During my internship in first grade, one aspect of the structure of the day which frustrated me was the literacy block. With a state mandated 90 minute reading block followed by a 30 intervention/enrichment block, I followed my wonderful cooperating teacher's schedule of 1 hour whole group instruction, followed by 30 minutes of literacy centers.
I tried several approaches to the structure of the literacy centers - homogenous grouping with scheduled groups for guided reading, heterogeneous groups with homogenous pull put groups for guided reading etc. Yet, I never felt I quite achieved the balance that I was searching for. additionally, I found the creation of the weekly literacy centers to be extremely time consuming, taking more organization and planning (not to mention grading) than most of the rest of the day/week combined. So I was determined to use this summer to research a little and find many different strategies and approaches to literacy centers. I recognize however, that it is ultimately the students which will determine which approach is best, yet I feel the more informed I can be in advance, the better instructional decisions I can make when I finally have my class.
One approach I recall from my language arts class at college, was inspired by the 2 sisters and their Daily 5 approach. Wanting to refresh my memory of this I purchased their book and plunged in. Hands down, I have never read a professional book so quickly, and throughly in my life. From the introduction, I knew that this approach was borne out of the same fructrations I experienced, and the same desire to make literacy centers the most effective learning experinces possible.
Next post, I'll go into a little more detail. At the moment - 1 ♥ Daily 5.
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