Literacy II: Week Four

Cooper and Routman 8 (both chapters are required reading):

How are these two readings similar to each other and how are they different? You might explore this question in a global sense or you might consider a few specific points of comparison. Additionally, what aspects of the Optimal Learning Model are evident in the readings? Why are think alouds so important in comprehension strategy instruction? Have you seen this type of instruction in your placement? What is similar or dissimilar?

Similarities:

•  Both focus on teaching strategies for comprehension 
• Both state that teaching these comprehension should be taught with multiple strategies, not just one (Proficient readers use many strategies)
• Teaching comprehension should be carefully mapped out and explicitly modeled 

I felt that even though the readings were quite similar, I resonated more with the Routman reading.  Perhaps it's her conversational writing style, but I just found a lot of this chapter so intriguing to me--Highlights all over the place!   Some of the areas I found most thought-provoking were the following:

Demonstrate That Proficient Readers Use Many Strategies
I thought that Routman's stance on comprehension was revolutionary:  "Strategies wrongly become synonymous with comprehension, when, at best, they are a tool for facilitating and extending comprehension" (Reading Essentials, 119).  This is profound to me because how many times as a primary student are you asked to understand a story one way, and you are told that way that you comprehend the story is a strategy to derive more meaning from the story?  And then... you get to college, and you are asked to derive meaning of a story's themes in one, two or more ways and you are at a loss because the way you've been taught to figure out the "story" (read: plot) is the only strategy you know to figure out a book.  However, if a student is given the power of several strategies for comprehension instead of being told that understanding the story IS a strategy, this changes the way a student will look at a book forever!  Exclamation points!!

The Strategies
I found all of Routman's strategies helpful, concise and clear.  In fact, I am going to use rereading as my mini-lesson for my targeted small group instruction.  I thought her suggestions (rereading, survey the text, connections, self-monitoring and interaction with peers) her easy ways to really teach kids to learn and comprehend.  I see this in my own classroom because as our character unit comes, we will be focusing a block on making connections with that character, or "how does the connection I make with the character help me understand the story?"  It's a great strategy to teach kids comprehension in a fun and efficient way (because, really, we humans love to apply things to our own lives.  It's the ego). 

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Literacy II: Week Three

Routman lists five things she does to ensure students become excellent readers (p. 43). Choose one of these five. Support it with examples from Routman chapters 1-4, the optimal learning model, Cambourne's conditions of learning, and/or examples from your placement (or non-examples if applicable). In other words, make a case for this point's importance.

Oh my goodness, without a doubt, I love "Provide an excellent classroom library."  This is absolutely VITAL to students becoming better readers.  I think of it this way:  You can't learn to be an excellent ice skater if you have on roller skates.  They look similar, but an ice skater would have a heck of a time learning to skate on ice in rollerskates.  You have to have the correct equipment to learn.  

It's the same way with books-- a poorly stocked and ill-prepared classroom library may visually look the same, but when you delve in and begin to choose books to learn reading, you are going to have a much harder struggle (or even failure) to learn to read using comprehension and strategies.  In my own classroom, my MT has very carefully and deliberately started a library of both leveled books (A-N, in first grade) and general books of varied interest.

I feel her library supports the Optimal Learning Model in that we do mini-lessons almost everyday on reading, as well as reading conferences.  She uses specific leveled books that she has chosen for her conferencing (I do), models strategies and how to read those "just right books" with the children (We do), and then allows them to go "book shopping" every other day (this is where the children find the leveled book tub that corresponds to their level, but get to choose a book that they want to read.  "I do").  I don't think it gets much more optimal than that!

My MT often says the school we are at uses a lot of Regie Routman in their practice, and I can see that in what we use everyday (although we use Lucy Calkins units of study for writing).  Regie says, "When we teachers begin to understand the learning model, we begin to make different decisions" (Reading Essentials, 47).  My MT lamented to me all the time she feels she wasted by not having the model of literacy we do now.  She told me that her practice in the last six years has done more good for the students than the previous 20 combined.  Now that's a powerful statement, and I think Routman's been a huge part of the literacy revolution in the NS School District.

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Literacy II: Week Two

I think what struck me most when reading Routman's Reading Essentials was when she was speaking of publishing students' work and valuing that work in order to bond with them:  "When we celebrate the stories of children's lives, we blur the lines between home and school and let students know that their lives matter" (Routman, 18).  Here is why that quote resonated with me:

I was never a struggling reader-- in fact, in kindergarten I was reading at a fourth grade level and devouring all the books I could get my hands on!  I was Roald Dahl's Matilda but with a happy homelife and loving every minute.  For me, publishing my great works such as "Bear on a Hair," and "Where's Mystery," was the penultimate of my young writing career!  The day we got to write a story that was to be bound in book format for all to read was when my life as an author really started to bloom-- suddenly, it wasn't my work for just the teacher or my mom to read, it was a "real" story!  Someone had enough interest in it to read my works!  From then on, nothing I wrote was hand-written.  I would pound out short stories and poems on my mom's typewriter old-school style, relentlessly banging out each word key by clicking key.  Eventually, I was published and won the Young Authors Award in fourth grade, where I got to go on a small trip to another school and meet a real-life published author whose name escapes me now, in my old age.  But, at the time, it was amazing and uplifiting to be celebrated for being a published writer.

And it doesn't just work for celebrated writers or advanced writers.   Routman also states that she publishes the works of struggling writers first to boost self-esteem and faith in their writing skills.   My brother, who had always struggled in school from kindergarten until 10th grade (where he ultimately dropped out and got his GED instead), ended up a published writer, as well.  The difference was, he was published in the National Anthology of Young Americans, a book that is a Library of Congress book!  I cannot tell you how that made him feel--that he, a struggling student who didn't always have a great attitude at school, was chosen by his teacher for this great honor of being "good" enough a poet to publish his poem, "Green," in a national publication.  I really think that this was a huge boon to his academic career.  He could have given up; he could have reached 10th grade and not gotten any sort of degree.  But deep-down, he cared about his academic life, and he could always reach back to that one spot where he, Ben Martin, was a published author and poet.

I know that as a teacher, I will value every child's written work.  I think Routman is spot-on when she says to celebrate a child's work is to bond with them.  Not only does it instill trust and pride within the student, it creates a safe and encouraging classroom environment for the entire classroom, including the teacher.

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