Routman-Chpt 10: Examine Guided Reading
I was relieved to see that Routman does support homogeneous
grouping in kindergarten. This is important in order to focus on specific
skills that students need to master. However, I want to be mindful to provide
lots of opportunities for flexible grouping. We have done some partner reading,
but I want to include more of that in my lesson plans, so that opportunity
doesn’t get put on the back burner. I’m also intrigued on literacy circles in
kindergarten. I’d like to see what that really looks like.
A huge problem I see with guided reading in kindergarten is
book selection. There just is not a lot of choices for high interest books with
VERY simple text. Although, this does remind me that I would like to find more
wordless books. Wouldn’t it be cool for students to write their own words for a
wordless book?
I still have trouble establishing my schedule. It’s more
challenging with younger students to have an hour long block, and have some
students work independently. I need to teach more literacy centers so students
can work independently while Ms. Hazel and I are working with reading groups.
I love, love, love that Routman advocates sufficient time
for playing, building, painting and acting out stories. It seems the push to
teach more standards has left little time for students to develop language and
social skills through play. Most days my students get to have center time, but
honestly it is the first thing to get cut if we run short on time.
It was also eye-opening that the model classroom described
did not have guided reading groups, but had other hands-on, real experiences
for students including book baskets, a morning message, many reading and
writing opportunities and as many as SIX read alouds per day! I struggle to fit
in 2 read alouds and I know that typically our students have not received
sufficient read aloud time prior to starting school.
I found the guidelines at the end of the chapter to be very
useful. I noticed immediately that our selection of books used for guided
reading does not easily lend itself to deep thought by students. I think for
kindergarten deep thinking about books is more readily accommodated in read
alouds.
Above all, this chapter deepens my resolve to have various
reading activities throughout the day and give those activities priority over
heavily structured, inflexible groups.
I would love to see some literacy circles in K! I can do some digging to see if there are any videos out there, and maybe you could pilot this with your kids. I bet it would be amazing! I completely agree with you that with our youngest readers especially, there is a big gap between "deep thinking books" and "decodable books." I liked to let my kids have a combination of storybooks ("deep thinking books") and sight word readers ("decodable books") for this exact reason. Also, I believe in the importance of play, too! I learned from Vivian Paley's book "A Child's Work" about something called a play journal. It's basically like kidwatching during centers so you can document the important work kids are doing in centers. The reality is that if you can document it, it's easier to validate it! I started doing this last year before I left the classroom and was amazed at all the new things I was noticing!
ReplyDeleteHi Lisa,
ReplyDeleteI always appreciate your thoughtful reflection. You wrote, "Wouldn’t it be cool for students to write their own words for a wordless book?" YES! I love this idea because it builds into the reciprocity between reading and writing. I also wanted to let you know that our new 2015 inquiry standards for ELA for kindergarten support play as well. We looked at those in our Dec. meeting. Thanks, Dawn