ginger/rob
Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:48:32 -0700
I have been almost obsessing about the idea of strategy studies vs. a cluster/integrated approach. I know Jennifer (from Maryland) discussed this with us a lot on the Mosaic side, but reading STW2 has me thinking about it again. This sort of piggybacks onto Jennifer and Bonita's conversation today about the order of the teaching .
I guess when I think back to my own beginning into this teaching I remember how I had NO CLUE what I was doing. I was the lone ranger in my building giving it a try. I knew they way I was teaching reading did not feel good/right any longer. I came from a special ed classroom into a job share situation so I relied on my partner to guide me in my first gen. ed. experience. I pretty quickly knew that the two hour tracking commitment I had made with the other 4 third grade teachers was not cutting it for me or my 28 LOW students (Being the new kid on the block- and ex-special ed.- I took that group.) I can't remember how MOT fell into my hands but once I read it I was forever changed. So, not having a CLUE, I just followed the book chapter by chapter and then when STW came out I followed that chapter by chapter- which meant strategy by strategy. When Debbie Miller wrote Reading With Meaning it pushed me even further into deeper strategy studies. And here is why. I seemed to be teaching at schools (over all those years) where the students were not learning the thinking strategies. So every year, third grade would start and I would have to start from ground zero and shape them into thinkers. I loved it. I got to see them transform right before my eyes. And to this day I would not have done it any other way. I think my students needed and benefited from the longer, more focused, intense strategy studies. Just as I was helping my students become thinkers, I was becoming a thinker myself. I was changing as a teacher. Totally. In all ways. I don't believe I would have evolved into who I am now (and I am surely not done yet either!!) had I not concentrated so deeply on each strategy. The growth I experienced in myself was just as powerful as the growth I witnessed in my students. Each year that I more fully understood the teaching, I was able to bring my students to a much deeper level. I understood where I wanted to get them myself and thus we got to a higher place as readers/thinkers. I started co-teaching 2 graduate courses using MOT and STW as our texts. I was so psyched about strategy instruction that I just HAD to spread the good word. It took me several years to accept the reality of the change process. Because the teaching felt so right for me and my kids, I just wanted that for all the teachers and kids. In all the grades. I thought that if I could share my own journey and the foundational pieces in the books, that all the teachers in our classes would just embrace the teaching as I did. Well, as you all know, teachers are not so quick to embrace change. And what we were offering them was never forced on them so........ some took it on and some didn't. When I had the opportunity to coach the teachers who had taken our courses (they volunteered to work with me), I realized it is not that easy to sit in a graduate class and then go and "do it". (If you are not someone who just dives in and has the confidence/willingness to have a go at something new and more abstract.) Supporting those teachers through lots of talk and lots of modeling as they worked through the strategies in a more linear order, showed me that teachers needed a lot of time to test the waters and make the needed shifts in their instruction. This teaching didn't come easy or naturally to many of them. Why that is I can't say. Sometimes I think it's because it is not like when we went to school. (I know there's been talk about this on the Mosaic side.) When I read in STW2 on page 34 "The short answer is that we introduce the strategies one at a time but quickly move on to introduce additional strategies so that kids build a repertoire of strategies and use them flexibly to understand what they read." I got nervous. Not only because I am worried that a teacher just picking up STW2 for the first time (not having read MOT and STW and RWM) will grab on to that model without truly understanding what I believe Anne and Stephanie meant. And because I worry for the kids in buildings where this is not a building focus and will the teaching go deep enough to capture them the way my focused studies did? Actually I would love to know what Anne and Stephanie mean in more detail. Knowing what I know now as a teacher (because of all my years of refining my craft), I could probably go "faster" sooner, but not me the beginning strategy teacher. I just don't believe it would be as effective. Looking through the eyes of a staff developer, I worry how teachers new to this teaching will interpret this part of the book. Gosh I am so longwinded here! Sorry! I think for me, I had to stick with one strategy until I (ME! the teacher!!) understood what I was doing first and foremost. And then of course, until my students got it. I guess it is probably a fine line. Was I too focused on the actions of the strategy at first. Probably so. But in doing so I got clearer over time about the true purpose of the strategies and I do know I was able to make that transition to the purpose being understanding the text piece rather than how to DO the strategy. It's almost like I have forgotten who I was before MOT and STW. I did not have peers moving into this teaching. I had no one to talk to and process what was going on. (Until I started the Mosaic list and found you guys!!!) But the me back then would not have had the awareness to dabble in a strategy study and then move on the way I worry teachers will read this part now. I also think children who have had previous teachers who teach thinking will certainly not need isolated strategy instruction like children who have not had previous strategy instruction. My future teaching partner and I were just discussing this today. I had two years at one school where my students came with strong previous strategy instruction and it made big difference in my organization. But back then I was still not who I am now in my own understanding of the teaching and even then I studied some of the strategies in isolation- particularly inferring and determining importance. Simply because my kids were not showing me proficient application of those strategies. I'll be emailing about how does a teacher respond in planning and instruction given a group of kids who tend to demonstrate higher integration of the strategies. I'm sort of hoping that is what I will have when I move to the school I will be working at in the fall. It feels good to get this off my chest. It's been on my mind all day. Ginger grade 3 _______________________________________________ Stw2chat mailing list Stw2chat@literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/stw2chat_literacyworkshop.org. Search the STW2 Chat Archives at http://snipurl.com/stw2archives.