I
love the way Routman put it “teach with a sense of urgency…making every moment
in the classroom count, ensuring that our instruction engages students and
moves them ahead”. This brings the habit begin with the end in mind to my
thoughts. As educators, we need to constantly be thinking about what is next in
order to get our students where they need to be. We all are aware that our time
is limited and that we need more time in a day but instead of harping on that, we
need to “teach with a sense of urgency”.
In
this chapter Routman reminds me that we need to hold our students accountable and
keep our expectations high. We need to allow ample opportunities for our
students to think on high levels, problem solve, and become “self-sustaining, thoughtful,
independent readers and writers”. This has made me think about what little I require
of my students. I am stilling “doing” a lot for them and I guess you could say
that I am spoon feeding them in a sense. My logic has been “well, they are only
second graders”…but I completely agree with Routman that I would be truly
amazed at how much my students can actually do and it is things that I am
already doing for them. This goes back to previous chapters of letting go of
all of the control and acting as a facilitator as opposed to standing in front
of the room and lecturing.
In
this chapter Routman provides us with 5 simple tasks that educators should be
doing to ensure that our students become excellent readers. The first thing we
should do is demonstrate that we (teachers) are readers. It is essential for
our students to know that we have a love for reading as well. I will be honest
this is something that I need to do more with my students. I need to make time
to show my students that I do have a passion to read even outside of school.
She
also said we need to provide an excellent classroom library for our students.
Students need to have access to great book, different genres, and the level
they need to be reading on at their fingertips. Searching for the just right
book needs to be made easy for the students. I feel as if I have an awesome
classroom library, filled with lots of books from different genres and levels.
However, until last week it was unorganized. There was absolutely no
organization to it at all. Now I have the book baskets labeled by topics and
the books are color coded to match the book baskets. This isn’t exactly where I
want my classroom library to be but I understand that some things take time and
that you have to start somewhere.
Routman’s
next suggestion is that we let our students choose books they want to read and
that we give them time to actually read them. I have implemented this in my
classroom this year on a completely different level than I did last year. My
students are given a consistent amount of time to read at the same time every
day and the sky is the limit on the choices that they have to choose from.
The
next thing that we need to be doing is teaching strategies. It is so important
that our students know how to process and understand the text. I love how
Routman said that if we as educators don’t know how to teach a specific
strategy it is our job to reach out and find out how to. The only way for our
student to succeed and be excellent readers and writers is to teach them
different strategies. It may take putting our pride to the side and reaching
out for help, we just have to be willing to do that. I understood that when I
became a teacher that I would become a life-long learner as well and I’m not
too proud to say that don’t know everything. In fact I still have a lot of
learning to do.
The last step is to evaluate our students on a
regular basis and to give them feedback in a timely fashion. We need to be
helping our students set goals and reaching them as well. We need to allow time
for our students to reflect on what they have learned and time to share that
with others. In doing all of these things I am truly convinced that our
students will become successful readers and writers. I understand that this
list isn’t set in stone or the only things that teachers should be doing but it
is a great guideline to follow and definitely a good starting point.
Another good point that Routman makes is that
when teachers increase the amount of independent reading time and decrease the
amount of guided reading time the teacher will begin to base instruction around
what the students need as opposed to just teaching the components of a structured
program. I think that every educator can agree that we only want to do what is
best for the student so even if it requires us to step out of our comfort zone…isn’t
that worth doing for the children?
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