9:00 - 9:30

Welcome and Ice-Breaker

Share Agenda and complete Ice-Breaker Activity

• To start, let’s each share the title and author of a book that you love either from your own childhood or one that you enjoy reading with your students. Include why you or your students love it.

9:30 - 10:30

Teaching Writing in Small Groups

Today we want to examine the how and why of small group instruction and the impactful nature of creating a sense of community. We’ll begin by reading together the vignette on p.5 of Jennifer Serravallo’s book Teaching Writing in Small Groups where a first grade teacher’s writing instruction is described.”

• With cameras off 10 - 15 min to think/write/share. What’s the why?

• Small groups take time. They’re tricky to manage. You have transitions. They take extra planning. Extra documentation. You have to differentiate your approach. They involve lots of moving parts. So, why do we engage our children in learning through small groups? What’s the advantage?

What are some advantages you’ve noticed in your teaching experience about working with small groups in either reading or writing. Refer to points on the slide or other aspects of small group instruction you read about last night.

• Share an impactful benefit (or 2) derived from working with small groups into this document.

Classroom Communities

As you process the content on the slide as you write, think about both parts of the slide. The relationships mentioned in the first part. Relationships take time. Why do we cultivate them? What’s your why? Once you’re working alongside your students in small groups how do you support students in developing their identities as writers? What do we do? What do we say? How do we support our students in becoming the writers we know they can be? What are the possibilities? How do we support our students in knowing the possibilities? How do we get them there?

• Take 5 minutes to process and write.

• Kid Writing Resources

• First Day Share

What are the questions that you ask to support students into cultivating their identity as writers? What do you ask? What do you say? What’s happening here? What can you tell me about X?

10:30 - 10:45

Break

10:45 - 11:15

Teacher Inquiry

Susan Lytle, who directed the Philadelphia Writing Project for almost 20 years, co-authored "Inquiry as Stance: Practitioner Research for the Next Generation." Watch this short video and then take 5 minutes to process through writing considering some of these questions:

• What happens in classrooms that helps kids learn and improves their life chances?

• What kinds of outcomes an possibilities are we hoping to see for our students?

• Why inquiry? Why take this stance when it’s so much easier to go through the text for lesson 1, lesson 2, … and stick to the teacher manual?

• As a learner (we’re in a writing community here) why would I want to take this stance? What good comes of questioning?

• How does this connect to bell hooks’ notion of active participation?

11:15 - 11:50

Journal Writing Groups

Take 15 minutes to write and 15 minutes to share with your group. Question to consider:

• What are possible your essential questions or “provocative propositions” that you are considering as you plan your unit?

  • Group 1: Tamala, Danielle, Lisa Lapina, Kristyn

  • Group 2: Stephanie, Hannah, Jaclyn, Erica

  • Group 3: Lisa Hinz, Linda, Natoya, Nadia

Whole Group Share-Out

11:50 - 12:00

Closing

• Complete reflection for day In a Word slide

• Readings for Day 5:

  • Rivera-Amezola, R. (2020). Preservation and education: Teacher Inquiry and the “family and community stories” project. Language Arts, 97 (5), 324-329.

  • Freire, P. (1983) The importance of the act of reading. Journal of Education, 165 (1), 5-11.

• Tomorrow's Schedule:

  • 9-10 - Whole Group Discussion

  • 10-12 - Individual Conferences