We adopted this program in our district for grades K - 3 and it is now being piloted in grades 4 and 5. Because I am a support teacher and not a classroom teacher, I can deviate from the program to differentiate and tailor the it more to my students' needs. If I were a classroom teacher I would most likely feel pretty overwhelmed by all of the program’s components. Since it has A LOT of components, I believe that the challenge for many will be to decide which components are "have tos” and which components are at the teacher’s discretion. I too feel that the writing is a bit weak, so I do my own thing with the writing piece. I like the leveled guided readers. I have four levels of guided reading books (from the Wonders Program) which are at different reading levels: approaching, on level, ELL and beyond level. What’s nice about the guided reading books is that they are all on the same topic. For example, we were exploring how animals survive and we read guided reading books on animal babies. Everyone in the class read books with the same titles and topics, but they were differentiated for each guided reading group. This gave them a common experience and the same background knowledge. I don’t like the ELL guided reading books because the publisher added all of this additional print to the pages in an effort to explain some terms to the ELLs, but all that extra print is overwhelming. Also, to state the obvious, explanations in English are not particularly helpful for many ELLs. I prefer to use the non-ELL guided readers for my ELLs and I just scaffold for them. They are more successful with this approach. _______________________________________________ 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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