Jennifer, I can almost see you buying those copies of ToUnderstand--and I'm smiling. And, of course, I love the "famous" part. I strive. That pretty much sums me up. I'm always surprised that my colleagues think of me as an intellectual, because I just think of myself as someone who wants to know AND wants to get better.
I'd like to share a story from my classroom. You'll immediately see that it's not a direct stategy lesson. I hope you see how connected to past strategy instruction it is. My whole group strategy instruction is in Shared Reading, which I do every day. I only have Reader's Workshop once a week (because I do Guided Reading in that spot the rest of the week). For the last 3 weeks, in RW, we have discussed conflict in literature. With read alouds and discussion my kids learned about (1 per week): character vs. character, character vs. nature, and character vs. self. You'd be amazed how well my third graders grasped this concept. So, this week, I taught character vs. self then sent the kiddos off to do their independent reading. When I brought them back for Sharing, I shared the book I am reading (People of the Book) and explained the character vs. self struggle. Now comes the power of strategy instruction (thanks for hanging in this far): Eight-year-old Upasana shared: "This is my book. It's not fiction, it's a biography, but it has character vs. self. It's called (something--the life of Michelle Kwan) and Michelle wants two things. She wants to ice skate and she wants to swim. BUT she's afraid of water. Here...let me read this to you." At this point Upasana found the stickie she'd used to mark the page and read to us about Michelle Kwan's fear of water (the kids loved it because she said she even imagined sharks in a swimming pool). Then Upasana explained why that was really character vs. self (overcoming her own imagined fear). This is not a typical share in my class, but it is a tribute to Ellin Keene. I hope you like it as much as I do. I think it's very very powerful and it wouldn't have happened without trusting kids to think, TO UNDERSTAND. Judy _______________________________________________ Understand mailing list [email protected] http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/listinfo/understand_literacyworkshop.org
