My Mission to Teach

 Here at My Mission to Teach, I am sharing the experiences I've had in my classroom implementing a variety of strategies for the teaching of reading and writing, and sharing these experiences with teachers. I have immersed myself in the research of  The Right Question Institute, Project Zero, The Reading and  Writing Project, Lucy Calkins, Jennifer Serravallo, Stephanie Harvey, Harvey Daniels, Lester Laminack, Carl Anderson, Fountas and Pinnel, and many others.  Everything that I share on this blogspot is rooted in this research. 

Why Should Readers Stop and Jot?

• Jotting can assist readers in monitoring their understanding of the text.

• Jotting assists readers in understanding the text.

• Jots are a record of the inner conversation a reader is having with a text.

• Jots provide insight into the struggles that a reader might be having while reading a specific text.

• Jots are a springboard for peer conversations about text.

• Jots can be used by students to provide text evidence to support the articulation of thinking during their conversations about text.

• Jots are ways for the teacher to assess readers' understanding of the text.

• Jots provide insight into how a child is approximating his or her new learning.

This is the template that I used with the students in my 2nd, 3rd and 4th-grade classrooms over the years. I had my students place a copy into their Reader's Response Notebooks for reference as they became familiar with the coding. If you would like a copy, message me!

Nonfiction Living Minutes

Throughout the school year in my classroom, students were always immersed in both Nonfiction and Fiction materials. Just because we were involved in a unit of study focusing on a particular genre, we would always continue our work in both genres. One of the routines I had students engaged in was the Nonfiction Living Minute. Below you will find a description and some pictures of the materials in my classroom that should give you the gist!

Each day during our morning meeting,  two students would share a nonfiction resource — any kind of nonfiction text deemed important in their lives. 

Each student had one minute to share a nonfiction resource, explain why it was chosen, and talk about why it is important to be able to use the resource in their everyday lives.  The shared resources remained in the classroom for others to peruse. 

Students love the activity and gain so much knowledge about how being a successful nonfiction reader is so important, not only in our classroom but in the world outside of our classroom as well!

                                

                                 

    PEACE!