Amy Hansen Blog Post 3: Miller Section 1: Not This: Is There Enough Time? And Is Time Enough to Support Independent Reading?

When I first started reading this chapter, I knew it was speaking to me. It always feels like there is never enough time in the day to get everything accomplished and trying to add in an independent reading time. Yes, I’ll admit that some days we get to our reading time and sometimes we don’t. I see the importance of it though and have been striving to make more of an effort to include it into my schedule. In my previous blog post, I mentioned that I have been using a Reader’s Workshop bundle to help guide me to give my students a focus during their reading time, but still I have the trouble just like the teachers mentioned in Baltimore of actually finding the time to fit it in.

I liked how they looked at the schedules of each of the teachers to help them find those extra minutes of time. We’re definitely all guilty of the morning announcement time and I am definitely guilty of calendar time. I will say though that I think calendar is an important tool for students to be able to use, but I’ve started incorporating it as part of my math time instead of early in the morning when I could be focusing on something more important. I will also say that I find myself teaching more about letters, sounds, phonemic awareness, reading strategies through our whole group read aloud time and small group time, sight words are just to name a few where I teach about reading, but never really giving my students a chance to practice it as I should. We actually only go to centers once a week to help fit everything in, so surely I will be able to find that extra time. I need to be more conscious of putting it into my lesson plans. With everything we’re learning through our class and through these readings, I know it will help me to better see what my students are actually thinking and doing when they read.

I would love to be able to observe someone to see what they do, how they set their focus, and how they do their conferencing with their students. I know we used to do reading conferences, but most of the conferences I did in kindergarten were based solely on what was read aloud in class. I would love to be able to see what others actually do or use to help conference with their students.