A Teacher's Ruminations

I have approximately 55 minutes to teach language arts. It's not enough time, of course. But then how much time is enough time? As I work through this dilemma, I have decided that some routines are non-negotiable. Independent reading and read aloud need to happen every day, and my students need time to write and explore different writing techniques in a writer's notebook. So far, I've been able to stay the course even if we've had to skip read aloud on occasion. In the meantime, here are some things I've noticed so far: Most of my students come in at the beginning of class and settle in around the room with a book ; they know that the first 10 - 15 minutes are for independent reading and they take this time seriously. I have my work cut out with some students who don't like to read , or so they say. What they don't know, or at least don't think I'm serious when I tell them, is that my goal for this year is to make sure that everyone loves t...

I am currently reading Donalyn Miller's book, Reading in the Wild  as part of this summer's #cyberPD book study co-hosted over at the  Literacy Zone blog . The idea is to read two chapters at a time and write a blog post that is then linked back to one of the participating blogs for this book study. Source: http://donalynmiller.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/reading-in-the-wild.jpg?w=226&h=300 Source: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/519lHx-UOzL.jpg Reading in the Wild  is a follow-up to Donalyn's first book,  The Book Whisperer ,  which promoted "free voluntary reading" in the classroom as a way to develop a love of reading in students. In this second book, Donalyn takes these ideas a step further by describing the kind of attitudes and behaviours commonly exhibited by "wild readers", or readers who love to read so much they always have a book in their hand, no matter where they go. The attitudes and behaviours of wild readers, as i...