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.