Chapters 6-8

My head is spinning with thoughts on logistics of notebooks and mini-lesson organization. I  will need to spend a long time on process before we get started. ("Go slow to go fast, go slow to go fast...").

I was pleased with how well my kids did with having the right stuff in the room last year. They complained because they didn't have desks in the room to keep their stuff in, thus making them actually think while they were at their lockers. Once they figured out that going to get it wasn't an option, there were fewer people "forgetting" because they either had it when requested, or it was a zero. We also established early on that earning zeros because the work was in their lockers was their fault and not mine. We called them "golden opportunities to show responsibility", and either they took advantage of the opportunity, or they didn't.

I am going to have to do a lot of work at teaching them how to talk positively to each other, especially in mixed-gender groups.

I loved that there were nine types of positive responses.
I plan to have my kids work in their writing circle groups to generate these types of lists to see how many they can come up with to see if I need to fill in any from p. 130 to add to their repertoire.

I also plan to spend a lot of time on the topic generation activities and using those to teach them to work together before they move into an actual writing circle with the topic generation/draft/share agenda.

Those are my ideas. What are yours?