This is a really interesting thread to follow. I teach second grade and one of the things that I often think about is how to blend all the parts. For example, most of my students have fewer than 3-4 books of their own at home (if that). These are children whose parents are (mostly) NOT reading to them at home, not sharing favorite children's books (in any language), not taking them to story time at the library, etc.
So for me, I want to recreate the love of reading that my own children experienced when they were 2 and 3 and 4 and listening to books being read frequently throughout the day and at bedtime. Books that were often read over and over and over! And yet I also need to use texts during reading workshop to share how readers think while they read, and during writer's workshop to model how authors put their words and thoughts together. When I have (infrequently) tried to read a portion of a new book to my students while intentionally trying to use it as a mentor text, I find that my students have a very difficult time making the connections I want them to make UNTIL they really know the book. They want to know what happens, they want to know how it ends, they sometimes need to hear the vocabulary several times in order to understand what is happening in the story, etc. So what I have tried to do is fit in reading to the children at odd times of the day (while they're eating their snack, first thing in the morning, if we need a quiet time to relax, etc. And for that first reading, I might do some brief "teacher-talk" (this is the author, I'm looking at the front cover and thinking about xxx, or the title makes me think that xxx, etc.) but I know the children's focus is on the story so that's what I do- I read them the story the same way I would have read the book to my kids when they were little. And then, later, I can pick up that book and use it for all sorts of things (so far this week I've used one book for 3 different mini-lessons on reading strategies) and the children are much better able to delve into the book and all the learning that I want them to do with that text. I think maybe with older kids I could get away with using bits and pieces of texts, but for my kids I do have a very strong feeling that in order to help them become lifelong readers I need to get them to love reading and part of that is sharing great books (the whole book) with them over and over. Robin _______________________________________________ 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.
