Chapter 8-Seven Strategies

Main Points: 2 Important Points
-best practice is a philosophy
-organization is key

Connections and Ideas Want to Incorporate...

*Small Groups: In my classroom, at the first grade level, small groupings have been beneficial for modeling and role-playing various concepts, such as proficient reading and writing. Creative writing centers with iPads has also been something that gives the students an opportunity to bounce creative ideas off of each other as they make a story.

*Text coding with Mind Maps has been a wonderful tool for me, and also for my students. It is has been beneficial for them to visualize how the different parts of a concept or story work together. I can see how text coding will be beneficial for them to use in communicating their understandings to me or to themselves.


*RTL: Have my students keep a math and reading journal's or "learning logs" and the to enrich the learning process and allow students the to write and draw with their ideas to become active learners.

* Classroom WKSP: I love schedule and the ideas of classroom workshops, because of the ability to model various ideas and concepts for your students, and the time it gives students to work on their own needs. This would definitely be a bit of work to get started, to ensure you could effectively have resources available for each student to have their choice of materials, whether it be with a reading book at the appropriate level, a writing topic available for each student, or setting up conference schedules. Once again, it comes back to organization.


*The concept of making learning authentic has been something I continue to strive for. I have a ways to go, but I have given more accountability to my students and have given them a "say" on how we've done certain groups, classroom design and small group activities. Like I've stated in past blogs, although I do work with first graders, their abilities for self-regulation and independence are well beyond what some might think. I continue to work on how to incorporate this at home and would like to involve other classrooms during our math, reading and science times to team-teach and learn together.

*Integrative units is something that I am working on throughout the summer. As a team, we've looked at home we can combine different subjects together under a BIG umbrella to ensure connectivity and fluidity.

*I believe in the idea of getting away from a one-size-fits-all way of teaching. The author states, "Teaching doesn't mean "talking" compared to what we've thought in the past." We can demonstrate techniques and strategies, but we need to determine where our efforts should be placed. Instead of re-teaching a concept to the whole class, when only 1/3 of the students need re-explaining, we need to channel our energy to setting up worth-while experiences that can engage the other 2/3's of students while we reteach.