Slam! Jaws dropped to the floor as Long-View poets took the mic, spouting repetitions, alliteration, and onomatopoeia. Delivering wisdom on topics ranging from anger to siblings to politics, Grey Band poets stunned the audience and judges of Long-View’s first poetry slam with their deep reflections, carefully-selected words, and well-honed performances. The slam took place this week at Caffe Medici’s performance space, and the inaugural event was a great success....
Read MoreReading and writing units at Long-View are often intertwined, supporting learners as they develop deep understanding of a particular genre across both domains. For the first two months of the year, learners in Red and Turquoise Bands have working on stretching their understanding of the genre of realistic fiction.
Called “Interpreting Characters,” the reading unit was focused heavily on understanding the central part of a story, the characters. Learners developed ways of thinking about characters and story in order to theorize about their readings…
Read MoreOur Grey Band is prototyping the next level of the Long-View program this year as we stretch into the middle school grades and iterate from a school for 2nd-5th graders to our ultimate vision of a school for 2nd-8th graders. The vision for the middle grades band, which this year is called Grey Band but also is referred to as “The Loft” because of their location upstairs in the adjacent building, is one of a great deal of independence. We want to see the kids standing on the shoulders of the work they’ve done with us in years prior, able to generate their own ideas, drive their own learning, and produce thoughtful and novel work…
Read MoreWe kicked off Information Text Units today in both Reading and Writing. We know that for many of the kids, these units will really propel them forward in their development. We are excited to see the learning and growth over the next weeks!
Traditionally, much of the elementary school curriculum has focused upon the reading of fiction, but extensive research has now established the importance of the literacy curriculum also focusing upon supporting children to be proficient in reading complex informational texts. Most of the required reading in college is informational in structure and challenging in content. Approximately 96% of the sites on the World Wide Web are…
Read MoreToday we celebrated how far we've come as writers in our first unit of study this year. Since the beginning of school, we have been studying, writing, exploring, telling, and revising personal narratives. We started with the idea that authors write stories from their lives and they are always collecting story ideas in their "idea file." We learned to live our lives as writers, noticing the meaningful moments all around us. Then, we studied mentor authors like Jane Yolen, Vera B. Williams, and Angela Johnson to learn how these authors magnify details for their readers and how they use craft moves to bring their stories to life....
Read MoreWe have had a wonderful start to the year in literacy and are excited by what our readers and writers will accomplish this year. Our literacy block consists of reading and writing, and we use a workshop format to teach both. We stand on the shoulders of the great work of Teachers College Reading and Writing Project out of Columbia University to inspire us and inform our practices. This organization has an amazing research base and a strong focus on helping kids do the work of real readers and real writers…
Read MoreGretchen Cion joins us as our Writing Specialist every Thursday for an hour. Mrs. Cion lives (and writes) in Houston so she'll be joining us via Google Hangouts. We are fortunate to have her collaboration, as she is someone who has an incredible gift for engaging every type of writer and helping each child reach to a high level. We are hoping that next week Mrs. Cion will tell us even more about the screenplay she has just started writing…
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