Kristin Humphries November Blog Post 4: Teaching With A Sense of Urgency

          As I began to read Teaching with a Sense of Urgency, I stopped to think about what this title means to me as a teacher. Do I teach with a sense of urgency? Am I doing everything that I can do to reach each of my students and do I challenge them each day? As I continued to read, I came across these words by Routman, “We need to support students in becoming more self-sustaining, thoughtful, independent readers and writers.” I know that it is very difficult to give complete independence over to our students. We want to guide them the entire way. I have seen that my students benefit from my directions and expectations when working on projects. They soar as they complete projects that required them to independently read, research, and then take that information to create their project. I know that there are still more ways that I can help them to be more independent with reading and writing.

Routman also provides a top five things to do to ensure excellent readers list. She explains that it is important to demonstrate reading by initiating, modeling, explaining, and thinking aloud. It is important to provide an excellent classroom library. Students should have choice in what they read and should have time to read the material. They should be taught strategies they need to process and understand text. Students should be evaluated so that they are provided feedback that they can use to help set goals. These are excellent points that will be very beneficial to me as I continue to grow as a reading teacher.