Blogging with Summer Institute 2008

Where will you be next Wednesday? Hopefully, relaxing!

Writing into the Day: TIW Reflections This writing will lead us to a Socratic Seminar for TIW wisdom.

Let’s make a list of all our TIW Titles and then revisit the elements of a TIW.

It’s official everyone can take a TIW breath. We have all created a first draft. Now how can we move them to the next place? Let’s write about what stands out to us. What TIW’s seemed to hit the mark in the specific elements of the TIW?

Here’s the 2008 Handout:

TIW description: In the Summer Institute,

you will share a well honed literacy-based activity or lesson that you do with your students in an 80-minute Teacher Inquiry Workshop (TIW).  You will take us through the process you use with your students, allowing us first-hand experience in the learning and writing.  An important part of your workshop involves sharing select examples of student work–how your own students responded to the lesson — as a way to illustrate and study your teaching practice and the range of students with whom you work. All workshops include time for collegial interaction and discussion.

What do presenters do in a TIW?

Explain (origins of) a teaching practice that is important to your literacy instruction and worth sharing and studying with colleagues. Describe your school setting, your students, teaching, and literacy practices. This is the context for my work- where, why, and how I’m working and thinking about a teaching practice to address students’ literacy.

Describe and demonstrate this literacy practice and how it supports students’ learning.  Share selected samples of real student work … excellent and warty. This practice reflects my hypothesis of what I do to support students develop skills as readers, writers, speakers, and/or thinkers. The student work I brought is data that I have been collecting in my study.

Craft real-time aspects of this literacy experience so that seminar participants can do what your students do (read/write) and/or think deeply about what they notice in the students’ writing.  Carefully structured learning activities can help adults learn about teaching methods/strategies through experience and reflection.

Offer a rationale this literacy practice related to your beliefs about teaching and learning, any outside research(ers), and the interests of your students, parents, or administrators. This is how I see my work in a larger context. These texts I have read and am now reading inform my work.

Invite participants to think about, write, comment, and ask questions about the workshop experience and to imagine how/if the practice would work in another setting.  Participants can think with me about this literacy practice, their experience of it, its implications in other settings, and/or new directions or next steps.

* We identify teaching as an act of inquiry and teachers as learners.

DD: Barbara

Logger: Katelin

Dear Matt,
I know I have been gone for a while, but I still can’t believe that there is only one day left. Today was amazing and exhausting…we started our writing day by penning postcards to those we haven’t spoken to in a while (I figure with my hours you deserved a postcard!). Accompanied by classical Brazilian guitar (provided by Bonnie, of course), we set to work to reconnect and write for an truly authentic purpose. Mary even gave us stamps to avoid the follow-through problem.
We continued our day by exploring two very different worlds, classrooms, and groups of students:
Cathy voiced her desire for her usually marginalized high school students to have meaningful writing experiences that can offer them ways to both express themselves in more abstract terms while giving them the tools they need to move themselves across the line society imposes upon them. We examined curious objects (ooh…I wanted to take that duck home with me!) and discussed the work of two students after we engaged in the same writing activity. I was left considering the implications of this kind of literacy engagement for all students as depending on what happens in the future, many of them will traverse the line of marginalization more than one time. Cathy’s work is important and interesting. I am glad I am lucky enough to be here.
I can’t wait for the book presentations tomorrow. Bonnie’s bells are going to get a workout!
Lilah closed our afternoon as she navigated us through the world of young learners who are not a part of the “literacy club” (which I, by the way, totally want to join. Is there a local chapter?). Lilah moved us into her classroom (“I rode my bike yesterday. Oh, and then I ran to the park. I was so sweaty. I ran near the swing sets and the sun was sooooo hot!”) within the TIW (“One type of scaffolding I use is scribing where I literally write down what my students say.” It was really useful to be opened to the world of beginning writers, and I am still thinking about the common scaffolding I use in my high school classroom.
I am unsure what happened the rest of the day. I went to the lab to help Steve with the anthology (read: sat and watched him format like nobody’s business) but I made sure to turn Mary into my loan shark to ask for cash for the shirts. I can’t wait to see the design when I get home. Thanks again for doing it a second year (Do you have any ideas for next year yet? What? Too early?). I guess I will see you around 9:30 when you get in. Thanks again for tiding up yesterday; I promise to clean out the litter box when I get home. Thanks, thanks, thanks.

Love,
Katelin

TIW Reflections: Cathy W. and Lilah