As you respond to this chapter you can think about the following ideas:
1) "No matter how long students spend engaged in direct reading instruction, without time to apply what they learn in the context of real reading events, students will never build capacity as readers." (pg 51) Reflect on your current practice. What opportunities do you provide for application of skills in read reading events? Please share what you do. As I have mentioned before I am a kindergarten teacher and there is always time in my schedule for practice. Most of the early skills our children learn are practiced by the teacher reading the book and children then using skills to aid in comprehension. Other ways that I help my students practice is by reading a book and reading words incorrectly or having trouble reading words and the students will give me the strategy to use. As the year comes to a close and more and more are reading simple stories they are able to practice the skills on their own. 2) Donalyn suggests that we do not need to allocate an area of the room as a reading corner. Reflect on your current room setup. What do you have in place that supports this statement. I would have to agree with her. I have a small room now compared to the larger more appropriate room I had when I first started. It's hard to get centers and tables to share space. I do have shelves for library books in a certain area but I do not confine students to this small space because they would be on top of each other. Instead I have given them pretty much the freedom of the room to read. 3) Donalyn talks about plotting the time lost each day on interruptions. I often suggest teachers write down everything they do for one week's time. This helps them to see what is eating up their instructional time. Think about your schedule. Where can you gain instructional time? Be creative about your use of time. I am lucky in that I have very few interruptions to my day. But if I were going to recover instructional time it would be during the times we line up to go someplace only to be too early or are dismissed early from a special. I also have a 30 min rest time scheduled to work individually with students if needed but it is flexible and I can use it for anything. 4) Open response to the chapter. Laura readinglady.com _______________________________________________ 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. _______________________________________________ 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.
