As a former physical education teacher, when it comes to skills and strategies, I can't help but use a sports analogy. In the game of basketball a player must possess certain isolated skills such as dribbling, passing, shooting, and a solid defensive stance. These skills are fundamental and constantly refined. They in turn need to use these isolated skills to learn. implement and pull them all together to apply game winning strategies of complicated offensive plays and defensive match ups.
In reading, their are many skills one needs such as phonics, decoding, encoding, using context clues, identifying narrative elements, knowing when meaning breaks down, rereading, reading with fluency, using picture clues, etc. and in turn these skills are all needed to implement the strategies of inferencing, synthesizing, creating mental images, asking thick and thin questions, making connections etc. I don't feel my students need as much clarification on whether it is a skill or strategy, as much as I as their teacher, need to monitor and assess my students' skills and what strategies they are ready to learn and/or can apply. Am I making sense? Donna Kleinert _______________________________________________ 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.
