Wednesday I attended Kristina Smecken's Launching the Writer's Workshop Workshop. It was phenomenal! The school I work at has been using the Smecken's program to teach writing for a few years now, and I felt it was time to bite the bullet and learn the program for myself. Last year when I taught fourth grade, I had amazing teaching partners, one of which is a Smecken's expert. Working with her, I was spoiled. She told me how and when to roll out each mini lesson and gave me a scope and sequence of what I should teach and when. This year as a fifth grade teacher, I have equally as awesome teacher partners, however, they do not collaborate as much. After attending the Smecken's writing workshop, I feel confident that I will be able to teach writing and more on my own as a fifth grade teacher!
Thursday and Friday of last week, I attended Kristi McCullough's two day reading workshop. She is a literacy consultant through Smecken's and just as engaging as her writing counterpart Kristina Smeckens. A lot of what we learned during the two day workshop, I had already been doing. This made me feel a few things, one being, "Yay! I actually did something right last year!" another, "WOW! These ideas are so much better than what I did last year!" Overall, the workshop was very helpful! Throughout a large portion of the workshop, I was thinking to myself, "I am so glad I implemented the Daily 5 last school year!" Kristi speaks very highly of "The Two Sisters", the authors of The Daily 5, in terms of the procedures/routines they put into place to make the 90 minute reading block is successful. Having implemented Daily 5 routines into my classroom last year, I think (hope) this year will go a little more smoothly, now that I have some tricks up my sleeve!
If you ever get the opportunity to attend ANY of the Smeckens Workshops, TAKE IT! Whether an administrator approaches you or you see that a Smeckens workshop will be in your area and its up to you to pay for it, do it! It's absolutely worth it!
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