Chapter 5 To Savor the Struggle
My own personal struggle seems to have been the end of the school year. As I just learned in Chapter 6, I am a Renaissance teacher (I thought I was just random). Being interested in so many things took its toll and for the past week I have been catching up on must needed rest. I finally had the chance to finish chapter 5 (and 6). This week I was asked to present at our district's Readers Workshop training. The topic was "Work time during RW". Thanks to Ellin, I felt more confident showing slides of "what it looks like in 2nd grade " and "how it evolves throughout the year". I didn't bring skills, prescribed lessons or ideas for centers. This year we read during Readers Workshop work time. Though I am comfortable laying down this foundation, I know I want to take the kids to the next level, to talk about books, to savor the struggle, to pause, think and wonder. I was starting to get excited that chapter 5 was leading us to "What's Essential", until I realized she added on 2 more systems that I was not as familiar with. I am a trained Reading Recovery teacher and 4 cuing systems were very familiar to me. Newest was the lexical system. I started my career as an English as a Second language teacher and way back when they talked about surface structure and deep structure systems. Coming full circle made more sense this time around. I've known for awhile that a good ESL teacher is a good literacy teacher. We don't need to just focus on the 2nd language learners from other countries. Most of the students I work with have a language different than "school/book language". They come with street lingo, community dialects and homes filled with electronic devices that diminish conversation. It is a 2nd language we are teaching them in schools these days. I want to do more talking about books/thoughts with kids. I told the audience that we don't write or answer worksheets about reading. We read and talk. One of next year's goals is to have the students discuss or record their thinking about the book (p. 124). Teaching just 6 systems may seem so easy but it encompasses so much. One of our best lessons this year was based on making mistakes. I tried a procedural lesson on making marbled paper. I had the materials, directions, I was set to go. What a mess it turned into! Shaving cream all over the place, kids in cream up to their elbows, wet paper-a total disaster. That night I thought about it and saw this was a perfect opportunity to show what happens when you make mistakes with procedures. We created a list of problems in comparison to the directions. Those kids knew exactly where we messed up. We took our new insight into redoing the procedure and this time it turned out. I always say I am a good teacher because I have had 20 years of making mistakes (and learning from them). Now I see that teachers need to hold back and let mistakes happen for it is from these errors that true learning opportunities lie. I loved Chapter 6. When can we begin? (Embedded image moved to file: pic22317.gif)
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