I am so glad each of you decided to join this year’s SCRI study group. It has been a great experience working with each of you this year; I have loved facilitating our classes and sharing in professional discussions. I just wish I could have been on campus more often so I could work with y’all more in your classrooms. In the famous words of Gamecock fans, there’s always next year!
As you reflect on the year, consider the following questions...
What has been the most valuable part of this course for you? Is there something in particular you learned that has been helpful in your teaching? Has your approach to teaching text changed at all? Have your views on reading and writing changed at all? Any other thoughts you have?
10 comments:
I think there was a collection of things that I found to be most valuable to me this year. First, I really enjoyed all the strategies (the ones shared by classmates and the ones were were exposed to via Diane). The strategies will help me to bring a large variety into my classroom and keep the students well engaged.
As far as the readings, many of them I encountered last year at USC. I did like the Subjects Matters books and how it had a large variety of strategies and activities. I also enjoyed many of the read alouds.
One thing I would really like to say is that I looked forward to this class each Monday. There was never a dull moment, and I would strongly encourage individuals who have not taken it to do so. I can't wait until next year!
I am very glad that I decided to take this SCRI course again, as I was unable to complete the first year of the course in 2006-2007. And no, Diane, I don't think SCRI is a 'cult'. :-)
I have learned many new strategies for reading comprehension and vocabulary building. I am excited to have such a great portfolio to add to my current resources. I can do a different activity every day for an entire semester and not repeat anything! Both my students and I will be very happy about that!
I have also really enjoyed how much the readings in this class have benefitted my work in my graduate program. It's nice to be involved in more than one group of learners, and I really appreciated all of the discussion, kindness, and helpfulness of my colleagues in this class.
Thank you, Diane!!!
More than anything, I loved the community aspect of the class - getting to know each of you. Many of you, I would never have had the chance to get to know otherwise.
I also (and I know this sounds cheesy) found the class to be very empowering. I honestly had no idea how to go about incorporating reading strategies in my class. I also had no idea what a struggling reader looked like - where the challenges were.
I really appreciate all the strategies - I've recently been teaching a unit on fairy tales in my German 2 classes and this unit has gone so much more smoothly than it did for my German 3/4 class because I had so many other possibilities to work with vocabulary. I've gone straight to Karen's packet on several occasions!
I've also felt challenged in my own personal reading. I try to listen to my students when they recommend stories for me... (does anyone have a copy of Burned? I don't remember the author's name.) But I also try to make sure I don't just go straight to the easy books, but that I look for works that will challenge my own vocabulary and reading skills, etc.
Anyways, I've had a lot of fun and have really felt myself stretched as both a teacher and a learner. Thanks for making this possible!
Nicole
Overall, I enjoyed the class for obvious reasons such as getting to know all of you. Also, I loved seeing the strategies that others use in their classrooms and being able to discuss how to implement them. The techniques that we learned to get students involved in writing about their reading were wonderful too; like the Discussion Web (if only I could find all of my copies!)And to be honest; I did not like blogging. Our district sometimes makes it difficult for us to access the site due to blockers and some of us are not as computer savy as others. I often times got frustrated after typing in comments two and three times and it not showing up in the blogs. I pray this one does because I just don't have the time to constantly redo. Enough about that; I also liked the read alouds and the discussions we had. The book circles were great too. I love to read and to actually get to read some of the books that our students were reading and striking that commonality with them was great. I'd do it again as a professional development course.
Being new to Airport, I joined SCRI for many reasons I believe I gained a lot out of it. Since leaving college, I haven’t kept up with reading as much as I wanted to. Also, ED is the first special education job I’ve taken where I really needed to keep up with strategies and help my students stay as close to their grade level as possible. The strategies assisted quite a bit and gave me new ways to look forward to teaching my students. All of the work and discussions we had about struggling readers were beneficial as well. I liked the variety of topics we read and discussed too. Even if a particular reading was on a subject I didn’t agree with at that time, I still felt I took something positive away from it.
It was a nice way to get to know everyone in the group. I really enjoyed discussions and book clubs. Being in my room all 4 blocks & for lunch, I don’t have the opportunity to get to know other staff very often & this was a lot of fun.
I really enjoyed this class. It was nice getting to know everyone and the food was really good. I felt like I gained a lot of strategies from my fellow classmates and Diane that I will be able to share with teachers one day. I took this class so that I would have the knowledge to be able to help teachers with reading in the classroom. The only thing I regret is not having this class while I was still in the classroom. I saw a lot of strategies that I would have loved to try.
I have to agree with everyone else who has already said that the most valuable parts of the class were the ‘community’ aspects of getting to know everyone and the collection of strategies that have been added to my repertoire.
My philosophical approach to teaching text has not changed as a result of this class; however, my practices have begun to change this year and will change more dramatically in the future as I incorporate more and more opportunities for students to react to text and share their thoughts with each other. I am trying to take less of a ‘leader’ role in discussions and allow the kids to step up to the challenge. We are doing more small group sharing activities than I have ever done. In all honesty, it isn’t going terribly well as most students tend to focus on very superficial aspects of what they read and then get off-track. But there are a couple of bright, shining stars and I’m working on ways to encourage the others. Here’s a sad statistic: The students were told to bring four discussion questions to class on Friday so that they could each lead the discussion of a question or two within their book club group. (They are given class time to read and those questions counted as their Reading Response Journal grade for two days.) Four students of twenty three had their questions. On the plus side, most of the students had read the pages that were due that day! As I told them… ‘Baby steps’!
I have truly loved being in this class. When Diane asked me last year if I was interested, I was a little hesitant to jump into it as only a second year teacher, but I am so glad that I did!
I have loved getting to know each and every one of you in the group. And I, too, just like Lisa, have loved the food!
While I had learned a lot of these strategies before, I must admit I was not too good at using them. When I learned them in graduate classes, I was not in a classroom, so I was unable to put them into practice immediately. It has been wonderful for me to take this class while teaching year-long freshman English. I am always nervous about my kids’ End-of-Course Test scores, but because I’ve taught them various strategies, such as coding the text, logographic cues, illustrating the text, and other interactive strategies (such as Post-It notes), I believe I’ve helped prepare my students more for this exam the best I can. Yes, I know they’ll not have a pack of Post-It notes when they take the test, but they can still write questions, thoughts, notes, illustrations, etc. in the margins of the text to increase their comprehension of what they’re reading and to help them stay focused! We all know such a big part of that test is endurance.
Thank you, all of my classmates, for making the class so refreshing. And thank you, Diane, for always making our class relevant and fun. I hope that we’re all together again next year! I think we sort of deserve this summer!
I don't think it is necessarily the collection of great strategies that was the most valuable part of taking this course. I really believe the relationships I have built with my colleagues is the best thing I could have gotten out of this experience. I have really enjoyed getting to know everyone and learning what he or she is doing in the classroom. It is great to share what we are all doing to help our students succeed. The engaging discussions on what we all have tried with our own students is really the most valuable part of the study group. As a science teacher, I haven't taken any literacy courses before. So the study group really helped me learn what reading is really all about and how I can help my students become better readers. I now realize that it isn't solely the English teacher's job to teach reading. Students need to learn how to read in all of the disciplines. Also, I hope to implement more of the strategies into my lessons. I have tried a few and found great success.
I have really enjoyed being in class with everyone and hope to keep sharing ideas. Thanks Diane for everything you have done for all of us!
Final Thoughts----April 14, 2008
“What has been the most valuable part of this course for you?”
Taking this course has provided a personal enlightenment of numerous reading aspects and a fresher perspective in introducing literacy this year in my classroom. As a relatively new teacher to the high school methodology of instruction; I have found this experience to be challenging yet enriching in both application and presentation to my students. This course has helped me tremendously to come to the realization that teaching reading strategies are not limited to the elementary level but they should continue to be taught at all grade levels. Also, this course allowed me to meet and become acquainted with some of my colleagues and observe some of the techniques and procedures in managing and maintaining good reading principles in the classroom. Often time, we as professionals and educators learned more when we interact with our peers-which I must say has benefited me greatly. Learning from our peers not only benefits our students in our classes but teachers as well.
I have learned and gained new strategies plus I have re-looked and revamped the ones that I used previously in my teaching career. It was exhilarating trying the different reading strategies with my students. I learned invaluable techniques in teaching students at the high school level, and encouraging them to know that reading is important in their lives.
Lastly, this class introduced books and reading materials that could be utilized at the high school level so that my students and I will benefit from for many years to come.
Thank you, Diane for a great learning experience!!
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