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Greetings!
 You're just days away from enjoying another summer vacation. The time has finally arrived when your daily routine includes... putzing around the house or reading by the pool, your evenings revolve around visiting with family and friends, and you wake up and wonder what you will do today.
Huh!? Maybe summer looks like that in the movies, but my guess is your summer looks a lot like mine. . .d
arting to ballfields;
tending to the overgrown garden; c
ompleting all the household honey-do's;
enjoying a family vacation;catching up on professional reading; attending a summer workshop.
Sound more like it? Whew! We'll need a vacation from the vacation!
Well, even if the rat race continues, I pray that you find some time to rejuvenate so you can return in the fall on-fire for teaching.
P.S. For those of you who are closing your classroom door for the final time this spring, thank you and happy retirement! |
| Main Idea! | | | Prioritize your summer to-do list
As you look ahead to next school year, here are some actionable tasks that may improve your literacy environment and/or instruction. Select a couple (or add your own priorities) to tackle over the summer break.
1. Prepare shopping lists. Keep the list of items you're looking for within your purse/wallet so it's always with you.
-- Toys and triggers to use as visual aids in mini-lesson instruction. Garage sales and discount tables are great places to search.
-- Picture book titles you wanted to find personal copies of. These could be new or used books.
-- Containers to reorganize areas of your literacy environment. Be sure to take some measurements before leaving your classroom in June.
3. Find anchor papers. Identify student writing samples to correspond with mini-lessons you conduct. These could be writings from your own current students that you saved and photocopied or samples you acquired from online resources. Need help locating good anchor papers? Check out these additional web resources.
4. Create a day-to-day start-up to your writing year. What are the procedures you want to deliberately incorporate into your first weeks of school in order to improve the management of your writer's workshop? How will you reveal the 6 traits to your writers? Make a 20-day game plan that includes each day's mini-lesson and students' independent writing time activity. (If you need some direction on how to do this, check out the "Launching the Writer's Workshop" one-day training we are hosting at the end of the summer.)
5. Identify core vocabulary. Go through your academic standards and identify the math, science, social studies, and/or language arts terms that are essential for your grade-level. Identify the top 30 core concept words per content area for the year. Pinpointing these core words helps you more intentionally teach them throughout the year.
6. Clean up your computer. Don't forget about your computer hard drives, CDs, flash drives, etc. Reorganize documents into folders for quick access in the future. And remember to back up your hard drive. When you burn the items onto a CD, or save them all to a flash drive, you save yourself great trauma when realizing the school server crashed over the summer and all was lost!
7. Identify your summer reading list. What professional books do you want to read? What about looking for some new chapter books/novels for all-class read alouds? Websites count as "reading," too. What professional sites do you want to spend time perusing this summer?
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| Organization Idea! | |
Maintain a spiral record of your mini-lessons
 One way to easily log your daily mini-lessons is to utilize spiral-bound index cards. More than your lesson plan book, this at-your-finger-tips tool would house the details of your mini-lesson instruction every day of your writer's workshop. And because it's spiral bound, the cards all stay in sequence.
Each card could detail not only the skill you taught but also the gist of the instructional components -- the anchor papers or picture books you used, the visual trigger, the key points you made, etc.
 Beyond the instruction, this daily record could also include the specific response activity the students did within the independent writing time.
What a fabulous resource to look back at the following year. Even if you change your plans the next year, at least you remember what you did previously.
You can sometimes find these spiral-bound index cards in quantities of 200 (which would be great for your 180+ days of school). But you could also utilize four 50-count spirals, filling one per grading quarter. |
| Workshop Update! | |
Got a game plan for your writer's workshop?
 We're gearing up for our four-city tour this July and August to
Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Evansville, and Chicago!
One of the perks for attending "The Launch" workshop is that you receive a free copy of my book, Launching the Writer's Workshop. And for those of you in grades 3 and up, you will be the first to receive the updated "Second Edition" of the original book.
I've been working on adding several new elements to both of these workshops, so I hope to be able to share them with you this summer! |
| Reading Idea! | | |
Consider your students' summer reads
 Use these last days of school to whet the appetite of your readers. Brainstorm with your class a list of all the books you have read aloud this year. Then do a little Internet searching to identify other titles by the same authors.
Besides searching for "other books" written by a particular author, maybe you'd like to pique their interest to some new authors, too. If you can, make time to read a couple chapters from these recommended books that would introduce students to characters and gist. However, a short synopsis and a pique-interest passage read aloud from the middle of the text would be just as attention-grabbing. (Be conscience of texts that would entice both your male and female readers.)
What a contagious effect this may have on multiple students wanting to read the same book.
Be sure to provide students a list of titles and authors mentioned. You want them to leave for the summer with their favorites circled. |
| Where's Kristina? | | Summer & fall workshops you won't want to miss
(Pre-Conference & Retreat)
June 21-23, 2010 -- Middlebury, IN
Launching the Writer's WorkshopJuly 26, 2010 -- Indianapolis/Fishers, IN | July 29, 2010 -- Fort Wayne, IN
August 2, 2010 -- Evansville, IN | August 5, 2010 -- Chicago/Elk Grove, IL
Beyond the Launch July 27, 2010 -- Indianapolis/Fishers, IN | July 30, 2010 -- Fort Wayne, IN
August 3, 2010 -- Evansville, IN | August 6, 2010 -- Chicago/Elk Grove, IL 6 Traits of Writing -- An Introduction September 15, 2010 -- Terre Haute, IN | September 21, 2010 -- Fort Wayne, IN
October 6, 2010 -- Indianapolis/Fishers, IN | October 18, 2010 -- Chicago/Countryside, IL
September 16, 2010 -- Terre Haute, IN | September 22, 2010 -- Fort Wayne, IN
October 7, 2010 -- Indianapolis/Fishers, IN | October 19, 2010 -- Chicago/Countryside, IL
October 8, 2010 -- Indianapolis/Fishers, IN
(Pre-Conference & Retreat)
September 30 - October 2, 2010 -- Nashville, IN |
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