Grade 3 Readers' Workshop Live Videostream

At The Creek, we embrace making instruction visible and accessible. To achieve this goal, our teachers continually collaborate with others, blog about their best practices, host national visitors, and graciously allow video coverage of their practice. We share the videos on blogs, nings, and wikis, but we also share live videostream lessons to the Schultz Center, our district's professional development site. On average, we stream about 30 live lessons a year to give others a window into our classrooms, and yesterday was our first live stream of the year.

The Grade 3 Readers' Workshop lesson focused on author's viewpoint and began with the four part mini-lesson using an authentic children's text, Tea with Milk, by Allen Say. The teacher, Jenny Nash, began by explaining to her young readers, "Author's viewpoints are not clearly stated in the book, rather you have to do some of your own thinking by the details the author provides to understand the author's viewpoint."

Mrs. Nash modeled using a short excerpt from this familiar text. She reread the excerpt, used a three column graphic organizer (labeled place, details, and author's feelings) to think aloud, and recorded the details to make her conclusion clear about the author's viewpoint.

Next, she gave students an active involvement time to practice this skill. She placed another excerpt from the story under the document camera, read the excerpt aloud, and had students turn to a shoulder partner to discuss. She listened in on student conversation, and after several minutes had the students share their ideas as she recorded their responses. When students shared a response that was not focused on author's viewpoint, she gently guided them deeper in their thinking through questioning, and required them to give a more focused response.

Masterfully, she linked the lesson to independent reading by explaining to students that the author doesn't explicitly tell you their viewpoint rather leaves clues throughout the text so the reader can determine the author's viewpoint. Sometimes this is done in the details the author writes and the use of their word choices.

Students began independent work time by quickly practicing with another excerpt from the story and then moved swiftly into independent reading time. The teacher circulated and then pulled a guided reading group. It was evident as she ran the guided reading group that her rituals and routines were securely in place, because all students were engaged in their independent reading task.

After the guided reading group, the teacher individually conferred with five students, selected individuals to share their work in closing session that would reiterate her teaching point from the mini-lesson, and students returned to the meeting area as a whole group to close the lesson. Select students shared their work, the teacher took their thinking deeper by asking questions, and the lesson closed. Mrs. Nash reminded students that good readers think about the author's viewpoint as they read to help them to better understand the story.

During the debrief the Schultz audience asked Mrs. Nash questions, and she gave them a virtual tour of her classroom to show which artifacts are in place to support the Readers' Workshop. I don't know about you, but in my opinion, you can't make your practice any more visible than that! Thanks, Jenny!

Coaching LIVE

Broadcasting live lessons through videostreaming allows the doors of Our Magic Kingdom to open to the outside world. “Why is this important?” you might ask. It is no secret that teaching is traditionally hailed as a closed door profession, and at Chets Creek we have broken that barrier. Since the school opened in 1998, teachers have been building a culture of collaboration and collegiality. They have been hosting and participating in demonstration lessons and debriefs, attending weekly teacher meetings, working with content coaches in their classrooms, and delving into professional book studies. The next evolution was sharing our best practice with the outside world. Video streaming on real time has allowed us to begin this journey.

My coaching role in this week’s video stream was an easy one. I simply observed in Vicky’s classroom over the course of a week in Reader’s Workshop, gave her a few suggestions on tweaking her practice, and pointed her in the direction of Melanie’s blog. Reading Melanie’s blog on teaching Sub Text allowed Vicky an avenue to read about a new strategy, gather children’s literature, and implement the reading strategy in her own classroom. My role was minimized with this self-directed second year teacher, and Vicky’s colleagues from around the district got to benefit by watching her lesson live!