Renee I am interested! Your experience will aid our endeavours
Cathy On 2012-02-27, at 7:26 AM, Renee wrote: > Hi Elizabeth and all.... > > Like you, it took me years to tweak my independent reading and writing > program (that's what I called it, as I began this before readers' workshop > was the in thing). Every year I changed how I did things, how I did > conferencing, what was on the students' checksheets, how I addressed > spelling, what kind of interactive writing I did, etc. So when people ask for > information and/or ideas on structuring and/or managing a readers' workshop, > I am generally stuck on how to respond. My advice to people starting it is to > just start it. That's what I did. Take one thing and implement it, then when > that's running, start another one. I've been thinking of sending a series of > posts the describe one thing at a time, but don't know if people are > interested. > > But the bottom line is that it is all an ongoing, learning process, and that > there is no one way to run a workshop. > > Renee > > On Feb 26, 2012, at 9:56 AM, Elizabeth Sledge wrote: > >> Renee...amen...couldn't have said it better! I recently retired from >> teaching elementary reading (30yrs.) and was fortunate to have a principal >> who allowed me teach "outside the box". After reading mosaic of thought I >> was truly inspired to create my own innovative and comprehensive approach >> for teaching my students how to comprehend deeply using each of the key >> strategies addressed in Keene and Zimmerman's book. It took me years to >> develop a "roadmap" of how this powerful instruction would look like in a >> classroom, but I did it! I call my sytem circles of learning. Circles of >> learning not only supports and encourages students to develop each of the >> strategic behaviors and make them part of their learning schema, but also >> provides a way for students to engage in critical thinking and reflection >> through authentic reading, rich accountable talk, text coding and >> journaling. I created strategic thinking journals which are a students hands >> on tool where they >> use writing as a means of gaining deeper analysis of text. Keeping this >> journal helps the reader notice and harvest observations and responses as >> they read by providing diverse tasks to teach, guide, reinforce and apply >> strategy use. Log term explicit strategy instruction framed around the >> gradual release model is an integral part of the instructional routine. No >> basals, text books, workbooks, ect...just authentic literature and jounals. >> My students loved getting into what I called literature learning circles to >> engage in meaningful talk about what they had read in a book using their >> journals to guide discussions. Would love to share...many teachers observed >> my classroom and are now implementing circles of learning using my >> differientiated journals. Would love to share! > > > "Democracy doesn't come from the top. It comes from the bottom. Democracy is > not what governments do. It's what people do." > ~Howard Zinn > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 > _______________________________________________ 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
