What's The Big Idea?

After reading the first part of Jim Burke's What's The Big Idea? Question-Driven Units to Motivate Reading, Writing, and Thinking, I posted my thoughts. This weekend I was able to finish the rest of the book, and everything that I loved from the initial chapters continued through the rest of the book. Something that I did not mention yet; however, is that the book page on Heinemann has companion resources, with PDF and Word documents of many of the documents in the book. A lot of times books have resources on CD, but I love how this also has the Word documents so that teachers can manipulate them to meet their needs.

Another component that I loved in the book was the level of student scaffolding. Burke gives clear models of how he carefully plans units. He has high expectations for all his students, and provides enough support for them to reach those expectations.

I have always used a lot of themes and big questions when I teach content areas, such as science and social studies. I also used themes prior to this year in language arts; however, when I switched over to reading and writing workshop, I have used themes anymore. Some of Burke's examples are implementations with whole class novels that he is required to teach, but others are for independent reading.

While reading the book I was considering ways to get back to having themes and big questions in my workshops. Next year I will only teach reading and writing, so I am thinking about how I can integrate Burke's suggestions while still allowing students to choose the majority of their books because I do not have any mandated whole class novels. Initially, I am thinking of general themes that would be in most books that students would read. I also want to further explore the option of requiring specific genres for different quarters and matching the reading genres to writing styles.

Burke's book gave me a lot of possibilities to consider.