Sorry, I somehow sent my message below before I was finished. But Judy's post also spoke about how coaches tend to spend more with new teachers and not with the more experienced teachers. I can see how that can occur but I haven't experienced that in my own school as we have a reading teacher that juggles her time consulting and working with students beautifully and skillfully. I have also worked with a young teacher for the the past 2 years and this year she is now coming into own teacher style and she is teaching now with incredible depth and understanding. It is a pleasure to share, discuss and revise our literacy lessons. She really zoomed in on understanding the basics of reading instruction and now she is able to think about how to best improve her teaching.
So hopefully Judy, you can share and discuss your thinking with other teachers at your school or maybe in a study group. And that the 2 new teachers grow into colleagues that you can eventually share your deeper understanding with. And, thankfully, there is this great group that supports us! Mary 2nd grade teacher On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 1:15 PM, mary mullin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Judy, > In reading your post I agree with you that your new teachers probably need > to build a foundation of teaching reading before delving into the "really > tough stuff". I think of my time training as a Reading Recovery teacher, > when giving feedback after a running record I wanted to "fix" everything at > once and my teacher leader stressing that it was important to pick 1 or 2 > teaching points that would move the reader forward. I think that's true > with new teachers they need to concentrate on 1 or 2 areas in literacy to > get before moving on. But I would still model to my RR students other > reading behaviors that they would eventually use. I see our role as > experienced teachers as being modelers and sharers of successful lessons > that taught more deeply the comprehension strategies. > > We have 2 brand new teachers (of 4) at my grade level. I've put in a lot >> of time helping them and I believe they're just not ready for deep thinking >> as they don't know anything about teaching reading. Perhaps Ellin will say >> that ALL teachers can start off with comprehension strategies on day #1, but >> it seems to me these darling new teachers need some foundation in the more >> tangible aspects (like decoding, fluency, and surface/literal >> comprehension). It seems to me that they just don't have enough >> understanding of the reading process to be ready for the really tough stuff. >> I hope you'll say I'm wrong and that they can do it all, but I wonder.... >> >> Judy >> >> >> >> >> > > _______________________________________________ Understand mailing list [email protected] http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/listinfo/understand_literacyworkshop.org
