Last week, I had the great pleasure of visiting Humanities classrooms at Heritage Elementary. This was such a treat! I knew many teachers at this school had been working diligently to grow their reading and writing workshop practices over the past 3 years, and during my visit I saw the fruits of this labor.
During my time in classrooms, I saw some great examples of "I can" statement boards (which included corresponding academic vocabulary for the skills), students engrossed in a poetry unit (from Units of Study) with many creative pieces to share, writer's notebooks, and portable "word walls" used as resources on students' desks. I saw several examples of thinking maps being used - clearly being used to help students understand concepts within social studies and also posted as anchor charts in the room. I saw guided reading while students were reading in workshop very intently and purposefully around classrooms. I saw several good reading corners with classroom libraries - I was tempted to curl up and stay for longer than would have been appropriate! :) I saw a classroom where parts of speech songs were being sung during students' transition between activities. This, followed by a micro lesson on the earlier discussion they'd had about the role of those parts of speech, flowed seamlessly into the next lesson. Every second of the day was being maximized for learning. I saw students becoming essayists and learning the difference between essays and other forms of writing. It was also impressive to see experienced teachers extending their array of practices by using the Units of Study as an "on the lap" resources to guide with a mini-lesson. This shows me that teachers are learning, and this is the most important thing we can model!
Heritage teachers have jumped into the new curriculum with both feet, and it's been neat to see students responding with writing and reading of unprecedented quality. For a peek into some of the things I got to see at HES, please click here.
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