The state of Indiana, passed legislation that THIS school year 2012-2013, schools across the state would be expected to implement 90 minutes of uninterrupted reading instruction for students in elementary schools. The school district I work for, decided to jump the gun and mandate our 90 minute reading block last school year. Although it was stressful, first year teacher, 90 minute reading block, new math, science, and health curricula, I am grateful I got to "practice" (for lack of a better word), how to manage what at the time, seemed like an insurmountable amount of time. 90 minutes of uninterrupted reading instruction? How to fill up that amount of time? Fill up time? Ha! I wish! Now, I wish I had more time! Our school district has encouraged teachers to utilize The Daily Five and utilize it I have. The only problem now, is that I think I could teach reading for hours, hence the title of this post. In a perfect world, my reading block would break down somewhat like this:
Mini Lesson (Based on Basal Text and District Curriculum Map) 20-30 Minutes
*Teacher Time (Working in leveled/strategy groups with short texts) 20-30 Minutes
*Daily 5 Choice (Working through the week's Daily 5 Tic Tac Toe Menu) 20-30 Minutes
*Computer (Students will work on Study Island or RAZ Kids) 20-30 minutes
*Content (Students will work on Science/Social Studies) 20-30 minutes
The asterisked items will all be going on simultaneously.The kiddos will rotate, completing every activity every day (pending school conflicts). The problem I ran into last year with Daily 5, was not being able to hold students as accountable as I'd wanted to. Yes, we checked in and students denoted what they would doing on the Daily 5 board, but I still didn't feel great about it. I found something similar to this, made it my own, and hopefully having this on the smart board throughout the entire reading block will help to keep students on task.
30+30+30+30+30=150
Either equation...I would like more than 90 minutes to teach reading. I could always take out content, stick to 15 minute rotations, something, it's just going to be another year of figuring it out. Definitely more to come on this subject.
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