One of the major areas that I am pondering right now is with the schedule. I am anticipating that I will have about 1 hour 12 minute blocks daily with each class. My priorities are to have time for read aloud with a reading focus lesson, writing focus lessons (writer's notebooks, Everyday Editing, traits, etc.), independent reading time, independent writing time, and word study. Then there are also other components that are not daily, such as Author Tip Tuesday, that I am trying to figure out exactly where they will fit.
Here are some initial thoughts running through my mind for options. I would love any feedback/thoughts on the different options. I am going to try to work through in my mind about what my preference is by the time I go to Heinemann's Boothbay Literacy retreat (only 33 days away, but who's counting?) because I know the retreat will be a great time to reflect on my ideas/thoughts.
Option #1: Have both independent reading and writing every day but only enough time for either a writing or reading focus lesson
- 20 min. Independent Reading
- 20 min. Read Aloud with focus lesson or Writing focus lesson
- 20 min. Independent Writing
- 10 min. Word Study
- 15 min. Read Aloud with focus lesson
- 10 min. Word Study
- 15 min. Writing Focus Lessons
- 30 min. Independent Reading or Independent Writing
- 10 min. Word Study
- 15 min. Read Aloud/Focus-Lesson
- 15 min. Independent Reading
- 15 min. Writing Focus Lesson
- 15 min. Independent Writing Time
You are battling the same thing I've been battling. One idea I've been thinking about is similar to Option 1. I am playing with the idea of cycling through a genre or trait. My thought is if I wanted to focus on informational text, I would spend the first little while doing lots of reading of informational text- noticing features of text etc. My kids would be doing much more independent reading and focus lessons for reading, then eventually we would get into writing that same genre- so now we would be doing much more writing and less reading. We would take the things from our reading focus lessons and start applying them into our writing lessons. Does that make sense?
ReplyDeleteKerry
Kerry,
ReplyDeleteThat does make a lot of sense. I have noticed this year that with everything I would like to accomplish I need to be very intentional about what I do. I recently read somewhere (but can't remember where) that most components should serve more than one purpose. I have thought a lot about how having the read aloud serve as a mentor text for writing seems like it would be a good use of maximizing time. It seems like you are thinking of the same idea, making sure that reading and writing components are supporting each other. I appreciated you leaving me a comment, giving me more thoughts to consider.