Balanced literacy in intermediate classrooms: deepening response writing with explode the sentence, co-constructing criteria, found poems; writing from questions of a picture, self assessment; purposeful homework.

1. Balanced Literacy in
Intermediate Classrooms,
Grades 4-7
Burnaby
Jan 31, 2019
Faye Brownlie
Slideshare.net/fayebrownlie.burnaby.4-7, 3d session

2. Adapted from Sharon Jeroski
What has changed in your
literacy programming – or the
balance of your literacy
programming - in the past 2
years?
What hasn’t changed?
What would you like to change
or add?
What would you like to keep?

3. How can we support our learners in
moving beyond the lines in their
written response to text?
• Leslie Leitch, Nakusp
• Grade 6/7
• In preparation for on-line response posts
• Text: A Monster Calls – Patrick Ness

6. •What’s happening?
•Who cares?
•Why does it matter?

8. • Big ideas
• Descriptive
• Adjectives
• Word choice
• Supported inferences
• Emotions – felt
• Touched hearts
• Clear examples of (emotions,
happenings)
• Personification
• Metaphor – simile
• Comparison
• Thinking like someone else
• Imagine

9. The Sequence
• Whip around – catch up on the story
• Explode the sentence
• Write to show you understand – move beyond a retelling, take a risk,
go deep, explain why what happens matters and to whom
• Share a phrase, a word, a sentence that is powerful in your writing
• Make a class list of what counts – beginning criteria
• Use those phrases to make a class found poem
• Reorganize twice to make the poem flow

10. Elias
• Conor seems to have been defeated. He has been overwhelmed with
negative emotions, fear, anger, sadness, and pain. He hides his
feelings with flat emotions, and pushes away all help. I think he is
very Anxious, because of all the pressure put on him from the bullies,
his mom’s sickness and possibly his mom and dad’s devorce. His
positive emotions are being stolen every time he has the nightmare.
His grandmother doesn’t help either…

11. Riley
• I think the most important thing in the story right know is the words
rissing and darkness. I think rissing means that he is beginning to
figure out his truth and why it is important. I think the truth is that
his mom will die and that is where the word darkness comes in …

12. Lucas
• What is going on in the last three chapters is that Conor’s mom is
getting worse and worse every single treatment. Conor is getting
more effected and anger from the scary storytelling monster that is
going to tell Conor three different stories, Conor is also getting bullied
by a group of kids in school which is effecting Conor the same way as
the scary storytelling monster and his mothers treatments…

13. Phoenix
• I think conors feeling nothing. He dosent seem to feel very much.
How would you now what he were feeling…

14. The next day…
• Review the criteria and reorganize into categories
• Read the next chapter
• Have students meet in small groups
• Provide a choice of 2-3 sentences for students to
explode in small groups
• Students write a draft for their on-line post
• Students identify, alone, then with a partner, where
their writing has achieved the criteria
• What works? What’s next?
• Students edit for sentences, grammar, and post

15. Cross-Curricular Competencies

17. Teaming: a grade 9 collaboration
• Goal: writing with voice and opinion
• Questioning from a picture
• All voices heard
• Move beyond the obvious
• Write the story behind the picture
• See how many of these criteria you manage
• Timed write: 7 minutes (added on 3 more…)
• As students write, we move to conference
• What should I notice?
• Extend the thinking, question, highlight
• Share a phrase, a line as a whip around
• Share with an adult. Ask for feedback.

18. Self assess – before and after
Rank yourself 1-3
• Asking questions
• Not answering questions
• Being observed
• Writing a narrative
• Self assessing with criteria
• Dealing with ambiguity and risk

19. Criteria
• Evidence to support your story
• Visual detail
• Inference evident
• Voice
Mark up your paper. Find your gem to share.
What should we notice about your writing.

20. Today was the day. The day the face of humanity was determined. Mike
Wolfe gathered all his belongings to bring to the town’s main fountain where
the meeting was said to be held. When he got to the fountain the town
councellor had just begun a speech. “Good morning everyone.” Today is a
race to see who is the sacrifice to spy on Oslyn. Mike knew that Oslyn was
their rival town across the ocean. “Now is the time. We are going to race.
The only catch is that there are a series of different obstacles. It is likely that
only one will survive,” the councellor announced. First contestant:
Evangeline. Second contestant: Zatar. Mike was relaxed because there were
so many others could be chosen. Final contestant: Mike. Oh, no. the first
obstacle was poisonous …
Very detailed intro but left the picture up to the imagination – not alone.

21. • Strengths
• Academically very strong
• Very good with right answers
• Strong opinions
• Want to please
• Listen well
• Stretches
• Risk taking
• Producing writing that has depth, opinion, voice
• Critical thinking
• Sharing before writing
• Worked with different partners
• Goals
• Hearing all voices and writing having a voice
• Risk taking, handling some ambiguity
• Self assessment
• Writing that has a message, that communicates
• Children to especially attend to
• One boy returning to this class after a suspension from another
• The silent group who let a few speak for them

22. Homework Journals
• Ideas and samples from Cedar Stream,
grades 3-6, Whonnock Elementary,
Maple Ridge
• Multi-age, place-based, co-taught classes
• Spend 90 minutes/day ‘beyond the fence’ in the local forest
• Teachers:
• Heather Chapman
• Renae Pennell

24. Bear entry – based on
The Six Cedar Trees
• I can statements:
• I can celebrate when I’ve done something I am proud of
• I can listen to my feelings no matter how I am feeling
• I can use calm down strategies to help me when I’m upset

25. • Provocation: What can we learn from Bear?
• Week 1
• Youtube video: Black Bears – Yosemite Nature Notes
• We relate to bears as we are so similar to them.
• How many ideas will you record from the video? (light, medium, dark roast)

26. • Week 2
• Connect Bear to
• Listening to our intuition
• Acknowledging our feelings
• Taking breaks when we need them
• Being proud of whom we are
When in the forest we listen to our inner Bear when engaged in risky play and
ensure we only do what feels right to us.

38. • What will you try?
• With whom will you work?
• What student(s) will you keep in mind as you try something new to
gauge the impact of your actions?