Week 3 post

After reading the chapters in Book Club Plus! A Literacy Framework for the Primary Grades, and particularly focusing on the book club model, I noticed a great deal of similarities as well as differences within my classroom literacy instruction. I learned how important the appropriateness of text is in relationship to the quality of learning that will take place within each student. If each student does not have a variety of thought provoking, age-appropriate text to choose from, the classroom literacy instruction will be very limited for these particular students. As educators, we need to ensure that every child will have suitable materials that will enable them to gain the necessary literacy skills they need to have to be a successful student. While looking at the book club model, I noticed that there were several components that are very prevalent in my own classroom. We often utilized teacher read alouds, independent reading (in centers), shared reading (whole group), and writers workshop (both whole group and centers). These four core elements take up nearly half of our daily schedule for most of the week (thus far). As the year progresses, we will start up our guided reading groups which will be a major focus for most of the year. Some differences between the book club model and our classroom literacy instruction is the types of literacy centers that are available on a daily basis. We do not have centers on language arts, journaling, or unit work. Our centers tend to have very specific tasks for each center. Our five centers are guided reading (with a teacher), independent/buddy reading, handwriting/writing, retelling/listening, and word study. Within our centers, the children spend approximately fifteen minutes at each center to complete a specific task. These tasks vary daily as well as weekly and adjust to the needs of the students. These centers allow the students to practice reading in nearly every station, writing in two of the centers, listening/viewing in every center, and speaking in three of the stations. These five components are not only practiced throughout literacy centers but also in numerous and various approaches across curricula and throughout the school day. Our students are given a great deal of time in the day to practice their writing. We utilized the Lucy Caulkins writing program almost every day. We have been instructing the students to write about what they enjoy doing, what they had done in the past week or so, what they are planning on doing over the weekend, etc. At this time we are not allowing the students to create fictional stories. I look forwards to seeing what other literacy instruction is going to be utilized as the year progresses.