Instructional Coach Update
Reading and Writing Connection
Using Great Mentor Sentences to Teach Grammar Conventions
Invitations in Writing
In this edition, I will highlight the first three invitations: Invitation to Notice, Invitation to Imitate and Invitation to Celebrate.
Invitation to Notice
Find a mentor sentences from a piece of literature that demonstrates the convention you want them to notice. Display it and have the students begin to notice it.
What do you notice?
What else?
What’s the punctuation doing?
What effect does the punctuation have on my reading aloud?
What changes if we remove it? Use something else?
What’s the writer accomplishing with his/her choices?
An Invitation to Imitate and Celebrate
Deconstruct the sentence for its prominent features.
Show an imitation of your own or a student’s and connect back to the prominent features.
Show students how to insert their ideas and experiences and still imitate the structure or pattern.Throughout the writing and editing process, we have to pause and celebrate.
Celebrating takes place as often as possible-almost all the time.
It’s a time to laugh, to listen, to clap and to praise.
Have them write their imitations on sentence strips or half sheets of construction paper. Then their creations go on the wall or in a class notebook.
Have the student read their imitation to the class. Then have her read it again. Ask the class, “What stuck with you about her writing?”Be sincere, but also scour, hunt, and celebrate what is done well-or at least on the path to wellness.
This gives kids a chance to treat each other as writers, learning from each other, praising each other. Like all writers, kids need to know what audiences respond to.
Early Literacy
Book Spotlight- In a Village by the Sea
Children will delight in getting a peek at the setting of a fishing village in Vietnam. The story is told from different perspectives starting out with a view of the village and narrowing into a hole in the floor where a cricket lives. The prose is lyrical and children will enjoy reading it again and again. You will be transported away to a different world.
Growth Mindset
Interesting Blogs
Book Spotlight- The Night Gardener
Teresa Brent- NCE Instructional Coach
Email: tbrent@newcaneyisd.org
Location: NCE room 53
Phone: 3255