Launching Units to Support a Year Like No Other

23 Jul Launching Units to Support a Year Like No Other

Dear Readers,

For the next few weeks I am going to posting units for your use as we enter into the new school year. They are free, I encourage feedback, and I hope that you find them useful and meaningful in the months to come.

ABOUT THEM ALL:

• They are ALL living documents. The K/1 has been updated a handful of times in the week since I originally posted it. Keep checking back at the document if you print it
• I welcome and encourage feedback. If something does or does not work, let me know. Especially for those of you who start school earlier, you can help refine the work for those who will start a little later.
• I tried to keep any and all prep work to a minimum. We are all trying to keep our heads above water. Once you get a sense of the units, you should be able to do 99.9% of the work with your children- no making the charts the night before or any of that.

The first one is for K/1 and contain a mash-up of community and relationship building, show and tell, interactive writing, phonics and shared reading. You could call it a reading unit, but it crosses out of that neat box into other areas. The unit is written with variations for distanced, virtual, or blended schooling. It is also written with the feedback of many brilliant educators, I celebrate them at the end.

 K/1 Reading Unit: Shared Stories, Shared Voices!

The 2/3 unit tries to bridge community building, identity, agency, and getting to know your readers. There is a huge emphasis on collaborative conversations. I tried as much as possible to account for all the variations in schooling, but honestly, who knows what it will look like tomorrow. Remember to check out the end where I thank the talented educators who gave their feedback.

2/3 Reading Unit: Building Communities of Readers

4/5 Reading Resources are here! This is a different set-up than the others because I think starting the year with a communal study of a book would be amazing to build relationships, support your readers, and manage a few variables. The incredible Kate Roberts has written a book called A Novel Approach  which marries the core beliefs of readers workshop with the idea of a whole class novel. Since the wheel has already been invented, I am sharing some resources with you about the wheel. Kate holds true to the importance of choice, the importance of agency, and the importance of choosing a text that matters to your kids. Kate calls it a “read-aloud” focused unit, and that gives me a great framing on how to think about how it can live within the structures of a typical reading workshop.

Here is Kate talking about it on Zoom with me. 

Here are some resources Kate created to help you make this work for your community.

Here is Kate’s website so you can soak up her brilliance. They have made a ton of helpful materials for online teaching.

We talked a little bit online and off about how much book choice matters. You might choose a selection of books that are connected to your kids and their passions and ask them to vote on which ones they would want to read and study. We Need Diverse Texts is a great place to find some titles.

Last by not least, this is not a year long curriculum, after a read aloud focused unit, you will want to shift kids into their own texts. Hopefully, by then, maybe, the world will make a little more sense, and if not, perhaps the book we have shared as a community helps us have ways to talk and think about ourselves.

I would pair this study with some of Sara Ahmed’s identity work in Being the Change.

AND PLAY. Okay, this one has been a while in the making but also probably needs the most feedback. In this document, I’ve tried to figure out how play works in a virtual and distanced space. Please give feedback and the document can grow and change as people are experiencing it in real time. My Purposeful Play Co-authors and I also have a post coming out on this topic which has even more information and materials.

A Handbook for Play in the Virtual/Distanced Classroom

The resources are all free. Use them, give feedback, share them. They are living, they will change. You can contact me through the blog or leave a comment, I will approve them all and make changes that need to be made.

Having said all of that, if you would like additional support, you can always connect with me for a webinar or private office hours. As a matter of fact, why don’t I just dive right into a shameless plug. Here are all the ways I am working with schools at this time: