[LIT] The BIG question - expert advice needed!

[Ty Dartez]

Hi Maggie,

Good to see you online:)

Well, that is a big question....but I would guess that you pretty much 
have the strategy teaching down....you use Strategies that work for 
that, right? And one question that you asked is easy to answer. Yes, at 
least for me, I find it easier to teach a reading unit using mentor 
texts on say creative nonfiction and then do a writing unit....and one 
of the things that troubled me last year with my first year of doing a 
real writing workshop (though I had taught writing integrated into high 
school English before) was how to balance student choice and writing to 
enhance their lives with genre writing.

This is what I have come up with: I am planning on using the Daily Five 
for a structure for Independent Reading and am going to use The 
Teacher's Guide to Big Blocks: Grades 4-8 for a framework for times and 
such while balancing science, social studies, and literacy. (I am going 
to be the reading inclusion teacher for a new middle school in my 
district, grades 6-8, so I am sure teachers will be relying on me for 
recommendations on how much time to spend on each thing, etc. And yes, 
it is recommended in this book that guided reading takes place 70% of 
the time during content time....remember, though, that a book is only 
suitable for guided reading when students can read it with 95% accuracy 
or more....therefore, if you are using content time to do guided 
reading, you need to use trade books, picture books, etc. to teach the 
content....student inquiry is a great way to organize this (or content 
lit circles). When the textbook is too difficult for students, it is 
best to read it aloud while students follow along (using whole-class 
reciprocal teaching) or students can listen to recorded tapes, if 
available, but this is not guided reading.

As far as integrating test-prep into guided reading, sorry to recommend 
books, but I am just telling you what I do....(and this comes from a 
teacher who has read literally hundreds of professional books due to 
similar questions to yours) I use Beverly Tyner's Small Group Reading 
Instruction: Grades 3-8. It is published by the International Reading 
Association and has a great lesson plan framework for several different 
stages of reading, much of which focuses on the test-strategies that 
you mentioned: analyzing character, compare/contrast, fluency, 
etc....word study cards for the stages of development do not accompany 
the book but are available for free on the IRA website for print-out.

As far as a yearly schedule, I think I have a curriculum map for 
reading strategies somewhere on my computer....it has a suggested 
framework I think based on Juli Kendall's work, with teaching 
monitoring comprehension and fluency in August and September, Making 
Connections in October, Questioning in November, etc....and of course 
the already-taught strategies get reinforced throughout the year. There 
is also a chart you can get somewhere (I should have one saved 
somewhere) that correlates Mosaic strategies with the Six traits, or 
someone else on this list might have one readily available?

If you google "Middleweb listserve" you can find Juli Kendall's 
curriculum units for the year.

The Daily 5 structure has a section of the Daily 5 for personal writing 
and a writing workshop completely separate in the afternoon in which 
genres are taught....I loved this idea. Living Books can be used during 
the Daily 5 writing time.

Feel free to email me offline for more information about the Daily 5 or 
anything else. Good luck this year, Maggie! I'm sure other teachers 
will also have some great ideas, and I hope at least some of this might 
be helpful to you....I know being a new teacher can be 
overwhelming....remember to be patient with yourself. None of us is 
born knowing everything that would be helpful to know when teaching, 
unfortunately.

May Dartez/6-8 Title L.A./GA

maydartez at charter.net