Melissa, I always devoted the first 3 weeks of school to a study of metacognition and saturating my class in strategy talk. I basically wanted them to realize that this class was different from other classes/teachers they might have had and that the important thing in here was their thinking. We talked about justifying our thoughts, having evidence, and the different types of thinking (connections, questions, inferences, etc.). There are some great lessons on the tools page about helping kids listen to their metacognitive voice, their "little me" that sits on their shoulder while they read and makes comments. I spent a brief week discussing each of the comp. strategies, then after the 3 weeks was up and I'd "set the stage" so to speak, I backed up and we worked on connections and schema for 4-6 weeks. I spent about that much time on each of the strategies, so I really just got another unit on questioning done before Christmas break.
The order that you teach the strategies doesn't really matter, and as you teach them over the next year or two you'll see how truly connected they are. Eventually I'd spend my "connections/schema" unit really focusing on conn. and schema, but I'd be mentioning questioning, inferring, visualizing, etc. all along. They fit perfectly across the content areas too, particularly math. A great book for integrating the comprehension strategies in math is "Comprehending Math" by Arthur Hyde: http://www.amazon.com/Comprehending-Math-Adapting-Strategies-Mathematics/dp/032500949X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-5646745-8815947?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190937351&sr=8-1 Anyway, hope this helps! Heather Wall/ Instructional Coach/ Georgia NBCT 2005 Literacy: Reading - Language Arts ----- Original Message ---- From: "Zey, Melissa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, September 24, 2007 5:39:40 PM Subject: [MOSAIC] (no subject) Here is a crazy question for everyone. What order do you teach all of this in? By all of this I mean the following... I teach comp. strat. using the Strategies That Work book. I also do Fountas and Pinnell's first 20 days to set up my independent reading. However, then the more I read Tanny's book and now this listserv I'm seeing all of these lessons on teaching kids to think. For example, the salad lesson or the apple analogy that someone emailed out. I love them, but when do I teach those lessons? It's always hard to figure out what to do when so that everything can build and connect properly in the children's minds. I'm in the middle of connections now, plus teaching how to "buzz" effectively from F&P, and I'd love to do the salad lesson, which I'm just going to just jump in and teach. For future reference I'm wondering how to do this. Any ideas? _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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.
