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| One of our classroom rituals is to change the leaves on the trees with the seasons. The kids know that the new season is "official" when we switch our library decorations! |
A common quote about reader’s workshop comes from Lucy Calkins, where she basically says that the places in life where the most creativity can happen are the most predictable of environments (the artist’s studio, the scientist’s lab). Those of us who use reader’s and writer’s workshops know that within that predictable structure, what we once may have thought impossible, is possible. I often tell teachers who are just starting workshop that simply by providing the minilesson, independent work, share structure every day without fail, they will be giving their students a gift. Even though there is so much more to workshop, the structure and predictability of the workshop environment is the first and most important place to start. If children know they will write and read for extended periods every day, they will plan for it. It’s sometimes as if the extraordinary happens between workshops- in the anticipation and preparation for the day or days to come. The magic happens when a child plans to finish this story and then write the story of the moment before and after. Or when a group of children plan to use their partner time to compare a stack of books by their favorite author. All of the above, we know.
All this has got me thinking about rituals. First of all, I love the word. Ritual. It’s so much better than “routine.” Routine sounds like programmed, going-through-the-motions steps. Oh, but calling it ritual makes me feel as though every time a thing is done in the same way as before, it brings our class closer as a community. Ritual is interwoven with class culture and our history and our future.
Reader’s and writer’s workshop are just the start. If children respond well to those classroom rituals, shouldn't we take a look at other parts of our day? In what ways do we start the day that invite children to come together as a learning community? If we gather together in a cozy, but intense way to start reading and writing, how are we gathering for math? How does that differ from how we gather for science? I’m not simply talking about the “routine”, or step-by-step directions for how children come to the carpet—the directions that we would leave for a substitute. No: what I mean is “what is the meaning behind those actions?” If readers and writers gather surrounded by books, how to mathematicians and scientists gather? And besides gathering, what poems, phrases, or songs to children utter every day? And why those poems, phrases, or songs? How are children honored by you and their peers? How does the class celebrate?
Here are some of our classroom rituals (and reasons).
Ritual: Greeting each student at the door
Reason: “Seeing” each student every morning, saying every students name at least once before the bell, eye contact, teacher-student bond
Ritual: Morning Song
Reason: setting the tone of the day, smoothing the transition, inviting all children to feel connected by knowing the words to the same songs, reminiscing and revisiting “old” songs as evidence of shared history
Ritual: Morning Greeting (student to student)
Reason: Having each student’s name said one more time early in the morning, eye contact, peer bonds
Ritual: Reading of a certain text over the course of a school year (My favorite text to read over and over is All in a Day by Cynthia Rylant)
Reason: Children eventually memorize parts and text becomes part of shared history, words/phrases slip into other parts of the day to explain frustrating events or used during transitions, influences craft of writing in writer’s workshop, functions as shared reading (word rec. and interpretation)
Ritual: Reading and writing meeting in the library (minilessons)
Reason: Sitting in the library signals to children that soon we’ll spread out to read, all library meetings are literacy-based (either reading, writing, or read alouds) so sitting there sets the tone, children begin to act a certain way when meeting in the library because they know reading and writing meetings are time to listen and turn and talk- hand raising and calling out become less and less
Ritual: Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop
Reason: From the first day of school, children understand that we’ll never skip reader’s or writer’s workshop. Having personal bookshelves and taking home books from our class library enable children to read one or two texts over a number of days without feeling the need to rush or skip ahead in case there is no time to read the next day. Having writing folders with on-going pieces and no “turning in” or deadlines does the same. Stamina and focus are automatically increased during workshop.
Ritual: Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop share
Reason: spreads good ideas in a kid-run forum, reinforces the child who originated the idea, makes the whole workshop more organic
Ritual: Novel Read Aloud and Picture Book Read Aloud at the same time and place every day
Reason: meeting surrounded by books communicates a love for reading and requires a level of seriousness, children know that the novel read aloud is more relaxed with less teaching and that the picture book read aloud is time for turn and talks and teaching, the same way RW and WW builds stamina for reading and writing, read alouds begin to build conversation stamina
Ritual: Free Choice Time
Reason: children know they will have a time when they can extend their reading or writing thinking, or when they can read or write things above or below their just right levels
Ritual: Math Warm-Up
Reason: math begins with immediate independent thinking and problem solving, pencils and math journals in hand, the math period starts with sharing of problem solving strategies- ensuring that mathematical talk happens every day, regardless of the lesson
Ritual: Rainy Day reading (when our days are dark and rainy, we snuggle up and build in extra reading with quiet music)
Reason: nurturing reading identities and reading lives, having a kind of secret ritual
Ritual: Fridays playing “When I Was Interrupted” (On Fridays, instead of regular RW sharing, we go around the circle and say, “When I was interrupted, I was with Jack in the Amazon Rain Forest/ or at the foot of an erupting volcano/ or in Junie B’s bedroom)
Reason: growing the idea that to stop reading is to be truly “interrupted” and plucked from a faraway place—the idea that if you are truly lost in a book, it is hard to come back to the “real world.”
Ritual: Unit Celebrations
Reason: to bring closure to one particular line of thinking and to build excitement for a new line of thinking, to periodically add some spice to the predictability of workshop
Close up, small rituals add a rhythmic texture to the fabric of our days. But take a step back, because the resulting design is anything but routine!
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