Monday Musings - January 5, 2015

After a hiatus, I'm back to reading Read, Write, Lead by Regie Routman; a book packed full of great wisdom on teaching reading/writing in authentic ways.  Often times as I'm reading, it just affirms the great work we are already doing and serves as a great reminder of why we do what we do in literacy and that we are on the right path to prepare our students to be readers/writers.

In the chapter on Reducing the Need for Intervention, Routman identifies 6 daily practices that deter failure:

• Make the work more authentic.
• Provide more student choice.
• Make learning intentions clear.
• Celebrate students' strengths.
• Have students do more silent reading.
• Confer with students daily. (struggling readers)

When you reflect on the current reading/writing practices in your classroom, do you have all of these in place?  Which of these are strongly in place and which of them could be improved upon?

As I read this section I reflected on our literacy practices school-wide, based on what I see in classroom walkthroughs and identify our school wide strengths as: providing student choice, more silent reading and conferring with students.  As I reflect on the other practices, it emphasized the need for more daily conferences 1:1 with our struggling readers/writers. As I read about the importance of making writing work more authentic (not just teaching a grammar skill or giving a writing prompt, but providing authentic reasons to write) I recognize how those that are piloting Lucy Calkins Units of Writing are providing their students with this.

I'd love to share more of my learning from this book with you, but want to know what you'd like to know more about. Please take 30 seconds to share with me in the survey below of what's already in place and what could use strengthening in your classroom:
*I'm not sure if this will work in your email, so you'll likely have to go to johnsonmemo.blogspot.com to complete the 2 survey questions.