Jessica Amsler's Blog Post 4: Routman: Chapter 4: Teach With a Sense of Urgency

This chapter was very interesting to me and pertained to what we are doing in first grade.  I really liked the teaching tip on page 49 because it is so important for us as teachers to reflect!  I got a lot out of reading the section: Integrate basic skills into challenging relevant curriculum on page 50.  I know I’ve mentioned it a lot in my past blogs, but I will mention it again.  This book is great to read if you are doing the Daily 5!  I used SRA since I started teaching.  That’s all I knew and I was scared to move away from it but I think my kids this year are better readers than my kids in the past.  They are not learning phonics and then reading a story that is hard to follow, they are reading what they choose to read.  Routman states that “focusing excessively on skills in isolation limits learning possibilities” and “Isolated drilling in the basics hampers low performing students because they fail to learn how to process new information effectively.”  I feel that my students are becoming better readers and learning this skills through integration rather than isolation.  

The teaching tip on page 51 that stated “instead of giving a test to see whether a student has phonemic awareness, examine a writing sample, such as a journal entry.”  This made me think about the Dominie writing part of the assessment.  First grade has always used Domnie to level our kids and this year we were introduced to the writing portion.  It was interesting to see my students’ results and helped me plan what I needed to teach.

The section about including Interactive reading was also helpful for me.  I am always asking questions during read alouds and my kids always answer.  They are now able to predict my question and I love to see their eyes light up or them wiggling on the rug because they want to tell me whether it is fiction or non-fiction or tell me who the main characters and the setting.  I often wonder if I should wait until the end to ask these questions.  I use turn and talk for other things, I think it will be good to have my students turn and talk to answer questions about the story.  I would also like to make a bookmark of the questions on page 53 so that my students could answer these questions on their own during silent or partner reading.

 As I read this I know that I have so many things to work on and I know I am going to become better with the Daily 5 over time.  It is nice to be doing what the author is discussing and get tips to become a better teacher rather than want to throw out what I’m doing and start over. Routman’s book has been very helpful so far!  I feel good about my teaching and our curriculum.  I’ve never had this feeling before-it’s a good feeling but a strange felling.   My grade level and I were discussing things that we can do better next year and years after that.  I am really having a hard time writing in my pensive as I’m conferencing with my students.  As I am working with them I am thinking “I need to write that down” and I plan to do it but it never happens.  Melissa shared an app called Evernote with our team but I haven’t taken the plunge yet.  If anyone has any tips for me, I would appreciate it.  I know how important it is but I just get wrapped up in the moment.  It will help me make every moment count and ensure that I am making good teaching decisions.