100 Minutes: Chapter 2

I just love summer vacation for so many reasons. This week I spent Monday and Tuesday with my little love bug. We went to our first tumbling class, visited the library, played outside, and met daddy for lunch! Such wonderful things that we normally don't get to do. The rest of this week I am doing an independent study at school. Basically I'm earning credit for stuff I have to do anyway! It is fabulous!

Anyway, I spent a little bit of time today reading the next chapter in "100 Minutes: Making Every minute Count in the Literacy Block," and am now linking up for this great book study!

So this chapter was all about the Building Blocks. A lot in this chapter reminded me of the Daily 5, and what I am already doing. The main difference in Lisa's suggested literacy block is that reading and writing are intertwined throughout the 100 minutes. I do my best to integrate the two, because really you can't have one without the other... we obviously write during reading time, and read during writing time. However, I typically have a Reader's Workshop time, and a Writer's Workshop time and they each have their own focus. They tend to be separate workshop times in my schedule and I love the idea of intertwining them! Also, the intentionally sequenced tasks make perfect sense!

Finally, the section on choice really spoke to me. I know that research (both by the 'experts', and my own real life research) tells me that choice is imperative. This is something that I love about Daily 5. However, I often felt like students were choosing activities that had nothing to do with the mini-lesson I just taught, or the guided reading lesson they just participated in. I was never really sure how to remedy this. My favorite quote from the whole chapter was on page 23 where Lisa said, "the teacher chooses what the student is learning and the students choose how they are learning it." It helped me see that I can still incorporate choice, but that the students will "partner with the teacher" to make choices. 

While I love the idea of sandwiching the two whole group lessons around independent work time. I find it somewhat odd to have a writing lesson, and then just end the literacy block. Are the kids going to remember what I taught them the next day it they don't have time to immediately practice a taught skill?

I'm sure more will be explained as I continue on. After all, this is only chapter 2!

Head over to AppleSlices to read some more thoughts!