Week 1 Posting

It is somewhat difficult for me to speculate on what the district does well on or not in regards to CCSS as this is only my second year teaching within my school district. This difficulty is also compounded as I work within the Title 1 Preschool, and currently there is no CCSS for preschool age students. I do feel that the district has taken good steps in regards to educating their staff in CCSS, as we have had both a seminar on the CCSS and received a copy of the book "Pathways To The Common Core." The district also hired a new Title 1 Director who has done a significant amount of work with and research into the implementation of the CCSS. While I am not familiar with the work done in the elementary schools in regards to writing, I have implemented a “weekend” news activity, which encourages students to write or draw about an event that happened over the weekend. I have noticed that Weekend News does appear to have a positive effect on increasing students awareness of print carries meaning, as well the importance of illustrations to gain information to decode and understand text. The concept of emphasizing the critical aspects of the text, such as: understanding main ideas, using evidence from the text, and increased comprehension of text, are all concepts that I would have hoped was already happening in the classroom when students were reading text. If we are not comprehending and able to answer questions based on the text, what have we taken from our reading? One aspect that I am surprised about is the de-emphasis on building personal connections to our text. As a teacher I am often encouraged to help students build personal connections to their learning in order to engaged them. If we are asking students to read for 45 minutes a day, I would assume it would be most successful if they were allowed to choose book that interest them. As an adult I choose books to read that I have either a personal interest in or I have another connection to. For a long period of time it appeared that in grades kindergarten through second, ELA was focused on “learning to read” and then from Third grade onward it was “reading to learn.” The new CCSS emphasis that the focus should always be on “reading to learn” which makes a great deal of sense being that traditional “sound it out” reading curriculum and instruction is actually a very poor method of teaching students how to decode. Part of the most challenging aspects of being a teacher is that no two students are really ever at the same point in their learning at the same time. This is why in my classroom I do as much small group or individual learning opportunities as possible. I have had kindergarteners who enter into my class “reading” books as high as ‘Harry Potter’ however while they are able to read this level of book, they are not actual retaining any information or details. As Pathways to The Common Core states, there are children who will just devour books, which is wonderful of course, but often if you ask them what happened in the book and more detailed questions they don’t have much retention. I believe that by focusing on the actual content of the book, not just reading a book, students will realize that reading is truly to increase our knowledge base and also activate our imagination and critical thinking skills. Having a wide range of books that are leveled to help our most struggling readers to our most advanced readers right at my fingertips has been a huge asset. Also having well written beginner reader books is so important, nothing is more frustrating then have a series of books that are so poorly written or have no plot, that it is actually impossible to ask a reader what was the story about, as those early reader books can truly be about nothing.