"What a Wonderful World" (Writer's Workshop Day 4)

The week has flown by and the final day of our Writing Residency with Ms. Sandy is here.

We had a lot to accomplish today and got started right away!

We started our morning with our Community Circle. This morning we shared something we were thankful for from our week together. Many of us were thankful for the fact that Ms. Sandy came all the way from Arizona to help us learn! We were also thankful for learning more about technical writing and working together in our groups.

After our Community Circle, we started our learning by collaborating to create the writing criteria for our "Math Mobiles" writing assignment. We chunked the criteria into three sections: "Introduction," "Body" and "Closure." We reviewed what needs to be included in each section so that our writing is clear and complete.

After that, it was time for us to learn about the editing process.

Today, we all learned the editing marks that editors use when reviewing written texts. We also reviewed the Editing Checklist and learned that editing our work is OUR job - not the teacher's! We can collaborate with our team and our peers to ensure things like spelling, punctuation and other conventions (paragraph and sentence structure, etc) have all been corrected before sitting down with a teacher for the final edit and review.

To be respect our readers, it is important that our writing is legible, well-organized and error-free.

Equipped with all of this great editing knowledge, it was time to meet up with our teams to keep on working on our writing. There were so much great discussions amongst the teams! We all worked very hard and most teams were able to finish their introduction, body and closure.

After our break, we pulled our chairs up to the front of the room to participate in our first public conference. A public conference is when one writer (or team of writers) shares their revised and edited work with the whole class with the goal of having the writing celebrated. First, the group reads through their writing aloud. Then, the teacher reads through the writing, stopping to celebrate what the writer/writing group has done well. The rest of the students in the class also have the opportunity to celebrate what they noticed about the writing. A public conference is also a time to give suggestions that the writers may want to apply to their work before meeting for a final editing conference. Suggestions could include: adding more details, re-organizing certain parts of the text, and using more specific vocabulary ("Amazing Words"). Editing feedback can also be shared at this time. 

Then, it was time to wrap up and say goodbye.

To close our time together, Ms. Sandy played her favourite song for us once again while Mme Careen

showed us the pictures from the picture book.

We were all so inspired that we began to sing along! 

It was such an incredibly powerful and inspirational moment.

Before saying goodbye, we presented Ms. Sandy with a copy of one of our favourite français picture books, 

Je veux un monstre. We chose this book because it was the inspiration for our current français writing project, 

"La création d'un monstre" which was our first introduction to technical writing 4 weeks ago 

when our preparation of this Writer's Workshop began!

Mme Buckwold also presented Ms. Sandy with some other great picture books and a writing journal as a thank you.

And then, just as quickly as it started, our time together was done. 

We shook hands, shared hugs and headed off for the rest of our day.

Having the chance to work with Ms. Sandy was truly an amazing learning experience.

We will be sure to keep in touch as we continue our writing and we can't wait to share our manual, 

The Method of Math Mobiles with her and her students once it is published!

Thank you, Ms. Sandy!

- ET -

Bravo à vous, les élèves! Vous avez travaillé tellement fort cette semaine et je suis très fière de vous!

Reposez-vous bien cette fin de semaine.

À lundi! :)

"My brain is so fried from thinking!" (aka: Residency Day 3!)

It is incredible to see how far we have moved along with our writing process in only 3 days.
We worked hard today and accomplished so much!

We started off with our Community Circle, but instead of sitting in our chairs in a semi-circle, we stood in a circle, shoulder-to-shoulder. We celebrated so many incredible things about our learning from Day 2. Many of us shared that we liked having a specific role in our group and enjoyed writing on large chart paper with good markers!

After sharing in our circle, and reading our learning goals together as a class, it was right down to work. We started off by revising our class shared write, "Problem 120" in our groups. Our task was to read over the text, making note of any revisions we would like to make to the Introduction and the Closing. We then came back as a full group and started the 'negotiation process' as a class.

To help facilitate our the revision of our class problem, we put all of our charts on the white board side by side. 

6 chart papers in all! Incredible!

We started by cutting and taping one of the charts into a different order so we could have a better idea of how the entire text would flow. We then read each section of the text together before sharing revision suggestions. In order for a change to be made to our original text, we had to vote; majority rules. Ms. Sandy and Mme Careen also negotiated back and forth with us to ensure we were making the best revisions we could.

This process was NOT easy! It took a lot of reading, re-reading, changing a word, changing our minds, re-re-reading and so on. There were many great revision suggestions from each team and many Reporters for each group were very passionate about their suggestions which created such wonderful - and exhausting - dialogue! :)

In the end, we ended up with a title, introduction and closing that we are all proud of! 

(The original text is in black and revisions are made in green).

After a well-deserved break, we came back and started the second part of our morning with public conferences. A public conference is when one group's work is read and celebrated in front of the whole class. First, the Reporter reads the group's writing aloud. Then, the teacher (in this case Mme Careen) reads the group's work aloud and stops to notice what the group has done well. She (the teacher) will also ask the group what they notice about their writing and will then ask the other students in the class what they noticed and would like to celebrate.

After the celebration of the writing, we zero in on the details and give suggestions of what the group may want to review and work on. The teacher jots down the ideas and next steps on a sticky note for the group to refer to when they start the revision process of their own writing.

The last part of the morning was spent writing in our groups. We picked up right where we left off on Day 2! By the end of the morning, all of the groups had finished their introduction and were well on their way to finishing the step-by-step instructions of their problem. Some groups have even started writing their closing sentences and will soon be ready to start editing.* Wow!

*Speaking of editing... Did you spot that bright green poster in the above pictures? That poster shows us the international symbols for editing that all publishers use! While the editing process wasn't originally a part of our learning plan today, one group - who had already finished their writing and revising - got an sneak peak! Tomorrow, after they have edited their own work and are ready to publish the final draft of their writing, they will then take on the role as our class editors for this project. This means that they will conference with the other groups and help review and edit their writing before it is submitted to Ms. Sandy and Mme Careen for final approval.

Phewf! It's no wonder our morning together flew by and that our brains are "fried from thinking!" :)

And, with that, we close off this Day 3 post with what may very well become 

one of the greatest student quotes of all time...

"With great knowledge comes a great need to nap."

Agreed. :)

Great work today, everyone!

Sleep tight! 😴

Day 2 of our Writer's Workshop!

We had another great morning with Ms. Sandy today!
It is incredible how much we have accomplished already! We are working so hard and
are learning so much about ourselves as writers!
Here's a look at what we were up to today:

We started our morning in our Community Circle, as we did yesterday.
We passed around a talking stick and shared something we liked/appreciated about yesterday's time together. It was so wonderful to hear all of the things that were important to us. Many of us liked having our letters celebrated. Some of us said watching the slideshow and seeing Ms. Sandy's mother's paintings was their favourite part of the morning. A few of us enjoyed listening to the song, "What a Wonderful World" and asked if we could listen to it again today!

After sharing, we jumped right into today's learning goals. We read them aloud together before Ms. Sandy offered more information of how we were going to meet today's "dreams."

We had three main goals today: to be introduced to the peer revision process, to write an introduction for our class problem and to get started on our own writing in our groups.

The big blue sheet Ms. Sandy is holding in the above picture is the Peer Revision Checklist. We each got our own copy as well. On this list there are 10 items that we are responsible to look for when working in teams to revise our writing. We used the checklist to review our class shared write, "Problem 120" that we did as a class on Monday.

When meeting up in our teams today, we each chose one of three roles: Recorder, Reporter, Facilitator. The job description of each role was written on the back of the tent card we selected. (You can see the cards in some of the pictures above; each role was printed on a different neon-coloured card; pink, green and purple).

Working in our groups, we now had a chance to brainstorm ideas of how to introduce our own step-by-step writing. We shared our thinking and came up with many great hooks to engage our reader! Ms. Sandy and Mme Careen also collaborated and came up with a possible introduction for our class problem, modelling that when you have the chance to talk out your ideas with someone first, your writing becomes much more efficient.

The last part of our morning together was dedicated to starting the writing of our group's own Math mobile problem. After having heard so many wonderful hooks and ideas from our peers, we were able to jump in and get started right away. There was so much great discussion among the groups and each team accomplished so much in a short amount of time.

Before ending our morning together, we took the time to celebrate each group by asking them to share what they accomplished and how they found the process of working together as a team. It was incredible to listen to all of the wonderful writing and how the team worked together in their assigned roles!

With two days down and two more to go, we can't wait to see what else might be in store for us as we continue learning together as a team. We are all working so hard and are certainly inspiring the teacher-observers in the room with everything that we are accomplishing!

Bravo les élèves!

Vous êtes formidables!

Meeting Ms. Sandy - Day 1 of our Residency!

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

What a wonderful morning of learning we had together!

It was so great to finally meet Ms. Sandy and get our Math-writing residency underway!

Here are a few pictures to show you what we accomplished together this morning.

After saying, "Hello" and shaking hands with Ms. Sandy, Ms. Sandy started celebrating the wonderful letters we wrote to her. She noticed something great in each of our letters and took the time to 

answer all of the questions we asked her.

After she celebrated us, Ms. Sandy shared more about herself. She showed us a PowerPoint filled with pictures of where she lives, her family and her students. The picture on the screen is right at the Arizona/Mexican border. 

We asked about the construction of "the wall" and what she thought about it.

She also played her favourite song, "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong while Mme Careen showed us the pictures from the book with the same title.

After a long time of sitting and listening, we took time for a brain break! 

We learned that Ms. Sandy's students often play Simon Says for their brain breaks just like we do! 

Mme Careen tried to stump us, but we're getting too good!

After our brain break, we got back to work!

Next on the agenda was reading through all of the great ideas we contributed to our 

"What Do Good Technical Writers Do?" chart. It was so great to hear everyone's voices!

Here, Ms. Sandy is sharing a published Math technical writing piece that another school here in Winnipeg has written. Ms. Sandy worked with Robert Andrews School back in February. 

Their writing piece focused on the order of operations.

She showed examples of how we can include an introduction and a closing for each of the problems. We also noticed that their manual contained a title, a table of contents and a glossary - 

all things that we had noted on our "Technical Writing" chart.

Here we are looking over the shared write of the Math mobile problem we did yesterday as a class.

After rereading it together as a group, we made a few changes to our thinking; adding in missed words, changing other words to be more specific and discussing that we should likely include an Author's Note to explain the PEDMAS concept in more detail for our reader.

After this, things in our room got very busy!

The last part of morning involved us getting into groups of 3 and picking our mobile problem that we'll be writing on over the next 3 days. We found a spot at the white board (one group worked on a small board on the floor) and got to work solving our problem. While we were working, Ms. Sandy and Mme Careen visited each group to listen to our thinking. Ms. Sandy wrote our key "language thinking" ideas onto a post-it note so that we know how to start off our writing tomorrow. Mme Careen took pictures of our work so we can have a guide of our "Math thinking."

The morning flew by and we barely even noticed the 25 visitors in our room with us! :)

We all worked so well as a group and contributed so much to today's lessons.

We can't wait to see what we'll start our day off with tomorrow! 

All set up and ready to go!

Happy Monday, everyone!

Only ONE more sleep until Ms. Sandy is with us! :)

We had a busy morning of learning today!

After we talked a bit about what to expect over the coming days (and got over the shock that we will have
25 guests in our room watching us this week!) we got straight to work.

Our two main goals this morning were to:

1) Re-organize our "What We Notice" chart into specific sections, thus transforming in into the chart,
"What do good technical writers do?"

 

2) Complete our class shared write for a "balancing mobile" problem.

Page 1 of our "shared write" in Math.

Our AMAZING Math words!
These two charts are in French, but (hiding behind them) are also the same chart in English!
We will refer to these word charts often when we are writing in our groups this week!

These writing pieces will be the first charts we go through with Ms. Sandy tomorrow, so it was important that 

ALL of voices were heard and shared on our charts.

We learned A LOT about writing with urgency and stamina this morning. Collaborating on a text together as a class requires everyone's full focus and participation the entire time! The more we share and build on each other's ideas, the better our thinking and our writing becomes!

We will be working with the same intensity all this week and we know we can do it! We came up with so many great ideas this morning and respecting others' ideas and negotiating with one another was essential to our success.

I (Mme Careen) am so very excited to be on this journey with you this week. Together, we will grow SO much as writers and learn so many skills that will help us become stronger learners across all subject areas! 

Je crois en vous!

À demain! :)

Our room is now set up and ready to go!

What do we notice about technical writing?

We were lucky to work with Mme Champagne again this morning as we continue to notice 

more and more about technical writing!

Today we read excerpts from a book with many technical writing features, Les monstres.

Mme Champagne chose this book for us because she knows we are currently working on creating our own monsters in Français... AND this book is also currently featured in our classroom library!

As Mme Champagne read from the text and showed us the pictures and pages, we continued to add to our
"What do you notice about technical writing?" chart. Our goal by the end of today's class was to ensure that each one of us had our voice heard at least once... and we got there! Great, work team!

Our next step with this chart is to take all of our amazing ideas and organize them into specific, technical-writing-features categories so we can better notice what good technical writers do. Our ideas will be posted in our classroom over the duration of our writing residency so we can be reminded of all the features
we should be including in our own writing.

Writing Algebraic Equations

We were very happy to welcome Ms. Toth back to our classroom this morning.

Our goal for today was to take our knowledge of how to solve our mobiles picture problems one step further... actually writing out "the Math" to go along with our thinking!

First, we started off by reading the book Mystery Math - A First Book of Algebra by David Adler.

It seems like a silly sort of picture book, but it actually introduced us to the key concepts 

AND vocabulary words we would need to move ahead in today's lesson!

Books are SO incredible like that! :)

Next, Ms. Toth called us all up to the board to model how to write algebraic equations to explain our Math thinking when finding the values of each shape in our mobiles.

We also learned key words such as "variable" and "equality."

Now that we had an idea of how to get started, we got into our randomized groups and got to work!
As we worked through each mobile, Mme Careen and Ms. Toth stopped by our groups to check our equations and ask us questions about our thinking. Writing down an equation only isn't enough; ALL members of our group had to be able to explain the reasoning behind each equation and the order in which it was placed. This is NOT as easy as it sounds! Our brains were on maximum thinking mode today!

We will revisit this process once more - as our class "shared write" - before Ms. Sandy arrives.
Who knew a simple Math mobile could teach us so much Math? Wow! :)

Super Slime Follow-up!

Mme Champagne was back today to get our feedback on Room 205's "marche à suivre: Slime."

We read each section of the procedure aloud as a class before discussing what went well and what went not-so-well during Monday's slime-making experiment. We suggested adding quantitative details to the materials section and keeping the vocabulary consistent when referring to the Borax solution in the procedure (instructions). We also negotiated how to make the step of slowly adding the Borax solution to our mixture more clear, as many of us didn't have a point of reference for the quantity 1/8 cup.

Reviewing Room 205's procedural writing (and having put it to the test!) helped us notice many features of technical (procedural) writing. We will take all that we noted and begin applying it to our own writing in Français (with our monsters) and Mathé (as we write out the steps when solving equations).

Félicitations!

We started our day together in the gym celebrating our Term 2 successes.
Congratulations to all of our classmates who were recognized in this morning's assembly!

Slime!

Happy Monday, everyone!

We were very happy to welcome Mme Champagne back to our class this morning for a very fun - 

and very messy - lesson! :)

Mme Champagne's class is in the final revision stage of their soon-to-be-published procedural writing of how to make slime and we had the opportunity to test their method (step-by-step instructions) to see if the writing was clear, easy to follow and guided us to a successful (and slimy!) final product.

Before getting started, we read through the instructions as a class and Mme Champagne guided us through the new vocabulary. We were encouraged over and over (and over!) to carefully read the instructions
BEFORE getting started.
It was challenging not being able to have a teacher answer all of our questions! We needed to rely solely on the slime instructions and our group members to figure out what to do.

The groups that carefully followed the instructions - in order - ended up with some super slimy slime! The groups that skipped steps, did the steps out of order, or did not take the time to read the steps ended up with some interesting end products!

Later this week, once our messy hands and desks are cleaned up, we will discuss as a class what went well and what we would change/clarify in Room 205's slime procedural writing. Our constructive criticism will help them with their final revisions before they publish their writing.

What a great way to start the week!
Merci, Mme Champagne et les élèves de 205! :)

What else is keeping us busy?

In addition to all of the extra work we are doing to prepare for Ms. Sandy's visit,
we are keeping up with many other concepts and projects, too!



In Math, we have started learning about percentages and watched the video, "If the World Were a Village" to start seeing how this concept truly applies to the world around us. This video, based on the book of the same name, shared many interesting facts about our world's population, including the percentage of people who have access to clean drinking water as well as those who do not consistently have enough food to eat.



In Français, we continue to work on designing our monsters! Once the rough sketch of our monster is complete, we will begin drafting out detailed, step-by-step instructions of how to draw our monster, being sure to use the proper verb tense as well as the correct vocabulary words when writing our "monster method." The anchor charts currently posted on one of our bulletin boards are helping us choose the best words to explain our thinking. They are also helping us correctly spell key vocabulary words and use the proper articles (le/la/un/une/des)
for each noun.
We are very excited about this project and we can't wait to share our writing with our classmates
and the students from Mme McKenzie's class!  👾

A visit from Ms. Toth!

One of our next steps in preparing for Ms. Sandy's visit is looking at the type of Math problems
we will be solving when creating our step-by-step problem-solving guide.
We were very fortunate to have Ms. Toth (our school division's Numeracy Coordinator) with us
this morning as we jumped in and got to work.

After finding our group (a randomized group of 3), we found our spots at the white boards and began working through the steps to solve a series of picture problems. Each card contained a variety a shapes, each of a different value. We had to solve for each shape so that the picture remained balanced
(both sides of the balance were of equal).

As we solved each question, we needed to explain our thinking to Ms. Toth and/or Mme Careen before moving on to the next question. Some questions were certainly easier to balance than others! The more we worked through the problems, the more we were able to come up with different strategies and negotiate the most effective way to solve for each shape.

Some groups were able to work through all 8 problems and then were tasked with 2 next steps:
1) Writing a basic algebraic equation to represent the problem.
2) Creating their own "balance" problem for another group (or teacher!) to solve.

We worked really hard this morning and our brains all got a little bit bigger from all the Math thinking we did!

We will revisit these same problems next week, this time looking at how to represent each step of our process with both an equation and a written sentence to explain our thinking. Ms. Toth will also be back to help guide us as we begin these next steps and we can't wait to work with her again! :)

Dear Ms. Sandy,

Our first task in getting ready to meet Ms. Sandy is replying to the letter she wrote to us.

We worked with Mme Champagne to learn all about the components of a friendly letter and brainstormed ideas of what we might share about ourselves when writing our responses.

After learning the main parts of a friendly letter, Mme Champagne shared her letter with us. We enjoyed learning about her cat and thought the comparison of her house to a box of chocolate milk was both funny and descriptive!

We then got to work on our own letters to Ms. Sandy. We had one class to write our rough drafts before peer-editing and writing our good copies in our ELA class with Ms. Miller.

Our letters will be delivered to Ms. Sandy for her to read before she meets us at the end of April. 

The first part of our first day together will be spent discussing our letters as a group and she'll be taking the time to talk to each one of us about something we wrote so she can get to know us better.

What a special way to kick off our week of learning together!

An EXCITING Announcement!

Happy Monday families!

Although most of our morning was spent saying "cheese!" in the gym, we did manage to squeeze in some time for a very important visit from Mme Buckwold, who stopped by to share some very exciting news!

Here is the text from the letter that Mme Careen sent home with us today:

April 10, 2017

Dear families,

I am very excited to announce that Room 208 (that’s us!) will be participating in an upcoming reading and writing residency here at Ness Middle School. The residency will take place Tuesday, April 25 – Friday, April 28, 2017. We will have the opportunity to work with Ms. Sandy Figueroa, a sought-after educator in the areas of reading and writing.

Ms. Sandy will be working with our class every morning in Mathématiques. Together, we will explore the elements of technical writing as they apply to our mathematical reasoning in problem solving. Our goal is to publish our writing on our classroom blog as well as create a problem-solving manual that will be shared both here in our school library as well as with Ms. Sandy’s students at her school in Tucson, Arizona.

As we work with Ms. Sandy, a group of teachers and administrators will also be observing our learning. The purpose of this residency is not only to enhance our (Room 208’s) learning, but also to support all students and teachers in becoming more effective readers and writers across all content areas.

Attached to this letter, you will find two copies of the Student Permission Request Letter. As explained in the letter itself, one copy is to be returned to me and the other is for you to keep. Please fill in the letter and return one copy to the school (me) as soon as possible. 

We are very fortunate to have this opportunity to work with Ms. Sandy! It will truly be an incredible week of learning for all involved!

Most sincerely,

Mme A. Careen

Participating in this upcoming residency will certainly be a lot of work, but will provide us with such an amazing opportunity to grow incredibly in our mathematical reasoning and our technical writing. In the coming weeks, in addition to working with Mme Careen, we will also have the chance to collaborate with Mme Champagne, Ms. Miller and Ms. Toth (one of our school division's numeracy coordinators) as we best prepare ourselves for Ms. Sandy's visit. We will be posting many updates of our "front-loading" (a fancy word for all of the learning we will be doing before Ms. Sandy's arrival) to our blog, so be sure to check back often!

What a great way to kick off our week!
We can't wait to get started! :)

An intro to technical writing

"Technical writing" sure sounds like something complicated, but we're starting to learn that it's a type of writing 

we both see and write with on a regular basis.

When reviewing our "balancing a subtraction" mental math strategy in class this morning, we started by writing out the steps to solve an example equation. We explained the steps of the process using short, specific sentences that include key Math vocabulary terms, such as:
Additionner (add), unité (ones), terme (term), nombres (numbers), soustraire (subtract).

Writing out the steps of a strategy as if we were explaining the process to someone else helps us deepen our own learning and truly internalize the strategy/concept being taught.

We will continue to learn about technical writing as we begin to incorporate more writing in Math.
(We will also see this genre "popping up" in Science and Français too, so be sure to stay tuned)!

Problem solving!

We haven't wasted any time jumping right into our work with problem solving!

We're working in randomized groups of 3 at the whiteboards to collaboratively solve different types of open-ended Math problems. The above picture shows us finding all the possible 6 digit numbers with a sum of 51.

We have also started collaborating in groups at the whiteboards for word problems. Mme Careen reads the problem with us before we take a copy of the question to our whiteboard working space. We have a chance to share our ideas and strategies while working through the problem with our group. Once we have found the answer, we need to make sure that each group member understands the steps taken to arrive at the solution before returning to our spots. We then have time to independently write out our solutions on our own question sheet (referring back to the whiteboards and conferring with our group members if need be) before handing in our work.