The Cycle of GRR

Pictures say more than words!  So, here is a quick representation of the Gradual Release of Responsibility Cycle.  The standard shown in the image is RL.2.5- story structure through beginning, middle, and end.  We have found that these steps help our students truly reach their highest potential. It allows each student to take full ownership of their learning.

We always start with a pre assessment to gather the base line for each student's prior knowledge and to form collaborative groups based on such knowledge.  The second step involves a hook - a fun way to engage students and introduce our learning targets.  In this lesson, for example, we took students on a virtual roller coaster ride (this hook related to our structure strategy as well as the mentor text we chose for this lesson).  The learning objectives are wrapped into "I Can" Statements or statements like Readers Can ...  We find it important to introduce these goals for every lesson as well as the academic language and important definitions.  This practice has allowed our students to expand their reading and writing vocabulary as well as understand the content at a higher level.  Plus, having a clear goal helps our students reach it.  Mini lesson (usually between 12 - 15 minutes) follows with a very explicit teacher modeling of thinking and the use of a specific, standard-related strategy.  Then, students are invited to apply the new knowledge of the strategy through partner practice.  While students are engaged in partner practice, we walk around the room, take notes of the conversations, questions, use of academic language, and student discussions.  We continue the same observations while students work in collaborative groups  (we add a step of asking essential questions related to the content and the standard).  After ample practice time (depending on how quickly each student grasps the skill/strategy) in collaborative groups, student work on an independent activity before moving onto the post assessment.  After each post assessment, we grin with amazement on how much knowledge growth occurred in our classroom.  We realize over and over again that the method of GRR madness is worth the effort...every time!

You can find all the activities, grouping guide, and assessments by visiting our TPT store here.

Using Plickers!

A couple weeks ago, we kicked off the use of Plickers in our classroom!  What a time-saver!!  We used it for our reading and math pre-assessments for the week.  Our students love it, and we loved being able to have data immediately as we were testing!  Then, we were instantly able to view the misconceptions and form our collaborative groups according to each students' prior knowledge!  What a great way to cut down on wasting instructional time and saving ourselves tedious grading!  Here's a picture of our class as we were testing them.

The only down side to Plickers is that your questions have to be multiple-choice or true/false.  Open-ended questions still have to be paper/pencil but even that element makes believers out of us!

Congratulations!!!

Just a quick little post to share the exciting news that Amna was just offered a teaching position at my school for next year!  We are both so excited and thrilled that we get to work together as colleagues next year!  No word yet on what grade-level but at least we'll be able to work in the same school!
Yay!!  Congratulations Amna- all your hard work has paid off and our school is lucky to have you as a teacher!

Teaching Comprehending Literature

Our standard for this week was CCSS RL2.10:  By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories and poetry, in the grades 2-3 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

For this unit, we decided to use a chapter book as our mentor text for this week. We chose a chapter book to prepare our students for third grade as well as challenge the thinking levels and use of comprehension strategies.  At this point in the year, we felt our students were ready for it and it would be a great way to work on this standard.   We chose The Trouble with Chickens by Doreen Cronin.  We thought reading a mystery would help our students dig deeper into the text so they could solve the mystery!  Also, the chapters in this book are shorter allowing ample practice and reading time.  The vocabulary is very appropriate for second graders, but there are few more difficult words, which  challenge students to use monitoring comprehension skills and resources such as a dictionary or thesaurus to further understand the meaning of the book. 

A crucial step in this comprehension-focused lesson was providing students with a catchy, easy-to-follow strategy to use as they are reading.  Modeling the use of this strategy was another essential component.  Inviting students to practice the use of prediction and monitoring strategies before moving onto collaborative groups, allowed the students to truly connect and explore how it all works.  When gradually put together, these components allow our students to read this book without a glitch.  Their minds came alive!  Their questions evolved from chapter to chapter and their clues matched their predictions.  The light bulbs were lit all over the place.  What a sight to see! 

If you would like the unit and activities we used, the pack is available in our TPT Store.  

Teaching Story Structure

This week, the reading standard we were teaching was RL2.5 Story Structure. It was a review standard for us... we taught it back at the beginning of the year but felt we needed to review it.  We used our new mini-lessons and activities and they worked out GREAT!  Our class had such a good time with the activities and they really enjoyed the mentor texts.  We're working on getting some pictures posted so you can see them in action!

What we love most about using the Gradual Release of Responsibility Framework is that it forces us to know where our students are.  As teachers, we know what prior knowledge they SHOULD have, but this framework is built on the foundation of using a pre-assessment to guide instruction- so we can find out exactly what EACH student really does know. After we use a pre-assessment, we can adjust our instruction and differentiate to meet their exact needs and we don't have to waste time making them do activities designed to teach them skills they already have!  Isn't our time in precious enough???  With GRR, we can specifically target the "holes" in our students' knowledge and work to fill those in- without wasting time! We feel much more efficient as teachers and our students are learning exactly what they need to learn.  

Here's the link to the Bundle Pack of Mini-Lessons, Activities and Assessment if you want to use it with your class!

RL2.5 Story Structure Gradual Release Mini-Lesson, Activity & Assessment BUNDLE

Hello Hello!

Well, here it is... our first post!  We are so excited to kick off this blog!  It is our hope that this blog is helpful to you while you do what we're doing... implementing the Gradual Release of Responsibility Framework into our teaching.

So who are we?  We're BJ and Amna - currently team teaching in second grade.  (Okay-technically, Amna is student teaching in my class, but we have fallen into a rhythm and partnership that it may as well be OUR class!)  My school has worked all year to implement GRR in our lessons.  We were on the right path, but were far from reaching our goal.  Then, Amna joined my class.  She swooped in with over two years of GRR experience and knowledge.  She's setting us straight and now our class is rockin' the GRR and our students are rockin' their learning! 

We are excited about the GRR "roar" because we have found that there is a method to the madness of it all.  Most importantly, we have discovered that each student in our class is able to find his or her unique path toward learning targets, and that is the most exciting experience to us.  We will try to paint the picture of the process as best as we can, and we hope you join us in this GRReat movement!