Chapter 6 Reflections

The most important idea that I learned from this chapter is that reading and writing are highly connected.  Regie Routman notes that effective teachers are more likely to have their students engaged in reading and writing of whole texts, as opposed to having them spend the majority of their time on reading and writing activities.  Furthermore, growth in reading positively impacts writing, and growth in writing positively impacts reading.

As I continued to read the chapter, Routman discussed the importance of shared writing:  this writing becomes the texts the teachers and students read in shared reading.  I have had my students participate in shared writing lessons every day since reading about the importance of shared writing.  My students and I have written texts together that including the following:

• what good readers do
• our morning routine
• how we feel about having a student teacher
• ways that we can become “bucket fillers”
• how we become “bucket dippers
• our class rules
• why self-discipline is important
• what we learned to do that took lots of practice
• steps in building a snowman
• what we did at home on all of our snow days

How do we improve our children’s reading and writing achievement?  The answer is really quite simple – we have our students spend more time reading and writing.  As the year progresses, my first graders have more stamina to read for longer periods of time than they did at the beginning of the year.  (They can also write for longer periods of time.)  I aim to have them read independently for 15-20 minutes per day.  Fortunately, most of my students also receive additional independent reading time during library enrichment.  As teachers, we must make sure to read aloud stories, poems, short books, long books, fiction, and non-fiction.

Another key point that Routman makes is that teachers need to be certain that the writing children do in response to reading is worth their time.  This type of writing requires students to think deeply about the text.  They might be asked to explain, summarize, compare, evaluate, and draw conclusions.  Below is an example of a writing assignment I asked my students to complete after they read The Grandma Mix-Up.  The students were encouraged to write about what Grandma (Nan or Sal) they would prefer to stay with and why.  I wanted them to back up their answer with their reasons for making the choice they did.

Student example of writing assignment for guided reading lesson.

Additionally, Routman discusses the importance of integrating content-area teaching with writing instruction.  I have a group of first graders that love listening to and responding to non-fiction text.  After completing our unit on penguins, my students wrote five facts they learned about penguins.  It was neat to see the facts they came up with.  They also loved creating the penguin art projects to go along with their facts.

Example of a student's list of important facts about penguins

Graphic organizers were noted as being an effective method that can be used to help students remember content.  I use a variety of graphic organizers with my students.  For the most part, we complete them as a whole-class or small-group shared experience.