Читать книгу The Perfect Blend - Michele Eaton - Страница 24

Although I felt good about the instruction happening at my little kidney table with those small reading groups, I soon became dissatisfied with the independent work during our reading block. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but my metric for success in that environment was compliance and not learning. Students were quiet, were on task, and appeared to be engaged in the activities. The problem was I didn’t feel like learning was happening in this space. It was practice at best. At worst, it involved students practicing skills incorrectly without me really knowing how they were doing. I was measuring success by the noise volume in the room, the students’ attention to their tasks, and honestly, the “cute factor” of my laminated activities. This was not good enough for my learners. I wanted to provide instruction for all students in my class, not just the five or six in my small group.

While I am describing my early shortcomings, let me tell you about those reading response journals. Almost daily that first semester, I wheeled home my materials crate filled with a stack of reading response journals with the plan of providing handwritten feedback in them for my students. Let’s be real, that’s what it looked like. Turns out, I had a million other things to worry about as a teacher, and the journals became less of a priority in my evenings. As the year went on, the facade even dropped; I wheeled home that crate of journals less and less—and it showed in more ways than one. As the year went on, my students became better readers and writers, but the quality of their reading response entries steadily decreased. The students figured out fairly quickly that I was the only person reading their work, and even that was not happening frequently. Their work did not matter, and their effort reflected that. The compliance I saw in my classroom was fake engagement.

My students deserved better. I wanted to do something different.