Throughout the past year after embarking on this blogging adventure, I’ve made connections with teachers and literacy coaches from all over the United States and beyond, becoming enthralled with the impact of blogging. I constantly ask myself the question, “How can I share my ideas in a way that will be worthwhile to others?” Sometimes I’m pleased with the way my thinking comes across, and other times I know I fall short in fully getting my ideas across to my blog readers.
I think this gets frustrating because so often thinking is philosophical, it is not necessarily a tangible thing that teachers can pick up, turn around, and use in their classroom the very next day. As a literacy coach, I value reflection and taking on a deep understanding and rationales of why we do what we do as teachers. Other times though, when I’m on the receiving end of what can basically be chalked up to philosophical BS, I find myself asking the question, “Yeah, that sounds great in theory, but what does it ACTUALLY look like in a REAL classroom with REAL students?”
So to those of you out there who have ever attended a professional development put on by your district at the beginning of the year by some famous education person who gets you all pumped up on educational theories for one isolated day (or maybe two) only to leave you to deflate into the reality of knowing that you don’t have the knowledge, resources, time, or energy to actually implement a fraction of what that person was talking about, I just want to let you know that I completely hear you.
That’s why I try to make my blog whenever possible, a combination of theory/rationales coupled with practical ideas and application to go out and try. I recently completed a product for TpT that takes the Common Core grade 6 standards for literature and breaks them down into minilessons within a Reading Workshop format. There is no guessing with this. So if you love the idea of Balanced Literacy, Reading Workshop, Gradual Release of Responsibility, differentiation, and all of those other literacy buzz words floating around, but aren’t quite sure what that really looks like in your classroom, wander over to my TpT store and take a peek at my latest product that takes great educational theories and makes them tangible.
Reading Workshop Minilessons
