Erin McAbee: March/April Blog :Chapter 4- Teach with a Sense of Urgency (Routman)

When I read the title, I initially thought this chapter is probably going to give me anxiety. Why? Because many times, I feel like I'm never doing quite enough and there's always something more or better I can be doing to help my kids. As it turns out, I enjoyed this chapter very much and found it very helpful.

I reflected upon my own ways of ensuring that my students will become excellent readers. I shared many of the same ideas written in the book. Some of things I need to work on  demonstrating that I'm a reader too and helping set goals. I was inspired to come up with a creative and fun way to help my students reach their goals. I want to become better organized in setting this up and having incentives for my students when they reach their reading goals. I was also challenged to set up an excellent classroom library. My classroom library is good and organized, but I want it to be something exciting and memorable for my students because it made reading fun.

I found the whole-class reading approaches helpful. I've tried this year to better show and share my own thinking with my students. I've found it a good time to model for the whole class what I'm thinking and asking myself as I read. I try to have it interactive with many partner sharing. I've also used it as a time to evaluate my students by how they are responding to their partner. It helps me to see if my students understand my question or the reading strategies we're working on in class. This section was affirming to how some read aloud and discussion time takes place in my classroom.

One of the last teaching tips shared that it is helpful to ask a struggling older reader to write texts for younger students because it helps the older readers be aware of their audience and take care to match their illustrations with text, choose their words and layout carefully and it's enjoyable for them to give their book to the younger reader. We have 4th grade reading buddies. Early in the school year, we tried to a shared writing activity. My students learned a ton from the older students about the writing process. It was amazing how they would take in the information shared by the 4th grade student and it seemed to stick better for some of my students than when I would talk with them about the writing process. This teaching tip is definitely something I want to share with my 4th grade reading buddy teacher and come up with a reading and writing activity for them to do together. I'm excited!