Okay, I've got bad news for you all. I just got a couple of new books. One looks good for people just beginning to do writers' workshop, but WOW you should see the other! It's Jan Miller Burkins' and Melody M. Croft's Preventing Mis guided Reading: New Strategies for Guided Reading Teachers. Very short, only about 100 pages. From IRA. Just to pique your interest, here are their listings of misunderstandings: Guided Reading is the only time we teach reading. Students need to read challenging texts in order to become better readers. The levels in a text gradient are scientific, discrete, and absolute. The most important thing we teach in K-2 is how print works. Students who have skill in print and skill in story will automatically integrate the two. Running records and benchmarking are primarily for identifying instructional reading level and making grouping decisions. Here are their new understandings: We teach reading all day. If students cannot practice a smoothly operating reading process in a text, the text is too hard. Text leveling, matching readers to texts, and student learnin g along a text gradient are all subjective and unpredictable. Print and story are equally important in grades K-2. The goal of all literacy instruction is to teach students to integrate print and story. Runmning records and benchmarking give teachers valuable insight into students" reading processes.
Looks very easy to read, but is probably more for those who have experience with guided reading. How am I going to keep my hands off it? Bev -- "There is nothing so unequal as equal treatment of unequals." Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes _______________________________________________ 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.
