Details

The journal not only was a place for ideas but a place to work out the specifics. Teachers have a plan book to use if they want but I used my journal that way. As with anything else plans evolve to some extent as they roll out. Teachers read the success or failure of activities and make adjustments on the fly.

At this point in my career I had not made the shift away from published materials to more teacher facilitated and student choice of reading materials. Things were changing, however, and more authentic learning was creeping in. I planned a five-day cycle for reading. Notice how little student reading is actually happening?

On day one I planned to introduce vocabulary words and have students add them to their vocabulary folders and word banks. Then I would have the students do the Skill Pak and Studybook that went with the vocabulary.

Day two was the time to raise the student awareness of what they already knew (schema) about the story topic, introduce and assign the story. This would be the only real reading time during the week.

On day three I would lead the students to do a story map and questioning activities and a strategy called “deeper meaning.” I don’t remember what the latter was so it was not deep enough or, maybe, too deep for me? The lesson ended with a Skill Pak and Studybook assignment.

Day four included decoding activities (kind of irrelevant after the fact), more Skill Pak and Studybook pages, something called “Int. Rel. Act.” and Creativity pages. I don’t remember what the latter two were?

And, finally, on day five we checked everything and shared activities. Whew! Lots of workbook stuff!

The five-day cycle started all over again the next week. Frankly, I was bored with it and so were the students but I just didn’t know what else to do.

I tried to weave in sustained silent reading (SSR), teacher pupil conferences about books they were reading, and sustained silent writing (SSW). These were probably the most important things I could be doing and they were getting the least attention and often didn’t happen at all because there just wasn’t time.

The SIWP (Southeast Iowa Writing Project) had prompted a dissonance in me. A nagging feeling that things were not nearly as good as they could be. I began looking at everything with a critical eye and wondered why? Doing things in a way I had always done them or the way some publisher who has never met my kids didn’t seem legitimate.