[LIT] The BIG question - expert advice needed!

[Melinda Haynes]

What insightful questions!  This shows you are a reflective teacher--KUDDOS to you!  I have the same struggles and questions with 25 years of experience of classroom teaching, including 17 years of facilitating staff development, as well!  

I feel your pain as an informed teacher of best practices involving teaching in a high stake's grade in TX!!!!  

Feel free to email me and we can chat if you have time!  I love to work in collaboration, and we can put our heads together to share how things are going, if you are interested.  

What do you have going on for the first week of school?  

Happy first day!

"Every book, every volume you see here has a soul.  The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived it and dreamed with it.  Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens..."
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
 
Melinda Hawkins
5th Grade LA/SS
McCulloch Intermediate School
Highland Park ISD
(214) 780-2325
haynesm at hpisd.org


>>> "Maggie Dillier" <m.dillier at gmail.com> 7/23/2007 3:09 pm >>>
Alright, friends, here goes: I need help with my entire reading curriculum.
I have asked for help with various details, but when it comes down to it, I
really need an outline to plug those details into. I just finished my first
year of teaching, and I can't bear to let down another group of kids when it
come to reading. (Exaggerating; I think I'm an excellent teacher, but I hate
those areas of weakness!) My school and district are VERY
traditionally-oriented (book reports out the yang), so I feel isolated and
need some help from teachers I actually admire!

Please help. (By the way, I have read all the professional books you are
going to recommend. I can't seem to integrate all their
ideas satisfactorily.) Some of the issues I struggle with are:

   1. *Teaching strategies (making connections, visualizing, etc.) versus
   text structures (setting, character, etc.) versus genre*. Do you teach
   all strategies early in the year and then literary elements later, or do you
   mingle both? (Clarification: I can see the year being arranged like
   this: "fiction, nonfiction, poetry, test prep..." or like this: "making
   connections, questioning, visualizing, inferring...")
   2. *Integrating test preparation for the big reading test*. See
   previous posts. Do I teach a whole unit on test-taking, with test passages
   and the whole deal, or do I teach the type of questions that will be asked
   (compare and contrast, author's purpose, cause and effect) in another
   context (i.e., guided reading)?
   3. *Aligning reading with writing topics*. When I'm teaching
   nonfiction in writing, should I do nonfiction in reading at the same time?
   4. *Guided reading*. WHAT texts do you teach? Do you reinforce
   whatever you taught in a minilesson, or is it a different focus entirely?
   5. *Content-area reading*. Probably some of you don't teach all
   subjects, but I do, and I wonder if I should teach reading the science
   textbook in science or in reading. Is content-area reading a unit you teach?
   Should I do it as part of guided reading instead of whole-class?

Okay, that is it for now. I TOLD you it was the big question. For ease of
responding, I have numbered each issue and you can jot some ideas for that
number only when you reply! I am relying on your expertise, everyone! Thanks
in advance.

~Maggie
5th/TX

-- 
Maggie Dillier

"If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and
don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the
endless immensity of the sea." (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
_______________________________________________
The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org 

To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org.

Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive