I gave my copy of Reading Zone to my principal.? He's in charge of LA in our building this year but has a History background.? I have enough other LA teachers reading and excited? about the book so that he is curious as to what is going on.? Luckily he is quite willing to look at other methodologies and will read most of what I give him.? I think Atwell is probably the best proponent we have out there right now.
Karen Onyx Carusi Middle School -----Original Message----- From: Sarah Mulhern <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 8:16 pm Subject: [LIT] The value of independent reading Hello everyone! Recently I was observed by our new school principal. Just my like, I was his first observation of the year! However, I felt the lesson went well and wasn't too worried. I met with him last week and was a little unhappy. You see, he was present for our independent reading. I have been following Atwell's reading workshop model for the past two years and just this year really focused on the independent reading portion. I am THRILLED with the results! My students are reading, recommending books to each other, and completely focused on their books. Well, in our meeting the principal told me that "while it is perfectly acceptable for 6th grade students to read independently for 20 minutes each day, they should be doing something then". In other words, he thinks the reading time is an excuse for me to sit around and do nothing. I explained that I conference with the students while they read (and he was there to see me do this!), will eventually pull small literature circles with them, and otherwise meet with my students. He wasn't convinced that this was a valuable use of instructional time. Thank goodness I didn't tell him that on some days I read, too! Modelling is just as important, in my opinion. I left the meeting irritated but not too upset because he won't observe me again until next year. My vp and supervisor will, but that's fine. However, just a few days later we had a district meeting with my supervisor who spent a good portion of the time telling us that middle school students can not and will not read for sustained amount of time. We were told these students are just pretending to read while pulling the wool over their eyes. I didn't want to start an argument by telling her that my students can and do read for up to 45 minutes at a time, independently! While I'm sure they sometimes zone out or focus on their own thoughts, I do conference with them and have not found this to be a widespread problem. Ok, after all that rambling, I guess I am asking if anyone else deals with this. Do your administrators support independent reading time?? sarah __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive ________________________________________________________________________ Email and AIM finally together. You've gotta check out free AOL Mail! - http://mail.aol.com _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
