Janessa Bechard

Independent Study- Writing Institute

During the week of August 1, 2016, I attended the Writing Institute Professional Development session through the Eau
Claire Area School District. The training was from 1-4pm Monday through Thursday. There were many different things
that I learned. In this reflection, I will highlight the many things that I have learned during the Writing Institute Professional
Development and how I grew as an educator with the steps that I took.

Monday:
● Overview of all of the Lucy Calkins Kindergarten spirals. To prepare for this, I created all of the necessary anchor
charts that are used when teaching Lucy Calkins. The majority of this discussion was review because I exclusively
taught Lucy Calkins writing last year and did not have Math Expressions to focus on, as my co-teacher taught
math. Last year, our grade-level literacy leader told us that our district will be implementing a drawing unit prior to
teaching the four Lucy Calkins unit spirals. Due to the fact that I need to organize and lay out each lesson, I
developed a drawing unit from the given materials. I have included it on this document.
● Additionally, I made a table for each Lucy Calkins’ spiral to organize all of the anchor charts that I created. They
are as follows.

Unit 1- Launching the Writing Workshop Anchor Charts

 Session/Part of Lucy’s Version Our Version
Lesson

Session 1: Conferring
and Small-Group
Work
Session 2: Share

Session 3:
Connection
Session 5: Mid-
Workshop

Session 6: Mid-
Workshop
Session 7: Link

Session 7: Share
Session 9: Link

Session 12: Mid-

Workshop
Session 13: Teaching Summary of Creak! Goes the Bed

Session 13: Link

Session 14: Link
Session 16: Mid-
Workshop
Session 17: Teaching
and Active
Engagement
Session 19: Partner Share- could be used during the celebration
Celebration

Introduction to Elbow Partners/Writing Partners

`
Unit 2- Writing for Readers

Session/Part of Lucy’s Version Our Version

 Lesson

On Demand Writing
Prompt (Pre)

Session 1: Mid-
Workshop
Session 2: Teaching
and Share
Session 3: Teaching
Session 4:
Connection

Session 5: Link
Session 6: Teaching

Session 6: Link
Session 7: Teaching
and Active
Engagement
Session 8: Share
Session 9: Mid-
Workshop
Session 12:
Connection
Session 15: Share
Session 18: Share

On Demand Writing
Prompt (Post)

Punctuation Lesson
Capitalization
Lesson

Unit 3- How-To Books

Session/Part of Lucy’s Version Our Version

Lesson

On Demand Writing
Prompt (Pre)
Session 1: Share
Session 2: Connection
and Share
Session 4: Mid-
Workshop
Session 5: Link
Session 7: Active
Engagement
Session 8: Active
Engagement
Session 9: Connection
Session 9: Connection
and Link

Session 11: Active

Engagement
Session 12:
Connection and Share

Session 16:
Connection
Session 16:
Teaching/Interactive
Writing
Session 17: Share
Session 17: Share
Session 17: Share

On Demand Writing
Prompt (Post)

Unit 4- Persuasive Writing of All Kinds

Session/Part of Lesson Lucy’s Version Our Version

On Demand Writing
Prompt (Pre)
Session 1: Connection
and Teaching
Session 3: Teaching

Session 3: Teaching
Session 4: Teaching

Session 5: Teaching
Session 5: Conferring
and Small Group Work
Session 6: Teaching and
Active Engagement
Session 7: Connection
Session 8: Guided
Inquiry

Session 8: Share
Session 10: Connection
Session 12: Teaching
and Active Engagement
Session 12: Conferring
and Small Group Work,
Mid-Workshop, and
Share

Session 13: Connection

Session 13: Share
Session 15: Teaching
Session 15: Link
Session 17: Share

Session 18: Connection

Session 18: Teaching Enlarged Opinion Checklist

On Demand Writing
Prompt (Post)

Tuesday
● During this day, we talked about engagement. This is the day that I found especially important because last year I
had a very hard time keeping my lessons within the allotted time frame, especially for demonstration lessons. The
targeted time frame for lessons are between 7 and 14 minutes. We had some extra work time on this day and I
went ahead and focused on reading through the first few lessons of the first spiral for Lucy Calkins and highlighting
key features. I am happy that I have one year of teaching writing under my belt because now I am able to build off
of what I taught last year and make it even better. This year I plan on really focusing on keeping my lessons short
but meaningful. Lucy Calkins is very wordy and it’s challenging to pick out the important information. I have written
in the “I Can” statement in each of the sessions in all of my Lucy Calkin spirals. This will ensure that the “I Can”
statement is available to state and it will remind me to mention it multiple times throughout my lesson. In addition to
having the “I Can” statement written in for each writing session, I have written post- it notes that say, “Yesterday
we…” to remind me to make the link for the students to remember what we talked about yesterday to get them
back in the groove of writing. Secondly, I highlighted Lucy Calkins teaching points so I remember to state it each
and every session.
Wednesday
● On Wednesday we talked about the different aspects of conferring. Conferring is a very important part of Writer’s
Workshop. I have collected materials to include in my Conferring clipboard. I have my post-its in my clipboard.
Post-Its can be very helpful when conferring with a student, it allows for you to leave your “teaching point” with the
student when you leave to go and work with another student. One way some teachers have been using post-its are
to draw a quick picture, for instance, maybe a child needs to work on stretching out their words and hearing all of
their sounds so a teacher would draw a picture of a slinky. To save time and because I’m not very comfortable
drawing things, I created my own “task cards”. While these are not 100% inclusive to all of the teaching points, I
created them based off of the most common teaching points that I used during conferences last year.
Thursday
 ● On Thursday we discussed assessments and the importance of making sure everyone in the district is on the same
page. Luckily, this is something I have experience with because as a Kindergarten team at Sherman, we went
through extensive conversations last school year to ensure we were all on the same page. On this day, we spent
time “norming” to make sure that we all had a clear understanding of scoring pre assessments and post
assessments. We all needed to score each of the three writing pieces and then discuss why we decided that was
an appropriate score. By doing this, we “normed” and ensured we were all scoring at the same rate within our
kindergarten team.

When the writing institute was finished, I chose to develop my own writing unit. As a kindergarten team, we implemented
one “If Then” unit from Lucy Calkins book, “If… Then… Curriculum (Assessment-Based Instruction). The If Then unit that
we developed and implemented last year was “All About Books”. As a kindergarten team, it took nearly four hours to take
what Lucy Calkins had written and put it into a lesson plan format. After my professional development was finished, I took
the time to develop an If Then unit of study, Pattern Books, to incorporate next school year. Lucy Calkins gives an
overview of how to teach these “If, Then” units but leaves it very wide open for interpretation from the teacher. I think
Pattern Books are a very developmentally appropriate way to teach beginning writers. The central idea of the unit of study
that I lesson planned for, is to use repetitive sentences to tell about one topic. I decided to include materials needed along
with the I Can statement and teaching points for each session for the Pattern Books If Then unit I created.

Writing Pattern Books

Bend 1
Session Focus Lesson Materials I Can
Session 1: -Empty classroom library -Pete the Cat, Brown Bear, I can think of a topic and
and tell students that you’re Brown Bear, What Do You plan my story across all
looking for them to help you See? pages.
fill it. -Pattern books
-Ribbon-cutting ceremony
-Think of a topic, meaning
first (my dog..)
-Plan your story by talking
across stories

Session 2: -Model pattern writing, (My -Pattern books I can write and draw across
dog runs. My dog plays.) all of the pages.
-Sketch drawing and then
go back and add detail
-The drawing helps the
reader know the new words
on each page
-Goal is to finish a pattern
book

Session 3: -Asking yourself, does it -Pattern Books I can identify the important
make sense? Some -Post-its parts of my pattern book.
students may be using a -Class written pattern book
random string of sight words (My dog..)
that are familiar that don’t
make sense.
-Use Post-its to label
different parts of a class
written pattern book:
-Main Topic
-Ideas to go with
the topic
-Words that stay
 the same
-Words that
change

Session 4: -Use mentor texts to show -The Very Hungry I can use mentor text to
the following: Caterpillar, Mrs. Wishy- make my writing better.
-repetition Washy series
-how the title
holds the pages
together
-add a twist to the
last page
-Pictures add
meaning (helps
with tricky words)
-Use mentor text to get
ideas for own book

Session 5: -Think to yourself, “does this -Pattern Books I can edit my writing to
make sense?” -Colored pencils or pens to make it the best it can be.
-Writers look at their writing edit
and edit as needed (fix and
add words)
-Remember to use pictures
to help plan

Session 6: Mini Celebration -Pattern Book I can share my book.

-Take your best pattern -Share
book and publish it

Bend 2
Session Focus Lesson Materials I Can
Session 7: -Revisit mentor texts -The Very Quiet Cricket I can use two repeating
-Introduce more challenging -New pattern books sentences for one topic.
topic sentences.
-Introduce one topic using
two repetitive sentences (I
like pizza. My mom does
too.)

Session 8: -Use writing partner to make -Pattern books I can ask my writing partner
sure writing is readable for help.

Bend 3
Session Focus Lesson Materials I Can

Session 9: -What an opinion is -Idea page I can express my opinion

-Brainstorm ideas for an -Pattern books using pattern books.
opinion pattern book (I don’t
like to do laundry. I don’t like
to vacuum.)

Session 10: -Using your pictures to add -Pattern books I can use my pictures to add
more to your book. (Mario is more to my story.
fun. Yoshi is fun.)

Session 11: -Fix and fancy writing -Pattern books I can make my writing the
-Colored pencils or pens to best it can be!
edit

Session 12: Celebration -Pattern books I can share my story.

-Can have each child share
their favorite pattern book or
share a summary
-Can type of their stories
and add them to
independent reading time