Rhiannon Wyatt December Blog Routman Ch. 4 "Teach with a Sense of Urgency"

Every chapter that I have read so far by Routman makes me excited about teaching and ready to try new reading strategies in my classroom as soon as I get back to my classroom the next day.  The chapter titled, “Teach with a Sense of Urgency” was no different.  Teaching with urgency just clearly means to teach relevant content in meaningful ways being aware of the students that I teach and their needs.  Routman stated in this chapter that it is important to ask yourself ‘why’ am I teaching this and ‘why’ am I teaching it in this way.  When I read that statement I was brought back to the process that I underwent for attaining National Board Certification.  Through that process I had to tell the reasoning behind my teaching methods. As teachers we should always reflect on the importance of what we are teaching as well as the methods of that instruction.

There were several points that Routman made throughout the chapter that I especially liked.  I felt that the list of the Top Five Things I Do to Ensure Students Become Excellent Readers was eye opening. I feel that I do well with demonstrating that I am a reader as well as teaching strategies students need to know to process and understand text.  Another topic that made the list was providing an excellent classroom library. I have a good number of my books for my classroom library but I am working on acquiring more books of a variety of genres as well as the refining thee organization of my library.  Another point that Routman made that I enjoyed reading was integrating reading and writing into the curriculum rather than teaching content in isolation. This has become a challenging task for me to instill in my classroom however it is one that I would like to master.  Routman states that “breaking learning into bits and pieces can actually make things more difficult for students”. I see this in my students who can capitalize proper nouns on a language test but cannot apply that to their writing.  I enjoy teaching units of study and feel that integrating the subjects will benefit all of my students and help them progress in their reading and writing skills.