My school had encountered many changes dealing with curriculum
over the past few years. With the new leadership brought change and many people
didn’t welcome it at school. I embraced it, and put the changes into action.
Two years ago, my school’s main focus was on the implementation of writer’s
workshop. Teachers at my school were
trained in the proper implementation of writer’s workshop, and were expected to
use this approach to teach students. Through the use of mini-lesson, writing
time, conferencing, and sharing time, I could see improvement in my students
writing over the course of the school year. They loved their writing time and
would ask regularly to continue writing even if the “writing music” had
stopped. This made for a happy teacher! My student’s favorite time was sharing time.
By sharing their stories/writings with the class it gave them a real purpose
for writing, and taught students to learn how to give constructive feedback and
positive comments.
After getting Writer’s Workshop established in our school,
our next big curriculum change was to implement guided reading throughout the
school. This was not a big change for the younger grades, as we already had
guided reading established. This allowed me to work with a small group of
students at their instructional level in order to improve their reading skills.
During guided reading, students were expected to work on literacy centers as
their independent working activity when not meeting with the teacher. Literacy
centers were a “must” at our school. Within literacy centers, students would be
working on SR (sustained reading), buddy reading, word works, and other various
learning activities that would enrich their learning.
Within my literacy block, I also do shared reading and read
alouds to support my students’ literacy needs. Mini-lessons are a frequently
used in my literacy block to teach comprehension skills. Students are expected
to take the skill taught in the mini lesson and apply it to their reading
during SR and their reading time in guided reading groups.
These are the components of the comprehensive literacy
program that I have implemented and plan to continue to use next year.
Your school has a had a lot of change! However, I think the moves toward the reading and writing workshop have been successful! :) I love that you use "writing music"- I have used that before, and the kids actually loved having it on- they really seemed more focused! I love that you use your read alouds to teach comprehension strategies- have you also incorporated read alouds into your writing workshop? There are some great books that have examples of writing skills the students are supposed to use throughout their writing. Great job!
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