Through observing my CT’s literacy programs and in readings for this course I have come to fully realize just how many different ways there are to approach teaching literacy. Unfortunately, a lot of what I have seen so far is simply plans for how my CT wants to teach literacy. Up until last Friday all reading instruction was done through a MEAP review book with short reading selections and accompanying comprehension questions. This was a little tedious but it did serve two useful purposes. One was obviously to prepare the students for the test, and the second was to give us a very clear idea of each student’s literacy skills. Using this information my CT was able to divide the class into three reading groups based on abilities and make decisions about the skills each student needs to work on.
On Friday we finally began to implement the literacy program she plans to use all year. Literacy block every day is divided into three parts. In their separate literacy groups, students spend part of the block reading as a small group with the teacher and discussing their ideas about these readings. Throughout the year the class will read from basal readers and from novels. Another part of the literacy block is spent in centers. Each day my CT will assign individual students or pairs of students to specific center activities where they can work on phonics, vocabulary, and grammar skills that she feels they need to practice. The last part of literacy block is seatwork. This usually resembles the Lucy Calkins Writer’s Workshop model and the accompanying mini-lesson for each day is given before literacy block begins. The class is divided into three groups and each group rotates through all three parts of the literacy program every day. We have only implemented this for two days now and we are still training the students to manage their behavior while working independently at centers and seatwork without direct teacher supervision.
I can see possibilities for this literacy program to contain elements of the ideas in Book Club Plus!. The small reading group format would allow for community sharing and discussion along with reading. In these small groups, students have the opportunity to talk to each other and the teacher about their thoughts and ideas. Writing into, through, or out of a unit/text could be implemented into the seatwork portion of the literacy block at different times. Even though the class is in different groups, all groups are often reading the same texts. Different writing tasks could be given throughout a unit to accompany the reading. I haven’t seen all of these things in action yet, but I can imagine them happening later in the year.
Reading instruction also occurs through many of my CT’s science and social studies lessons. When reading from textbooks as a class my CT talks to the class about features of informational text and discussions are constantly held to make predictions, draw conclusions, and connect the textbook reading to students’ lives and the greater world. I see many examples in my class through literacy, science, and social studies for talk to be used as a way to surface knowledge, inquire into, and reflect on information in a given text as described in the reading. I hope to see more examples of these ideas as the year goes on and the literacy program develops more.
I find it really interesting that a lot of teachers in the schools push everything aside to study for MEAPs. My teacher has incorporated what the MEAPs might have on them (the multiple choice, the different formats of the stories, and varieties of reading they might have to do).
ReplyDeleteI think the great thing about the book club plus is the fact that you can incorporate it into a number of different curriculums and make it work with all of the different activities. I don't know how I am going to feel when the teacher splits the classroom into leveled groups. A lot of teachers seemed to already do that and they work well, but I would be curious to see how it's implemented in a way after the first few weeks of school.