Hi All! Hurricane Thursday was definitely a surprise! Thank you for regrouping and adjusting to a last minute decision that needed to be made!
I spent the afternoon on Wednesday in an incredible PD about The Science of Reading and the shift our district is making to work smarter and not harder!
Meaning...we are going to follow the science of how our brains learn to read! We made this shift last year in math with the addition of our Clusters and the focus on the following:
This year is definitely crazy and we are having to adjust to so much but it is the perfect time to step back and punt! We can dabble in The Science of Reading and REALLY get a handle on what we want this to look like in our classrooms.
WATCH this video on The Reading Wars!!!!! We are going to heal the wounds!
WATCH this TOO!
I know what you are thinking...SCHROEDER! What does this mean for us? Well it means we are going to make small adjustments to our instruction to get the most bang for our buck!
First, friends we are NOT going to be leveling our readers like we have in the past. (I know, you may need to sit down.).
Levels are for BOOKS NOT Kids!
- We will NOT be doing Running Records to determine a level to group students.
- We will NOT be reporting to parents a LEVEL as a grade.
- We will NOT be having the L group come for guided reading.
Well SCHROEDER, what will we be doing then?
- We WILL be doing running records to drive our instruction. (The letter score is for the teacher!!!!!!)You can use any book or passage!!!!
- We WILL be using decodable readers connected to our Letterland lessons.
- We WILL be presenting grade level material in LARGE GROUP!
- We WILL spend a good amount of our 90 minute reading block focused on Letterland!
Aren't decodables for kiddos learning to read? Ours are reading to learn!
NO! Decodables are fantastic for students at high levels if the teachers connects the text to their Phonics Skills!
- Students will work with connected texts based on our Letterland pacing.
- They will read grade level texts in small groups and focus on the standards.
- Students will interact with the read aloud text during small group-zooming in on certain parts fo the text. Students will work on higher level questioning and written response. (We want them to be secure with grade level material!)
*This is just a SNEAK PEEK at the direction that MGSD is going in READING. Remember it is going to be a work in progress this year.
We are in this boat together!
You were absolutely right, it sounds like we are swinging back to how we used to teach when we first got the Running Records in MGSD - mid 1990's We used the Level and the MSV data from their incorrect answers to create groups and then we did mini phonics lessons in the small group and then group reading lesson using a book that that was a leveled text at the child's "frustration" level. Then we also had a quick spelling lesson using a list of the week and nightly homework that focused on a spelling rule like add s to form plurals, but if the word ends in s,x,sh,ch add es to make it plural... Then we had a whole group reading lesson from the basal which had a great collection of literature in it- really good books like Owl Moon, and Thunder Cake. Here we would map the story,learn new vocab, discuss character traits and character development, main idea and details, sequencing events, problem and solution, literary devices, author's purpose... PLUS we wrote daily! We had one piece we worked on all week and we went through each step of the writing process from brainstorming to published copy. We had an imaginative prompt one week and a realistic the next, and it was very often something tied into science or social studies. Kids had a thinking map, many handwritten corrections and notes, a "sloppy copy," then they had a 1:1 conference w/teacher or TA on Thursday where we walked through and made corrections in grammar and spelling and we pushed them further to add more details, description, etc. based on what they had done the previous week, and then they went back and rewrote a final copy and illustrated it on Friday, while I was correcting their whole group reading tests... This was a lot of work, but SO rewarding especially at a conference to show the progression over 9 weeks of writing to a parent. If districts would value the experienced veterans who have seen the pendulum swing as you said, instead and ask THEM for input into what's working and what's missing as the years go by, instead of always buying into the latest and greatest guru's "new" program, I think we would be a lot better off! The vets pulled us new girls along and taught us what we needed to do basically, and we respected and valued their expertise, and we taught them some fun "games" so the kids were learning, but getting up and having fun instead of just sitting at a desk all day! The content and standards changed and method of delivery may change, but how kids learn to read did not. Glad you are here to guide our younger teachers and I am sure the veterans will be happy to see some of this too! I hope you get great buy in!
ReplyDeleteThank you Susie! I a really excited about the direction we are morning in:)
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