balanced literacy

  In many classrooms, there are never enough materials to do our job.  So we teachers go to the library -school and public, we borrow from other teachers or our home and we especially create materials.  Unfortunately, teacher created materials take a lot of time.  To lead a balanced life, teachers must work to become more and more efficient without lowering the quality of our instruction.

As a huge fan of the fantasy genre, including the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, I take these words very seriously, but I may have a new favorite book series...Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Over Spring Break, I started and finished both The Lightning Thief, Book One and The Sea of Monsters, Book Two.

This series is for middle schoolers, but is appropriate for most students that can read at a six grade reading level.  The protagonists, include a male and a female, both of whom are strong characters. Oh, and one of their parents is a Greek god.

Today was the last in a series of trainings I attended with a cohort on Balanced Literacy and NUA (National Urban Alliance).  Our balanced literacy component focus for the day was guided reading.  Our thinking map of the day was a flow map.  To combine the two we discussed guided reading as three or four parts: planning, before reading/priming, during reading/processing and after reading/retaining.

After Reading

After my 'aha' moment with Comprehension Connections I bought the book all excited to put it to use. I'm an ELL support teacher with over 70 students so I don't provide the daily read alouds and mini-lessons for most of my students. More often than not I have 15-30 minutes with students to do guided reading and/or fluency work. While I haven't been able to try as much as I'd like so far, I have liked how simple the lesson ideas have been for me and students.

What are some good mentor texts to use in Writer's Workshop?  As a new teacher, finding books that pair well with certain comprehension strategies and writer's craft is a continuing challenge.  Thank you librarian.  Thank you internet.

Let's share our ideas! And successes!

Dialogue:

Frog and Toad

Owl at Home

Poppleton

Because of Winn-Dixie

Today I had one of those 'aha' moments, not in my classroom but at a training focused on blending National Urban Alliance (NUA) strategies, like thinking maps, and balanced literacy.  A coach involved in the training demoed a series of lessons on priming students for comprehension strategies with text.  She prefaced the demo by sharing that when she taught Stephanie Harvey's Comprehension Toolkit lessons, her students never had the comments that Stephanie's students did or went away with the same level of understanding.  In retrospect, she realized that when introducing students to a comprehension strategy with the Comprehension Toolkit, she was requiring students to learn a new strategy, a new text, a new subject and a challenging