Thanks to our Witness book club for bringing the poem for two voices back to us. Lindy and Maria, I loved the way you two captured the essence of the book through your poem for two voices.
Our visit from Dr. Styslinger really helped us to remember who the most important voices in the school (and textbook adoption committees) should be...THE STUDENTS'. The web-site activity reminded me of how easy it is for struggling readers to get lost in text and text structures. I would like to try that activity with students at some point in time.
If you would like to take a look at my copy of The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease, it's available. Do you all remember reading the first chapter of that book at the very beginning of the year? My how we have changed since those first meetings.
Many of you had questions about doing a word sort. If you would like me to help you with one in your classes, just let me know. We will practice one at our next study group session too.
Post your comments about our February 26 study group session and your reading to this thread. (Thanks for visiting us Mary!)
6 comments:
This reading about Reading Workshop came at a timely point in the semester for me. During the past two weeks I have spent much time on Writing Workshop, and I’ve seen the great progress my students have made in their own writing. They are doing, for the most part, what I want them to do and picking up on the details I want them to notice and know. There is a particular student who has hardly written more than four sentences at a time this semester, and he wrote more than half a page! So, I anticipate the same progress with Reading Workshop, and, boy, do I see the need for it. The key is the mini-lesson followed by individual/group “practice” time. Those concepts mentioned in the chapter as suggested mini-lessons—managing reading time, asking for help, completing a reading journal—are just the kinds of trip-ups that frustrate me regarding independent reading. When I give the 10 minute signal, some students stop reading completely; on the other hand, some students continue working on journals well after we have moved on to another part of class. This week, I expected a load of novel completion sheets from my Block 2; I received about 6 from a 25 member class, most of which are completed well below my expectations and directions. So, I deleted that grade from the grade book (for now), bundled those papers in my “work to return” file, and plan to conduct a second mini-lesson on completing the novel completion sheet. I do like Daniels and Zimelman’s suggestion to have students complete a project, so maybe next year I can use that instead. Back to my point, the mini-lesson is a versatile tool for teaching skills and concepts as well as logistics.
Reading Reflection: Reading Workshop
I can definitely see the advantage of Independent Reading Workshop. It is well planned, moves at a fast pace, and keeps the students involved. I would like to see something like this succeed in my classas a whole, but right now it wouldn't. Things in my class have deteriorated over the past month. It's very frustrating, and I can't put my finger on the cause. Maybe it's the new students who have been added??? Maybe they are worried about upcoming court dates??? Or, maybe it's problems at home??? Whatever the problem, I have not been able to do any group activities lately. This group of students has to be separated right now, so all of my instruction is one-on-one. I am planning to implement the mini-lesson while working with them individually.
To end on a positive note, I think behaviors may improve after their long weekend. Hoping so anyway.
The subject of several conversations – students can’t read the textbooks. The textbooks are too hard for many students and especially the less academically talented of the lot, and they won’t and don’t reread and reread until they understand the material. My trouble spots were science and social studies and I can remember taking the first sentence or the topic of the section and making it into a question, reading the material, and then writing my answer and studying that for tests. It worked for me but I could read the material. That may be the difference. I put in the extra effort but then I could read the material. Students today struggle.
A solution? Student choice of reading material on subjects to be studied in the curriculum and the standards. The students listen to topics of the articles, choose an article, read, write what they learned and thoughts and feelings. They then give brief reports to the group in the last fifteen minutes of the exercise. Reading, writing and speaking skills are practiced.
On page194, the statement “begin building up article sets and begin sharing them more widely causes concern. Articles can be copied, used in the class, and stored only briefly for the teachable moment to not break copyright laws. Can’t have a file cabinet of class sets of articles. A way around this… choose articles that are indexed in Discus. Students would have to go online and read the articles and do the exercise.
Another thought: “learning goals they’ve set for themselves” – sounds like what Emma did in Emma’s Journal…one of her four goals. Set a goal to learn something new. Good idea to follow. Keeps us learning and doing.
I have developed a King Arthur unit that sadly I will not be able to flesh out this semester. However, next year I can tackle it with fervor! In the unit, I gave time for lit. groups (or, forgive for the traditional term, book clubs!). I have heard Maria talk about her book clubs, and the success she’s had with them. I would like to give some sort of reading that’s end goal is not a grade, but rather a novel completed!
Book clubs, (lit groups) are also a good way to make those, traditional/modern connections. The NCTE presentation Maria and I were a part of, focused upon the idea of them-based instruction around canonical texts. There are so many great ad. Lit. texts for the King Arthur myth out there! While preparing this unit, I sped through many of them. These novels allow for greater access to the concepts, without getting bogged down by language (a la, Shakespeare)! Hopefully, it will go as planned next year (or, fingers crossed, better)!
Textbooks are not only bias sometimes they are boring and incorrect. I work on textbook adoption for the health curriculum for the State and was amazed at the dog and pony show that went into the sales pitching. Publisher bring in the Big Guns to sell the product. The bells and whistle were on broadway production. You truly had to get away to review the books. Th e idea of having students on teh advisory council of this makes perfect sense. Who better to assist in choosing textbooks than the student who have to read them.
Private reading time has really made my class (strategies for success) appreciate the importance of literature. They have grown in their selection and levels of reading. So it has been a WIN-WIN.
Thanks Mrs. Miller for help with the word sort! This activity worked really well with my French III class. Before reading a chapter from Le Petit Prince, students sorted vocabulary to predict the chapter's events. They correctly arranged the vocabulary based on similarity to English,and prior knowledge of previous chapters. It was a great vocabulary builder.
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