Just recently I have begun some coaching around the Units of Study. I thought I had best go into some classrooms and try the lessons out myself before coaching work began. I am very familiar with Lucy Calkins' old grade span writing resource, but these grade level ones are new to me. What I found was that they are much more wordy and dense than her last grade span books (which is saying a lot because those are pretty dense too!).
Even after modeling how to unpack a couple of lessons and teaching the lessons in some classrooms myself with the teacher watching, teachers are still coming and saying that they just sat and looked at a lesson for an hour and still didn't know what to pull out to teach. Does anyone have any suggestions to help teachers with this? I've tried the "set a learning target and pull material to teach to the learning target" approach. I've tried having them read and sticky the parts they want to teach, or underline. Teachers are still overwhelmed with the amount of material.
The other part I am seeing is the Unit of Study lessons assume that the previous year's teacher taught the lessons too. So, 4th and 5th grade students do not know what a "Small Moment"story is and the lessons do not necessarily lend themselves to teaching what it is. Any suggestions for helping teachers with that also?
