This year, my instructional goal is to personalize our new reading curriculum, Wonders. We shifted from a model of all small-group reading instruction and workshop time for other students to a 90-minute block of direct teaching every day (sometimes longer). While this new curriculum does include a wealth of information and is definitely rigorous and interesting, the change in format did not suit all students. Many of them had a difficult time staying focused and listening for such a long amount of time, even with shifting some work to partners or small groups instead of all whole-group instruction. My teammate and I made it a goal to redesign the format of our literacy blocks without losing the integrity of the new curriculum, but to still make this literacy time accessible for all students and more flexible.
While this is still a work in-progress, one of the changes we have made are to shift some of the activities around between days based on how long certain things take. The planned curriculum, for example, would include tons of instruction on days 1 and 2 of a unit, but then towards the end of the unit (days 8-10), the instruction might take only 20 minutes for each day, or there would be just one activity. Noticing this allowed us to shift activities and minilessons to other days so that there is more balance and there is an average of 20-30 minutes of whole group instruction per day, instead of 90 minutes (sometimes more) most days and 20 on other days. After our students completed all of unit 1, we also noticed that there are similar procedures and routines that repeat themselves in each unit. Now that students are familiar with them, we have shifted some of those routines to partner work or independent work. For example, if we read a text through as a whole-group and discuss it on one day, then the next day students may reread the same text with partners and answer discussion questions together, rather than doing both days whole-group. In addition to shifting the activities around between the days in a unit to balance them better, the shorter amount of whole-group teaching time has allowed us to reintroduce small group lessons (still from the Wonders curriculum). So far, my students seem to enjoy the small groups and the book sets are very engaging. I like that the book sets go along with the essential question for that unit, so that what we are discussing in small groups corresponds with what we are discussing in whole-group instruction, and it all works together to build a large bank of knowledge for each students. Teaching small group lessons allows me to meet all students at their personalized levels and challenges my students more, since they are asked to discuss texts in a smaller setting. I meet with all of my students in a small group every day, since the small-group books are broken up into four short sections with discussion questions for each section. Then, on Fridays, students work on independently answering small group comprehension questions that are included at the end of each text. The shifts I have made so far make me feel more successful in meeting all of my students where they are at, and I believe that they also make my students feel more successful because they are able to focus more successfully during our literacy block and participate more frequently, while also having some time for independent work each afternoon. I do anticipate that there will be bumps in the road where I need to continue "tweaking" things, but so far I'm pleased with how far I've come.
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AuthorCourtney Hayes is currently a teacher at Lone Tree Elementary Magnet School in Colorado. She has teaching experience in both primary and intermediate grades, and is passionate about personalizing her instruction to meet the needs of all students. Archives
April 2021
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