Not Teaching In A Vacuum

        Thanks to the writers at Two Writing Teachers for hosting the slicing community!  Three more days before we begin the March Slice of Life Challenge. Are you ready?    I'm starting to take deep breaths every day, and collecting a few quotes to keep me going.  
             "Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words. Mark Twain

           It was such a pleasure to attend my state literacy conference. Here are a few additional ideas from the wonderful people whose sessions I attended.  It's a challenge to just write a few words for each. I think you should all just go to a conference if you can, and you'll experience the sessions for yourself.  Perhaps it will be with different people, but it'll be good, every time!  

I saw Regie Routman in the first keynote - my notes say, most important: Focus on the student--then celebrate, collaborate, simplify and strategize! She spoke and emphasized the importance of conferring. In fact, if I had to choose one word emphasized by nearly everyone, it was to confer, don't leave it out. And isn't that something that connects back to what has already been written, KNOW the student, FOCUS on the student?

I saw Harvey “Smokey” Daniels, so energetic about his work! He insisted that we should not be calling it "close" reading, but "careful" reading. Quote: "What kids can do out loud with a partner today, can do alone and silently tomorrow." He used a ladder as a metaphor for scaffolding, one step at a time, right?

I saw David L. Harrison – He has recently completed a series of poems with Mary Jo Fresch that link to specific sounds for work in phonemic awareness. The title and link: Playing With Poetry to Develop Phonemic Awareness. And David shared other ideas for poetry, emphasized playing with words, starting with one word and connecting, connecting until one has a good idea.  

Reading from Joyce Sidman's lovely book, What The Heart Knows.

I saw Carol Wilcox, yes, Carol of Carol's Corner, slicer friend and a Denver neighbor. What a joy! I think I know a lot about poetry, but took away so many titles from her presentation, and many quick ideas to get students going. For example, she shared her “abecedarian” poem, one written that uses the whole alphabet.  She emphasized how important using poetry is for seeing the world with different eyes, learning new exciting words-increasing vocabulary, using poetry as short texts to work on reading comprehension and shared the link to CCSS for Poetry exemplars on Poets.org, and also at ThePoetryFoundation.org   

           All of these people help us thrive as teachers, inspire us with their words, and help us to know that there are ideas out there that will enhance our personal lives, as well as the teacher ones.