Before I begin this post, let me make sure that I define my terms. Departmentalization means, to me, that the students have different teachers for each subject area and no one teacher has the child for the majority of the time. If that is the definition for departmentalization, I am pretty much against it for little people. I will say though that regrouping students for a small part of the day...NOT by ability, but by what kind of strategy instruction they need works very well for us. We regroup for PART of our reading time and do not regroup any other time of the day. I sit down with teams and we look at student formative assessments... running records, anecdotal records, writing samples etc and decide what kind of instruction children need. So, in first grade right now, across our five classrooms, we have an inferring group, a phonemic awareness group, a decoding strategy group...etc etc. For that small part of the day, kids move to another teacher's room for that kind of strategy instruction. During this time, I do intervention by plugging into a group with kids who struggle and coteach. We bring the class size down and target specific needs on a temporary basis. The groups change regularly and the kids in a decoding group are still getting balanced instruction, but they are getting this additional time developing the area that may be holding them back. This has done several things: 1. Moved the teacher's views from "my kids" to "our kids". It helps build that collegial teacher community that we all long for. I have more colleagues talk to me about kids and teaching now than before we regrouped for this time. 2. Intervention is part of classroom instruction...and kids are not in a separate program that the teachers know nothing about. We all work on the same things and the intervention kids get stronger, faster. 3. When you group by strategy need and not strictly by reading level, and when you keep the groups flexible, you avoid tracking kids and the problems that come with that. 4. As a reading specialist, I am in a non-threatening position where I can share ideas and build the knowledge base of the teachers I work with. I am not only teaching students, I am coaching teachers and helping them to understand how to teach balanced literacy. Because I do intervention sometimes in a comprehension group and sometimes in a decoding group...I can build teacher skills (and my own!) in lots of ways. This is more work for teachers...not less work... because when you do it right, you are talking about kids, sharing ideas and working together to differentiate. Having said all this...I am going to ask if we can move back, from here, to the focus of our list...comprehension strategies. Has anyone read Debbie Miller's Teaching with Intention? I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on that gem! :-) Jennifer In a message dated 2/12/2009 10:55:09 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [email protected] writes:
I've been reading/skimming many of the posts this morning. I feel strongly about doing what is best for kids and consider myself a whole langauge teacher. However, I also realize that what works for one does not always work for all, departmentalization included. Last year we did it successfully in second grade. We were actually able to group our children better heterogeneously and meet their needs accordingly. Students were in three groups and moved in the same groups. One teacher taught math, one word skills and two teachers took a group and did teacher directed and small fexible group instruction. Our students loved it and we found that their skills increased. I can see how this would not work for all groups. Like others have said, you would need to look at your children, your teachers and your plan- Good Luck:) **************The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards. AOL Music takes you there. (http://music.aol.com/grammys?ncid=emlcntusmusi00000004) _______________________________________________ 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.
