The Writer's Notebook

Inside this pencil

crouch words that have never been

written

never been spoken

never been thought...

                                                               WS Merwin

One of the modifications I am going to make to the Lucy Calkins’ unit is to start off the year with two weeks focused on utilizing the writers’ notebook. Many tenets of the writer's notebook are integrated into the first writing unit of study, but I feel like how to write in the writer's notebook needs more focused attention. During the second or third week of school, students will begin 10 minutes of writing homework, so they need the tools to know how to make decisions about what they will write and what quality writer's notebook work entails. 

Two great books that have influenced my “writers’ notebook” lessons over the years are:

Writer's Notebook: Unlocking the Writer Within You by Ralph Fletcher and Notebook Know How: Strategies for the Writer's Notebook by Aimee Buckner

Guidelines for the Writer’s Notebook:

* Students date all writing; when writing at home begins, they must star and date the line where they started their writing homework. (* means it was completed at home). This allows you to keep a check on students’ writing stamina and if they are really giving it the time it deserves at home. I have my students write for 10 minutes. Often I can tell that students have worked longer!

* I have students skip the first few pages. I don’t really have a good reason, but I always feel like there might be something special that deserves to be put on the very first few pages. In the past, this has included a quote from Ralph Fletcher and a chart of my take on the writing process.

* I have students write on the right side of the notebook. (I think I might have got this idea from Aimee Buckner)...the idea is that the left side of the notebook allows students space for revision, trying out leads and endings, making a sensory detail chart for the writing piece, etc. This year, I plan to put a little spin on this idea and am not sure if it will be too complicated for my students, but I'm going to try to teach them that if they are making a list (say of memories they could write about) THEN they can write on the left because they won't need the room for revision.
* The writer's notebook should not necessarily hold students' drafts. (This is SO hard to control though.) I am going to try hard this year to push the idea that our notebooks collect "seeds" and "watermelons." Even if what we have written inside the notebook is super-great, it will still require some revision. One rule Lucy mentioned and I have heard a presenter say is that students' writing goal should be to DOUBLE the length of their drafts. Lucy teaches students towards the end of unit one to write two sentences for every one they wrote in the previous draft. This is usually doable for kids because they often write briefly--telling instead of showing. This past year, I started having students begin their drafts on yellow legal paper to differentiate notebook work from the actual draft. I plan to try using the yellow paper again this year as a signal that students are moving from generating ideas to actually drafting.
*Erasing or scribbling out big chunks of writing (or ripping paper out of the notebook) is not allowed. 

Top Ten Lessons:
1- Writers create lists that can help come up with something we can (or want) to write about. The lists should be more specific than just a word (one-word topics are WATERMELONS).
2-Writer's often write about our memories. (Read aloud When I Was Young in the Mountains, The Relatives Came (Rylant), and/or Wilfred Gordon MacDonald Partridge (Mem Fox). Students make a list of memories, choose one and write. I usually use a timer and tell them they have to write without stopping, "Writers on your mark, set, go!" Set the timer for three minutes and they will be begging you for more writing time. :)
3-Writing allows us to see a long ago memory clearly. Peter Stillman believes "It's extremely hard to see a long-ago memory without getting it on paper." We might not know all the ideas and words we are going to write before we start writing, but the memory returns to us more as we get our pencils moving.
4-Writers use sensory details to improve the quality of our writing and to help the reader live in the moment we are describing. Students make a sensory detail chart (smell, sounds, sights, feel/textures, tastes) and generate a list of everything they can think of. It makes sense if this is related to a memory that they were already writing about and allows them the opportunity to add more details to it. This also pushes students to think in a variety of ways about their writing topic. (I used Charlotte Zoloto's The Seashore Book for this lesson).
5-Writers can make our own list of writing topics. We can ask ourselves questions that we don't yet know the answers to and explore the question in our writing. (Examples: What is my biggest fear? How have I changed since I was little? What's something important I have learned that I will never forget?)
6-Writers sometimes take some time to do "goof off" writing. (Ralph Fletcher describes this as a lesson in Teaching the Qualities of Writing.) I have had some amazingly creative writing come out of this lesson (one entry that sticks out was about a marker family...Crimson Sister, Magenta mother, etc.). I always have an example of my own and have students share their ideas during the lesson and the next day. The idea is to let the kids know that all of their writing entries don't have to be serious. It also frees them to be more creative in their writer's notebook during homework (as they may hardly ever get to write this way during class time).
7-Have you read Dream Weaver by Jonathan London? This is a great book for teaching students how to ZOOM in with their writing. It starts out with the main character walking past a spider and taking time to look and wonder. As the boy looks on, he gets closer and closer to the spider's world. We used this to zoom into an interesting idea--I wrote about zooming in to an ant hill. This is also a great book for poetry and image.

.....work in progress....

Launching the Writer’s Workshop: My Plans

So, blogging again last week was a little ambitious for me. I went to two district days on the Common Core Curriculum, and by the end of those two days, my brain was done. For those of you who live in states that have opted into the Common Core for math and literacy, it looks very exciting. For NC teachers, the Essential Standards for other content areas also look awesome…I’ll blog on NC Essential Standards later.

The Essence of “Launching the Writing Workshop”

In 17 sessions, the unit moves through the writing process in a spiraling manner. . If you have read the Lucy Calkins units, you know that she also includes mid-workshop teaching points (MWTP), and conferring snapshots to give you an idea of how she helps students with different abilities be successful as writers.  Here’s a quick overview of the unit as she sets it out in Launching the Writing Workshop:

*Setting Up Writing Community *Generating/Brainstorming Strategies

*Identifying Focus/Planning *Drafting *Revising *Editing

Session 1: Starting the Writing Workshop

            MWTP: Writing More                     

Session 2: Generating More Writing

            MWTP: Generating More Personal Narrative Writing

Session 3: Qualities of Good Writing: Focus, Detail, Structure

            MWTP: Telling a Story Instead of All about a Topic

Session 4: The Writer’s Job in a Conference

            MWTP: Writing Stories Step-By-Step

Session 5: Building Stories Step-By-Step

            MWTP: Spelling High-Frequency Words with Automaticity

Session 6: Choosing a Seed Idea

            MWTP: Rehearsing for Writing by Storytelling

Session 7: Revising Leads: Learning from Published Writing

            MWTP: Using Quotation Marks

Session 8: Writing Discovery Drafts

            MWTP: Rereading to Build Writing Stamina

Session 9: Revising Endings: Learning from Published Writing

            MWTP: Checking for Sense

Session 10: Taking Charge of Our Writing Work: Starting a Second Piece

            MWTP: Solving our Own Problems

Session 11: Timelines as Tools for Planning Stories

            MWTP: Resetting the Tone

Session 12: Timelines as Tools for Developing Stories

            MWTP: Choosing a Starting Moment

Session 13: Writing from Inside a Memory

            MWTP: Paragraphing (Importance of)

Session 14: Writing in Passages of Thought: Paragraphing to Support Elaboration

            MWTP: Answering Readers’ Questions

Session 15: Developing the Heart of a Story

            MWTP: Inserting Paper to Help Revision

Session 16: Using Editing Checklists

            MWTP: Reading with Writing Partners

Session 17: Publishing: A Writing Community Celebrates

By the end of the unit, students will have drafted 2-3 personal narratives.

Mentor Texts for Personal Narrative

So I guess in retrospect, my changes to the unit as written are minor, and are perhaps the changes that any writing teacher would make—mostly based on my previous experiences as a writing teacher and based on the mode of teaching that seemed meaningful and effective for my students in the past, but I am excited about the depth my planning is able to take on when I am not worried about the scope and sequence of the unit (Lucy's already given me a skeleton for that), but can add my special touches. 

First things first, any writing unit I teach must be deeply rooted in mentor texts that model what it is I am hoping students will be able to do. Cynthia Rylant is usually my go to author for writing techniques, but because I rely heavily on When I was Young in the Mountains and The Relatives Came for my memoir unit AND since I am trying to change my approach to teaching writing in a dramatic way, I didn’t want to fall back on my old favorites and risk the chance that I would also fall into teaching writing with “business as usual” lesson plans. So, I spent a few hours at the library. Here are the gems I came up with as foundational books for first writing unit.

Bigmama’s and Shortcut by Donald Crews: (Lucy mentions these in some of her commentary). In the unit, students learn to decipher writing topics from WATERMELON topics (too much to really be a focused narrative) and SEED topics (those that are small and focused enough-like a seed-to be turned into a personal narrative). When I read Bigmama’s, I thought “This is a watermelon book. I can see a hundred seed stories that Donald Crews could tell about his summers spent at Bigmamas house.” Then I opened Shortcut, and there it was! A seed story about a summer at Bigmama’s house when Donald and his cousins took the shortcut by the train tracks—which the children had been told time and again not to do—and the revelation that it wasn’t a good idea to walk close to the tracks. I plan to use these two stories to demonstrate the difference between a watermelon piece of writing that contains lots of ideas (Bigmama’s) and a seed idea that turns into a personal narrative (Shortcut).

When Lightning Comes in a Jar by Patricia Polacco: Nearly every Patricia Polacco book is a great example of personal narrative, but I chose When Lightning Comes in a Jar because of the story’s structure. It tells of a family reunion when Trisha’s grandmother and aunts tell the children a story of “when lightning comes in a jar” and end up teaching them how to catch lighting. The story has two potential leads to consider, as the book starts with “Today is my family reunion. I can hardly wait.” but in the next paragraph, it begins “How I remember that day. Gramma and I stood in her front window waiting for my relatives to come.” And this leads into the story of the day Gramma taught Trish to catch lighting in a jar. The beginning of the book contains great description of the beginning of the reunion, reuniting with family members and feasting on all the great dishes, playing baseball and crochet, and pulling out family albums. Towards the middle of the book, the kids start asking for stories. This leads into pages of small personal narratives from Gramma and the aunts, any of which are great models for the personal narratives that students will write. The end of the story has really good reflection in it. Just like the beginning, you can use quite a few of the ending paragraphs as examples of how Patricia Polacco could have ended her piece of writing.  I actually can’t wait to return to this book again during our memoir unit later in the year. Basically, I see the structure of this book as:

descriptive lead (for pages and like a WATERMELON piece of writing)-->personal narrative from Aunt Ivah (seed)-->personal narrative from Aunt Adah (seed)-->personal narrative from Gramma (seed)-->descriptive and reflective conclusion/powerful ending

One thing I took into consideration as I scanned through books at the library was tapping into “boy” experiences. In doing so, I found two great mentor texts with male narrators.

Touch the Sky Summer by Jean Van Leeuwen: Luke and his brother Peter spend a week at their Grandparents cabin by the lake. This story has a great descriptive beginning with minimal use of dialogue that will allow me to demonstrate for students why writers sometimes choose to use dialogue. In the middle, the author includes a number of scenes that could be examples of personal narratives. I see the author’s seed list as:

                -the day we hiked up Tongue Mountain

                -the day it rained and what we did

                -the day I went fishing

                -the morning we got up early and went out in Mr. Parkinson’s boat

                -the night we camped out in our tent

                -the last day when I was able to swim out all the way to the raft

All of these ideas may be more than most our students are capable of in one draft given the limited amount of time in the unit, but I will be happy if they are able to focus their energies into at least two seed ideas that turn into a whole story with a beginning, middle, and end.

Where the Big Fish Are by Jonathan London: (although only one of the books at my library fit what I was looking for in this unit, I was excited to find Jonathan London and see myself using lots of his books this year for writing). This book is a more focused narrative. Two boys go fishing (like they do every day of summer) and get inspired to build a raft. When the raft is completed and gets destroyed by a storm, they build again, and achieve their goal of getting to fish farther out on the water “where the big fish are.” I thought this story was a good example because it is one narrative and will hopefully speak to the experiences of boys in my classroom. (It’s not that I think only boys go fishing, but I realize that many of the stories I choose to use as mentors for writing tend to have girls as the main characters, and since I am planning my mentors ahead of time for this unit, I also wanted to target diversity in the examples I share with students.)

As I begin my year, I will read these stories before I plan to use them in a writing lesson. This will help students understand the writing lesson more clearly because they won’t be as focused on what is happening in the story and predicting what will happen next. It’s always a good idea to pull a book from reader’s workshop into writer’s workshop (and how proud am I that for once, I am actually planning this ahead of time!!!)

Watermelon VS Seed Writing
The unit has a huge focus on getting students to understand the difference between a watermelon topic (this summer at the beach) and a seed idea (the day I caught a wave at the beach). A watermelon topic is much too large and general for students to do a good job with. A seed topic is just right and allows students to learn how to focus their writing topics, elaborate and "make a movie in the readers' minds" (aka "show-don't-tell"),  revise beginning and endings, and edit. It also allows them the opportunity to write many small drafts instead of one draft that goes on and on (you know, the kind of student writing that you dread reading because you don't know what the point is and you don't know when it is going to end, nor does the writer).

This is an area where I disagree somewhat with Lucy, or at least feel that I can use the watermelon kind of writing to lift the level of my students' writing right away. One reason why I plan to modify this aspect of the unit is because of the narrative mentors I found. Nearly all of them started off with the watermelon list of descriptions (like Bigmama's could have been the watermelon beginning to Shortcut). I actually want to teach them to take all that stuff they want to write about the person, time, and/or place and get it out descriptively for the beginning of their story, then transition into the specific narrative, ending it off with another descriptive or reflective ending. I guess I am wanting students to start out broad, focus in, and then go broad again in their draft.

More on my changes to come.....

Lucy Calkins Writing Units of Study~ Reflections

When the Writing Units of Study came to our district in 2006, I pushed back hard, although I had purchased The Art of Teaching Writing a few years earlier. Year after year, I would turn to these units when I got stuck teaching a specific genre (like memoir or essay), and again and again, I would put them down and seek out other resources.

Why did I push so hard against Lucy Calkins’ Writing Units?

• Reading Katie Wood Ray’s Wondrous Words had already “revolutionized” my understanding of writing instruction. This happened towards the first year of my teaching career and I was in love with how Katie helped me believe in myself as a teacher of writing.
• The units of study were purchased for us and handed over after the year had started. In the midst of “I have to be ready to teach writing—tomorrow!,” reading a 200 pg book about the unit didn’t feel like the best use of my time
• Little to no support was given through PLCs, district training, etc. to help us muddle through the books (it also didn’t help that these units were purchased during a switch in literacy specialists in the district).
• I am the kind of reader that has to read every word, hence I read VERY slowly. If you have looked at or read the Units of Study, you know that Lucy Calkins has packed the units full of coaching tips, assessment ideas, lesson extensions and examples, writing theory, etc. Time was always of the essence and I could not make myself skim the books. Because of that, I also could not get a good sense of the beginning, middle, and end of the unit quickly enough, and I, like most teachers, like to know where I am going and why today’s lesson matters later in the unit.
• Last of all, I felt like the books were meant to “hand over curriculum” to teachers to be a top-down push from any district in the United States who wanted to control what teachers were doing in our classrooms. While I now know that this is not how Lucy intended the books to be used, I also know that there are plenty of districts where the intent of the curriculum as a guide to good teaching is misinterpreted.

A Change of Heart

Did you know Lucy now has a READING Units of Study? This past year, I was in a book study with two other teachers at my school and the literacy coach. A Guide to the Reading Workshop introductory book held beliefs of most everything I believe to be true about teaching reading and more. Good start! We were all about to begin our nonfiction reading units, so we decided to pilot the Navigating Nonfiction unit, and found it to be fantastic in teaching our students fresh ways to think about nonfiction. We even went to see her present on the Reading Units of Study in March.

Since my mind was opened a little more towards Lucy Calkins, I decided to give the Writing Units of Study one more chance by reading the first unit this summer, from beginning to end, no matter how long it took me!

Now that I am more comfortable reading Lucy Calkins’ style of writing and more acquainted with the format of the Units of Study, I am happy to say that I can read them more quickly and skim to get the general sense of the lessons and overall unit. It also helps that I have focused my attention on them at a time when I am on break and before the school year starts, before the craziness begins again.

And, drumroll please…I have decided to use the “Launching Writer’s Workshop” as a foundation for my first nine weeks writer’s workshop. Anyone who has heard me discuss the Writing Units of Study knows  how big of a turnaround this is for me :) Here's a quick list of reasons for my change of heart:

• I was able to get through the whole book (I know this seems silly, but how can you use it to teach if you have "reading block" towards it?)
• Now I "get it"...I feel like this unit gives me a pretty good start for the beginning, middle, and end of the unit. I especially love how it pushes students through the writing cycle (which I think I sometimes lose at the beginning of the year when I spend a ton of time on generating strategies). In this unit, students draft at least two personal narratives.
• I really want students to build independence as writers, and I definitely iterate and reiterate that they are "responsible for their own writing," but I also teach in a way that my minilessons are critical to students being able to move on. This means that some students (fast writers, those who are motivated to write and work more at home, etc.) spend time waiting for me (who is waiting for everyone else) to be ready for the next critical part of the unit. With the quickness that Lucy moves students through this first unit (only giving them 2-3 generating strategies sprinkled throughout the unit and moving them to drafting quickly), I feel like I may be able to set up a better workshop where students write more (different topic) drafts and publish their most favorite one. 
• And maybe...just maybe...it's because the OLDER I get as a teacher, the more help I want in planning out what students will do. Now, by no means am I ready to read off of a script all day long (or even for one subject), but I am ready for someone to hold my hand a little more so that I can stop trying to be a SuperWomanTeacher who does everything from scratch.

Tomorrow, I will blog about  the mentor texts I plan to use and how I see myself modifying the unit…until then, here’s a link to a pretty detailed overview of the unit from the Austin Independent School District. (I scored this gem when I decided to google search notes for the unit :) Unfortunately, I have not yet found the same caliber of notes for the other units, but  I will keep searching. My advice, DOWNLOAD IT, SAVE IT, AND PRINT IT NOW. This is a great place to start to help communicate the unit to colleagues (and even if you have read the unit) to help you modify the unit with your own ideas. I love that I can see the scope of the unit in 18 pages, and go to the real source for the more detailed versions.

Launching the Writing Workshop Plans (overview of unit)

Biome Characteristics Multiple Choice

This week, I modified my biome sorting cards to a multiple choice smart board and powerpoint file. If your students need to be able to identify the basic characteristics of different biomes, this multiple choice set of characteristics will help your students review. Within the download, I have included three options for students to respond with their answers: using the multiple choice slides with Smart Response clickers, ABCD cards, or biome cards. The 6 biome categories in this set of questions include: tundra, taiga, temperate deciduous forest, grassland, desert, and tropical rainforest.

Biome-Characteristics-35-Multiple-Choice-PPT-Smart-board-file

Understanding biomes is important knowledge for the NC 5th grade Science EOG. Here's a link to the released questions from NCDPI.Question 1 is related to biomes, "Why do large trees have a difficult time living in the tundra?" The Extend II sample questions are also good for helping students apply knowledge and review for the EOG.

"Test" the Season--Math Reflections

This year I find myself in a wonderful predicament. What do I do with nearly 6 weeks before the Math End of Grade test? Typically I have about ONE week that I am not teaching new material before the week of testing. In past years as soon as 4^th nine weeks starts, we spend about ½ of our math time on new material and ½ on reviewing old material in the form of released items from NC DPI. Perhaps this is one of the perks that comes from looping with a group of children—all year I knew what I had already taught them in 4^th grade and was able to quickly review that material and build off of it for our 5^th grade curriculum.

We have many concepts that my students need to spend more time on and some areas that we need to look at for precisely how the concept might show up on the EOG. For example, my students are really good at completing function tables when it is in the basic “look at the table, figure out the rule” form, but questions often describe functions without giving the scaffold of a table—students must create the table themselves in order to be successful in figuring out the pattern and predicting later values. But, how do I keep these six weeks from being nothing but mundane test-prep packets where students do the work and I go over the answers? And, how do I make sure this “test prep” is actually preparing them and helping them become BETTER math students? I came up with two strategies:

One sheet is a tool I created to have students gauge how much they know about the concepts we will be reviewing. We will do this on Mondays for the concepts I plan to review that week. At the end of the week, students will reflect on their understanding of each concept now that we have worked on them more. Here’s an example:

Each day, I also plan to incorporate SMART clickers/Senteos to go over our math homework. Then, I plan to have students analyze the problems they missed, noting whether or not it was because of a mathematical mistake OR lack of understanding the concept/question. Next, students show how they should have solved the problem and decide if they actually get it or still don’t get it. Here’s an example:

 (You can download these forms for FREE on TPT and modify them for your math content.)

I hope that these two reflection strategies will help students gain more control over their knowledge and help them meaningfully correct their mistakes through analysis and explanation (instead of finding out the right answer and just moving on). I am also thinking that I will have students staple these reflections on top of their review work for the week to send home to parents. As I start to realize patterns in students’ mistakes or misunderstandings, I will probably spend a few weeks (or maybe every Friday) with students placed in small groups focused on different topics that target what they need help on. Of course some students will need it all, and I might have them in each review group OR I could prioritize concepts for them focusing more on their confidence than having them try to improve on everything. I might even open it up for students to place themselves into the groups they think they need to be in.

I also plan to incorporate a 10-15 minute game time each day using some of the games we have used throughout the year to allow students to review concepts in a fun way. Have you used the games on DPI? Look through the Weekly Essentials files. The games are ready to go!

I hope at least one of these ideas is helpful to you as you work through “Test the Season!”

NC 5th Grade Science EOG

I just put together all of my vocabulary mats (study/review strategy) for our  5th grade science units in NC. Teachers in NC prepping for the science EOG might want to download this from teacherspayteachers as a pack instead of having to download all 4 vocabulary mats separately. What is a vocabulary mat? It’s a spin on the old flash card study strategy. Instead of having answers on the back of their cards, students have a vocab mat that stays as one sheet of paper that includes a set of related vocabulary words. Students also have a sheet of definitions that they cut apart and place onto the vocabulary mats as a study/review strategy.

Units include: Landforms, Ecosystems, Weather, Force and Motion/Simple Machines.
Here's a preview of the packet:

All Vocabulary Mats-for-NC-5th-Grade-Science-EOG-study-strategy

Why Vocabulary Instruction?

Why have I created so many activities for vocabulary?

It is imperative that students master vocabulary in order to truly master a content area and be successful in future grades. Wouldn’t it be nice if when you were teaching ecosystems (part of your curriculum) and you talked about PRODUCERS (organisms that make their own food), all students already had mastery of the word PHOTOSYNTHESIS (since you know that this is in a previous grade’s curriculum)?  In order to carry these important words with them to the next grade level, students must be afforded more than simply hearing the words in whole group instruction, seeing them in the content-area reading that they do, and having them embedded in their classroom activities. Don’t think direct instruction in vocabulary is necessary? Think about your EC students, ESL students, and struggling readers. Heck, even your average students may appear to know what you are talking about, but may forget word meanings once the unit is over and you have moved on to something else.

If we really want students to walk away from our teaching units with mastery and ownership of the important vocabulary in our curriculum, we must directly teach for the mastery of those words.

Where do we start? All the words seem important. This is so true! And, it is a habit to break ourselves of as teachers. If your district does not already have a set of content-area words identified (and even if they do), you can start by creating a list of words you think are important to the unit you are teaching. For example, in our landforms unit, we identified the following vocabulary words that students would encounter (using our standard course of study, science textbook, science kit, released End of Grade questions, and unit plans as a resource of potentially important words):

basin canyon channel core crust delta deposition

elevation erosion fault floodplain lava magma mantle

meander model mountain oxbow lake particles plateau plate tectonics

run-off sand dune sediment topography tributary valley weathering

Obviously, this list is too long for directly instructing students on each one, unless that’s all we planned to do with our science time. So, our next step was to decide which words were critical to our curriculum. Some of the words in our above list come from extension content (like core, mantle, crust), but are not directly stated in our curriculum. Some words on the list were also put there in hopes that students could say “I REALLY KNOW WHAT THIS WORD MEANS” in a vocabulary activity we do on the first day of our science units (lava for example). (See my Science Vocabulary page).We also decided which words were simple enough (or discussed so much) that students would learn them quickly through experiences during the unit. Basin was an example of this. Students work with stream tables daily, and hold a basin under the stream table to catch the water as it comes out. (A basin is a depression in the earth that holds water; we figured calling their plastic water catcher a basin would suffice in them memorizing this word). Canyon was also eliminated as every group would end up with a canyon in their stream table activity.  We would constantly point it out to students, show pictures of the Grand Canyon, etc. Students would master canyon through the regular activities of the unit.

After asking ourselves “Which words would we need to ENSURE students mastered AND which words might not be MASTERED by EVERY STUDENT through our normal classroom experiences? Which words need DIRECT INSTRUCTION?,” we whittled our list down to 8 words: delta, deposition, erosion, meander, oxbow lake, sediment, tributary, weathering. We know students will encounter these words on our end of grade test. Students needed to understand the difference between weathering and erosion. We might not see a meander in our stream tables, and an oxbow lake is extremely difficult to create and capture before it is once again changed by the flow of water. Knowing that meanders and oxbow lakes are tested, we knew we needed to take these words through the 6 steps, show many examples, put them in review games like bingo and jeopardy, and review them again before testing.

Once you have trimmed your words to only the ones that you have to take through the six steps, managing direct instruction in vocabulary for one unit seems doable. We took our list from 28 words to 8. So, what are the 6-steps I have been referring to?

Robert Marzano has researched and wrote heavily about the 6-steps of vocabulary instruction. These steps include:

1-Explain-Provide a student-friendly definition, example, or explanation of the word.

Ideas: tell a story, point out a class experience that incorporated the word, show an image, describe what you think of when you hear the word, create a picture that demonstrates the word

2-Restate-Ask students to restate the explanation of the word in their own words

                Students should not simply copy the teachers example, but construct their own example, description, sentence, or explanation

3-Show-Students construct a graphic representation of the word (picture, symbol, etc)

This nonlinguistic representation helps students visualize the word and code it in their brains in a different mode than simply written or oral processing

4-Discuss-Use discussion activities to help students add to their knowledge of the word

Ideas: identify synonyms/antonyms of the word, create analogies, metaphors, talk with a partner, Give 1, Get 1 activities, complete a Frayer Model with a partner, etc.

5-Refine and Reflect-Students return to their vocabulary work (perhaps in a vocab notebook) and refine their definitions, examples, sentences, etc. Students can discuss with a partner new ideas they have about the word.

6-Apply words in learning games-Provide opportunities for students to practice the words through games; this energizes students to review the words and helps put them into mastery

Steps 1-3/4 might all happen in the same day. Step 5 would be appropriate after students have had time to work with the words/concepts in classroom experiences, and Step 6 is appropriate all year as you try to add more words to students memory banks. Marzano suggests playing learning games weekly with vocabulary words. Perhaps you set aside 20-30 minutes a week during your content areas for word-learning/review games. This would give you time to review words from a unit in isolation but to also mix them together as you study multiple units.

(From Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement; Marzano (2004).)

How and where do students record these steps? Here is one option called the Frayer Model. I have probably modified it a million times over the years. It usually contains examples and nonexamples, and googling it, I think I should not be calling it the frayer model any more, but here's my template. 

Word/Term and Definition (I often save this block for last. I know that doesn’t follow the 6 steps, but I think when students have went through  the examples, created a sentence, and related words, they are better apt to create a personal definition—therefore more able to internalize it)	Sentence Using the Word
Related Words (synonyms, antonyms, or connected words) For science, I try to have students put words here that they should think of when they hear the main word. For example, when you hear producer, you should think “consumer, decomposer.” When you hear meander, you should think “oxbow lake.”	Picture/Symbol

Older students might have a marble notebook, binder, or folder for vocabulary. Younger students might need a folder or a binder because you will probably want to give them templates instead of having them spend their time drawing something like above. 

For more ideas and templates, you can check out anything by Janet Allen, especially her book Words, Words, Words. See my Science Vocabulary tab for what I do at the beginning of every science unit (strategies like "don't know, kind of know, really know," "sort and label," and vocabulary mats). Hopefully I will have more time to blog about this later! :)