Final of our 3 days of professional learning, K-7. Focused on quick writes and gallery walk writing to encourage sharing and oral language, accessing writing opportunities for all. Literature circles, co-constructing criteria for grand conversations, strategies for building background knowledge.

1. The Redesigned Curriculum: a
home for quality teaching and
learning in inclusive classrooms,
Year 3
Richmond Professional Learning Network
Sept 25, 2017 and Feb 23, May 18, 2018
Faye Brownlie
www.slideshare.net/fayebrownlie/
richmondpln.may2018

2. Shape of the Day
• 8:30-10 – Keynote
• 10:20-11:05 - Break out #1
• 11:15 - 12:00 - Break out #2
• 12:00 - 12:30 - Lunch
• 12:30 - 1:30 Keynote

3. Curriculum Design
• Engaging
• Voice and choice
• Deepening thinking
• Involves learners in assessment conversaMons
and decisions
• Moving learners toward independence

4. Curriculum Design:
Universal Design for Learning
• Connected to learners
• Accessible to all

5. Curriculum Design:
Backwards Design
• Teaching with the end in mind
• EssenMal quesMons and big ideas

6. Teaching makes a difference!

7. These are a few of my favourite
things…

8. • When students write, they generate
deeper thinking in any content area.
• Kelly Gallagher “The WriMng Journey” EL, Feb
17

9. Quick Writes
• Present a word
• Give 15 seconds to think
• Timed write for 3-4 minutes
• Count words
• Highlight gems
• Share gems
• Write from another word
• Aer a collecMon of these ‘quick writes’, reread
your wriMng and choose one to extend

10. Quick Writes – Grade 1
Quinn Hildebrand, Altona
• Modeled her wriMng – 2 stories, 1 make believe,
1 true
• 2 minutes – changed to 30 seconds
• Oral sharing – your story
• Walk and talk – first line
• 2 minute Mmer – orange line and count words
• Reread and think of your next 2 words
• 2 minute Mme and green line
• Share your wriMng with a friend and tell them the
remainder of your story

11. • April 10 – ‘huge’
• April 11 – ‘wet’
• April 12 – ‘jersey’
• April 13
– Share all 3 with a partner
– Choose the one to expand
– 20 minutes to conMnue wriMng

23. Quick Writes – Grade 3
Robin Martens, Altona
• 15 seconds to think about how they would start
• 3-4 minutes to write
• Wrote for an hour with different prompt words
– Pizza, soaring, puddle
• Kids highlighted their gems aer each write and
shared them with the class
• Created criteria:
– Using our senses to describe what was happening
– Using descripMve words

24. Robin’s Reflections
• Kids loved this
• Very focused on their wriMng
• Some of the developing writers listened to
what others shared as their gems, then
incorporated these into their own wriMng
• The next day in Work on WriMng Mme, several
asked for a ‘word’

27. Writing: risk taking, deepening,
extending thinking
• With Erin Green, Grade 7, and Cheryl Snaith, RT,
Carberry Collegiate
• 2 – 70 minute classes
• Strengths: kind, compassionate, want to do well
• Stretches: seek reassurance, formulaic wriMng,
give up easily

28. • “…if you want to revoluMonize your reading
instrucMon, invite wriMng back into the fold.
Give your students Mme to write during class,
and given them feedback that responds to
their cra and their composiMon. Great
wriMng is a communicaMon of great thinking,
so strengthen reading and wriMng in tandem,
not in isolaMon.”
• Bambrick-Santoyo & Chiger, “”UnMl I Write It Down”,
EL, Feb 17

29. Day 1
• 3 – 2 minute writes: skiing-control-courage
• Find a gem and share
• Built criteria
• Webbed ‘courage’
• 5 minute write: “Why is Jonas courageous?”
– Focus on evidence
• Erin and I wrote in front of the class
• Each writer shared a strength
• Added to criteria
• Change/add/edit one aspect of your wriMng

34. Day 2
• WriMng Med to class novel, The Giver
• Erin wrote in front of the class in response to
the ? “Was the gi of memories really a gi?”
• Erin also modeled how she chose her ?
• Now a slow write: web, brainstorm, talk, before
your write. Consider your audience.
• Conferenced with students as they wrote,
extending the thinking.
• Students marked up their text: what should be
noMced, according to the criteria.

37. Reading and Writing Connections:
writing with different purposes
with Barry Henderson, Gr 6, Maple Ridge
• Students love read alouds.
• Big Idea: Democracy/dictatorship
• Class web: dictator
• Quick write: Would you want to live in a dictatorship? Why
or why not? (who would you be?) 3 minutes
• Highlight words/phrases
• Share
• Choose 3 words from the shared and write a summary
sentence about a dictatorship. Write on the board as the
students are wriMng.
• Share sentence with those around you.
• Choose your most powerful sentence from all of your
wriMng. Why was this more powerful?

38. • I would totally HATE if we had a dictator because
then everybody could not have their own voice
and would have to do everything the dictator
said. If I did live in a dictator place, I would want
to move somewhere there wasn’t one. Everyone
should have their own voice.
• Voice-vote-right
• Everyone should have a voice to speak up.
Everyone should have the right to vote for what
they want.

39. Democracy
• With a democraMc government, you can speak
your mind. You are able to express your
opinion. The government doesn’t change the
way you think. You can be yourself.
• Control – choice – vote
• Dictators are the ones in control of the choices
you make and you cannot vote for them.

40. Gallery Walk Writing- Grade 3
Robin Martens, Altona
• Pictures from “Imagine a Day”
• 5-6 pictures displayed on chart paper
• Students, in groups, rotated through the pictures, adding
descripMve language, words, ideas to each picture
• Read the story
• Each student chooses 1 picture to write about
• Before wriMng, move and talk with others who are wriMng from the
same picture
• As they wrote, Robin highlighted gems and conferenced with each
student
• Shared gems and began to build criteria
• Day 2: met in groups to share their wriMng about the same picture
• ConMnued wriMng

44. • Imagine a day when the water is as smooth as
glass. Smooth water by a brown boat.
• Imagine a day when you can climb in to your
reflecMon and climb out of your reflecMon.
Imagine a day when the leaves are as so as
smooth sand. Imagine a day when the water is as
calm as a meryor. Imagine a day when the trees
are as green as bright grass. Imagine a day when
the sky is as blue as cold blue water. Imagine a
day when grass is as so as ice cream. Imagine a
day when water is like a meryor.

45. • Imagine a day when you could
make the whole enMre day turn
blue again just by beauMful blue
balloons and turn your frown
into a happy face. You could
hear the balloons pop like
popcorn. It looks like the world
started all over again. Imagine
when the rain clouds would
change just by you and nothing
else. Imagine if all of that could
happen all today, how would you
feel? The balloons are as blue as
the shimmering sky on a autumn
day.

46. • Imagine a day when your house can be in a tree
and the other side is on the ground. You can now
hear wind howling in the tree. The trees are as
orange as a yummy sweet orange. The leaves
make crispy sounds when you step on them. They
crunch like crunchy chips. The paint feels like
brown old mushy potatoes. The clouds are as
preqy as puffy marshmallows melMng in your
hand. The sky is as blue as a big fat blueberry.
Birds are whistling in the trees, singing a happy
tune.

47. Literature Circles
• No roles
• Student choice of books
• No limit on reading
• Open-ended response journals
• Small group ‘grand’ conversaMons about the
book they are reading
• ‘Say something’

50. Small Group Discussion: Fishbowl
• Model ‘say something’ with the whole class
• Select a diverse group of student volunteers to volunteer to
‘say something’ to another piece of text
• Remaining students observe and record ‘what works’ in the
discussion
• Collect the observaMons
• Group for criteria for a group discussion
• Givens:
– All voices are included
– The conversaMon change, deepens, extends my thinking
• Students reflect: what you should have noMced about my
parMcipaMon today

55. Telford and Brookes
A.E. Perry Elementary, Kamloops
• Self-assessment rubric

57. Building Background Knowledge:
see-think-wonder
• Present an image to the class
• See-think-wonder
• In groups, students examine different images and
apply the same strategy: see-think-wonder
• Students can provide a capMon for their image.
• Share images and capMons.
• Students write ‘the story behind the pictures’

59. Building Background Knowledge:
turn and talk
• Present an image or a quote or a few frames from
a graphic novel to the class
• Turn and talk
• In partners, students examine different images or
frames and apply the same strategy: turn and
talk
• Link the images or the frames
• Students write ‘the story behind the pictures’

63. Building Background Knowledge:
visual images and writing in role
Catherine Feniak and Shelley Steer, gr. 6/7, Lord Kitchener,
Vancouver
• Read a poem to the students
• Invite them to sketch as you read
• Aer reading aloud twice, give each student a
copy of the poem to reread personally
• Gallery walk the images
• Students write in role in response to the poem

64. TESTIMONY Going to the Dorm –
Shirley M Flowers
My mother sits by the window crying
Her heart is breaking
It’s the same memory every fall
The plane has taken her children away
They are gone for all winter
It’s <me for them to go to school
School is ninety miles away
We will not see them again for ten months
In the spring my brothers and sisters return
The plane flies overhead
My mother is running and crying
She’s crippled but she can run today

65. I hide behind my mother’s dress
I’m shy
My brothers and sisters
are strangers
Soon it will be my turn to go
When I turn twelve or thirteen
I have to leave too
I’m scared and excited at the same <me
I’m venturing out into a new world
I’m living in a room full of strangers
Some are kind, some are cruel
I’m constantly homesick and I cry all the <me
My heart is breaking
I want to be home

66. I see someone who might help me
I walk up to his car and say
“Can you send me home please
I’m lonesome and it’s making me sick”
That person doesn’t answer
He just looks at me and drives away
leaving me crying, standing in a cloud of dust
Next thing I know I’m being told I’m a trouble maker
The principal of our school
Has been advised that I want to go home
I’m told that what I’m saying and feeling
is upseHng others
And causing problems for the people
who run the place
And there’s no way I can go home
All hope is lost
I just have to make it through this year

67. My God, how can people do this?
How can they own my life?
I feel like I must be in a prison
I can’t get away
I can’t see my parents
My heart is breaking
I hate it here
Some<mes we have to fight for food
We have to work hard to look aMer the place
I can’t wait to get out of here
Spring comes, I can go home soon
I will never come back
I do though, one more <me
This <me I run away
No one can make me stay here
Now when I look at my teenage daughter
I realize some of what I lost
How do I be a mother to her
I wasn’t with my mother when I was her age
My heart breaks
But this <me all is not lost
No one owns my life
I am free
And this freedom I will share with her.

70. • Leqers wriqen in the voice of a child in
residenMal school aer listening to, reading
and visual journaling around the poem
‘TesMmony – Going to the Dorm’ by Shirley M.
Flowers

72. Questions to leave with…
• What is my BLITZ for the last 6 weeks?
• What is my plan?
• With whom will I work/celebrate/plan?
• How will I know if what I am doing is making a
difference?
• How will I involve my students in assessing
and reflecMng on their growth?