Think about the construct of the Reading Workshop. The units of study are NOT strategy-driven most of the time. Sometimes the units are built around a genre or a literary element. So the minilessons become two-fold: 1) to address the content of that particular unit and 2) the HOW part and that is where the strategies come into play. That is my thinking. I would love to hear from others who use the Reading Workshop framework. Leslie P Literacy Coach NYC In a message dated 6/12/2009 12:47:31 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
Heather, your head is not full of new questions as much as questioning what this is all about. The premise is that we are teaching our students to think about their reading and 'the strategies' with 'some' explicit teaching will show those who have not worked it out themselves, how to 'think' and what things can be 'thought' about. Another point as been made in this conversation about our own reading and what we bring to it, and how it changes from one year to the next. Everytime we read the same book again, we develop a new or different understanding...it doesn't matter how old we are or how good a reader or how many times we have read the book. We are thinking, making the 'connections' that matter now and finding new 'hidden' meaning. Nobody has taught us new 'strategies' but every reading experience, life experience, discussion, movie, television program, brings a new level of experience, knowledge and understanding to what it is we are reading. I have re read books and though, after years and years, why didn't this jump out at me then, it's so obvious? It's the same for kids. We are so busy teaching 'strategies' that we don't tap into what is already there in understanding and then using what the kids are telling us as examples of 'buidling on prior knowledge', 'making inferences', 'connections' etc etc etc. When someone says the kids have insights way above what the teacher expected, it's true, when we allow the kids to go with the book and not 'teach it to destruction' we find out so much more about our kids as readers. I will never forget reading 'Lucy's Bay" to a group of fourth graders and the level of responses that just was far beyond any teaching of strategies could ever have asked for. It was a story every child could relate to in terms of being left being responsible for a sibling and something going wrong...but from that experience and knowledge came a depth of comprehension that surpassed anything I could have imagined. I'll never forget one child saying it's okay that the brother has forgiven himself but will Lucy (the sister who drowned) ever forgive him? I guess those are the sorts of questions being asked by kids about books that they 'become engaged' in that we are seeking. The whole 'connection' and discussion has to become 'natural' and part of the thinking of the kids without thinking, 'wow I am using the inference strategy now and two days ago I used the 'connection strategy'. That's not how we read. We are teaching and guiding deeper level thinking. Don't you think? --- On Fri, 12/6/09, Heather Green <[email protected]> wrote: From: Heather Green <[email protected]> Subject: [MOSAIC] Do we really need to teach explicit strategies? To: [email protected] Received: Friday, 12 June, 2009, 11:31 PM An earlier post really got me thinking about this. Do we REALLY need to teach explicit strategies? The quote someone posted earlier from a book-- something like-- we use these strategies when reading materials high above our reading levels like highly technical reading-- got to me. That these are more study skills... I realized I couldn't agree more. Do you think it would be enough to just get our kids to be voracious readers? (I teach 1st grade). Do you think it would be enough to teach just ONE strategy which would be Readers think while they read. You could MODEL the different ways readers do this-- by using their schema, making predictions, and connecting the text to themselves and other texts, but do we really need to go further than that? Could we ask students to do all these things by just having book club discussions where students, even 1st graders, get to talk about the books they're reading? My head is full of new questions.... _______________________________________________ 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. Need a Holiday? Win a $10,000 Holiday of your choice. Enter now.http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylc=X3oDMTJxN2x2ZmNpBF9zAzIwMjM2MTY2MTMEdG1fZG1lY2gDVGV4dCBMa W5rBHRtX2xuawNVMTEwMzk3NwR0bV9uZXQDWWFob28hBHRtX3BvcwN0YWdsaW5lBHRtX3BwdHkDY XVueg--/SIG=14600t3ni/**http%3A//au.rd.yahoo.com/mail/tagline/creativeholida ys/*http%3A//au.docs.yahoo.com/homepageset/%3Fp1=other%26p2=au%26p3=mailtagl ine _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. 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