her, but I was really watching the teacher.  One dance teacher I found fascinating to watch could take a large group of students with a wide range of skills and by the end of the year, all students in the class would make significant gains. I watched this teacher create this success year after year. What was this dance teacher doing that other dance teachers were not?