I'm utilizing smaller blocks of time to get things done. My social studies/literacy block is an hour long 4 days a week, and 45 minutes on Wednesdays. The issue I've been trying to tackle is how to ensure I engage all of literacy, and not simply the nonfiction end of things. Its my Everest, and I am determined to make the hour block of time work.
I borrowed the idea from the Reading Zone, a posting I found a while back. The main difference is that instead of a read aloud, I am substituting leveled and independent reading (I'm hoping to start some book groups next week). Also, instead of 55 minutes, I am working with 60. I'm working on 15-20 minutes of reading, which is currently a short story from our basal reader. Following that is 40-45 minutes of social studies content, which still has reading integrated. My hope is to have Mondays be a strategy/skill instruction day and then the remainder of the week be focused on employing that strategy while I pull small groups. We'll see.
The driving force was a level of guilt I had. While I was providing some fictional reading, I was providing a vast majority of my instruction in nonfiction... barely nicking the surface of the wide array of fiction (particularly in intermediate grades). Part of me didn't feel bad (the part that recognized that a vast majority of what adults read is in the form of nonfiction- I forget the statistic on that, but it is well over 50%). But the other part was... well, wanting to do better.
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