Novel Study

Last week was hellish. Between observations, meetings, and more meetings I found myself struggling to make it to Friday. I was also out of the building Friday for a new teacher support training. I have mixed feeling about these sorts of things, largely because I hate being out of the building. I don't like making sub plans, nor the feeling that it might go down the tubes with the guest teacher. I usually am not enthused by the topics discussed, and find myself longing to be back in classroom for a majority of the day.

Ahh but Friday was different. The big takeaway was seeing how an experienced 5th grade teacher uses novels in her practice. While our district uses the basal reader, it also has a variety of other literacy materials. Novels are one of those resources. I've been wanting to incorporate the chapter books into my practice. Why? For one, I believe kids need to develop a love of reading, writing, and thinking. How do you get there? By reading voraciously in a variety of formats. Additionally it is a way to differentiate your reading instruction, moving from one size fits some to a more reasonable format.

The big drawback is the amount of planning. But that is what this week is for. One of the main things that this experienced teacher does is teasing the various skills out of the basal reader (provided for each unit in the basal reader), and then finding a way to apply them to the novel study. So you might be working on summarizing and questioning in the basal, but instead of using them in a small section of story you get to use them throughout a book... and get to see the end of the story (unlike in the basal!).

That is next week, a new thing for February.