Response to Theoretical Readings #1

Heather, Tracy and myself discussed the articles that were assigned this week.  It was nice to talk about how our school is using a "balanced" approach to literacy.  BES is using what is described by Cunningham as the four blocks reading program.  This past school year, we implemented guided reading and read to self through the Daily Five.  In the upcoming school year we will be adding Writer's Workshop and Words Their Way. We discussed how we implement homogeneous and heterogeneous grouping of our students in K-2 with our scheduling.  This can be very difficult to do in classrooms with 22 children.  Tracy complemented the teachers in our school by saying that he feels that the teachers in our building have a good "tool box" to meet the needs of all learners.  Everyone is different, therefore it takes different methods to reach all the students.  We also talked about how when working with small children especially that one day a method may work and the next day it will not. It is important to pay attention to the children and it is okay to have teachable moments.  Sometimes you must stop a lesson and give them some background knowledge especially when you are teaching children from poverty areas.  When comparing Method A and Method B, Tracy posed the questions "Why not do both?"  One of the last things that we talked about was this statement, "teacher education is ongoing, not short term".  This is so true.  I believe that I can say that every teacher in our building has definitely learned something new this year!

While I was reading these two articles, I started thinking about how much things have changed in what I teach and how I teach it since I started teaching just six years ago.   In the article "In pursuit of an illusion:  The flawed search for a perfect method,"  I couldn't help but think of a wonderful reading teacher who gave me some great advice.  She said, "Keep what worked from your old reading series, and use it in the place of what doesn't work from the new reading series."  She lived by this rule.  She used materials that she had in the early 80's.