A Week or 10 Days?

The start of the school year seems incredibly hectic. Getting to know kids. Getting to know parents. Curriculum night. Pre-assessing kids. Establishing routine. Ugh!

Instead of dwelling on the length of the week, I'm going to focus on our focus in reading. Our Math-Science-Social Studies/Literacy rotations began this week. My focus was on understanding the different features that are unique to non-fiction, and how they can be used to comprehend text. I started in the kids' wheelhouse: what makes a piece of writing fiction? Simple question that befuddled some of my kiddos- "really, you don't know what fiction is? It is just fiction!" Sometimes seeing something over and over is the most difficult thing to explain (granted all my kids were able get with it, and respond to that question accurately).

From there we transitioned into: what is non-fiction, and what features make non-fiction special? Kids were comparing their chapter books to our social studies text, and creating a T-chart of their findings. From some it was really important to not only share out the feature to the whole group, but turn to the page where it was located so they could visualize what the feature was (hmm what is a diagram? what is a glossary?). Again, seems simple but can be really powerful (and a great reminder).

But it wasn't enough to just identify features, but now we need to use them! So I had 4 questions that kids needed to answer, but they needed to use the features in order to respond. All of that was getting at our content goal of understanding what in the world geography is! Really really great start to rotations!

Looking Ahead

The start of the school year is such an odd thing. You start with 3-4 days, you get the long weekend, and then you have another 4 days. By the end of this second week you start to get into a groove, which is good considering you go another 4+ weeks before you get a day off for professional development.

While our 5th grade rotates students through content areas (math, science, social studies/literacy), we won't be starting that quite yet. Instead we'll continue to build community and routine in our homeroom groups. We have some math pre-assessments that need to be completed. We'll also do some reading comprehension through some short passages on maps, with the culmination being a completed map (off a blank world map) including major lines of latitude and longitude, continents, and oceans (I might be missing something as I'm not looking at it). We'll continue reading Rules by Cynthia Lord too. I need to be far better about my read alouds during the year, making a conscious effort to continue pushing through them even when we appear strapped for time. City of Ember will likely be next, as the trio of books in the series are really well written. We're just going to keep pushing.

Last Full Week

This is the last full week of school for my district. We have 2 1/2 days the following week, but for the most part this is it. We're going to continue to have our rotations this week, which should keep a degree of normalcy in the crush of spring/summer fever. What is in store? We are going to finish up with a brief (I stress the word brief) covering of the civil war. I have always hated the word "coverage" because it places emphasis on content instead of thinking skills. But in this case I feel ok about it.

I've been able to intermingle thinking questions with content so that kids aren't left merely trying to seek knowledge level responses. A case in point would be this past week where I had posed the question to kids "Was western expansion of the United States a good thing?" This was on the board as they walked in, and they needed to respond in their social studies journal. Each kid got a chance to respond, and we tallied "good" and "bad". Both wasn't a choice, but it was clearly reflected in their responses as many said "it depends on the point of view you are looking at it from." That gives me hope for the last week as we continuing trucking along through US History.

Teaching non-fiction

I think the most difficult part about social studies is the content. Textbooks, like most non-fiction, are dense in information. Where students find difficulty is in deciphering what is "interesting" and what is "important." Non-fiction is just one of those things that most students don't have tons of exposure to, and they aren't as familiar with the structure (as it is far different from fiction).

I'm approaching social studies as a content area, and reading as the tool to comprehend it. What that means is that I need to teach specific reading skills, and use those skills to gather important information. How is that going you ask? Well, it has just begun. Being a first year teacher I struggle a bit with pacing, which makes me feel like things bog down. But as a whole things move quick. As we just finished our second day of swapping kids (an hour per rotation of math, science, and social studies- middle school-esque), and I am starting to look less at the clock (pacing) and worry more about engagement.

Kids are engaged for sure. I am working to circulate, checking in with kids throughout the room. I feel a bit like I am a cattle prodder though, which has me thinking about how I can be more intentional. Perhaps it is a matter of setting things up more clearly so that I can work in depth with small groups. Perhaps it is a matter of establishing centers where kids rotate through a center with me... a center where they are working on something, another center working on something, and another where they are reading with me (or working on something with me).

The bottom line is that non-fiction takes time to teach. Kids need to be familiar with the structure. They also need to know what is important, and they need to know how to record that information so that they can more efficiently synthesize it. Eventually I want to move more towards having kids recording questions, and working them towards searching for answers and information. It is a work in progress.