So many things to think about. Many years ago I was fortunate in that my district sent me to Denver for a week long workshop (PEBC) to work with Ellin and a group of teachers seeing readers' workshop in action in the classroom. Wow! What an experience. I was a 4th grade teacher at the time.
Anyway, I had been teaching the strategies, focusing on one a month. (I was really over-teaching the strategies.) So, sometime around Feb., after all the strategies had been taught and practiced, we now would apply that knowledge as we read. Students realized they had "favorite" strategies they would use more often, and that sometimes the text lent itself to a certain strategy. I did some reflection and changed my approach. The following years I did a quick teaching of the strategies -what they were and how we use them. Maybe a week on each one. I had charts up in the room about each strategy with the important information and examples of that strategy from my lessons. There also was lots of empty space left on the chart. Then we applied what we knew as we read, adding to our learning and going deeper in a strategy when it was necessary, or the students were ready. This new information was added to the chart as we "discovered" it or it was taught. It wasn't perfect, but it worked. Readers use all the strategies and to focus so long on one seemed to beat it up. Jan On 6/12/09 10:44 PM, "Lisa Szyska" <lszy...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > Hmmm...so perhaps the error in delivery could come from teachers who are not > readers themselves? When I looped 3/4, obviously I moved forward and > deeper...had some seriously gifted readers that year...still needed explicit > instruction when learning to infer theme from complex novels, etc. This was a > natural progression for me, but I know teachers this would not be natural > for...and they are NOT readers...so natural for some, not for others. Just > sayin' > Lisa > 3/IL > >> I am so enjoying all of these >> posts. I wish we could sit and talk about this. >> I am worried that the "natural part" is gone. I am so >> tired of hearing kids say I am picturing or I have a >> connection and half of the time the connections are so >> superficial. I had to explicitly teach my kids to talk >> about the story or the information and not to hyper-focus on >> talking about the strategies. I shouldn't have to undo >> what has been taught. I should be able to move forward >> and deeper. If I am undoing previous teaching, I think >> there is an error in our delivery, not in our >> knowledge. Please don't misunderstand - I believe in >> strategy instruction but not to the extent that I am now >> seeing it being taught. _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list Mosaic@literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
