Jessica Barwick: December Blog

Routman Ch. 4 - Teach with a Sense of Urgency

One of the best points made in this chapter is contained in the first sentence!  Routman urges us to
"[make] every moment in the classroom count" (p. 41).  To me, this one thought sums up what I try to do in my classroom every day, even if I'm not always successful.  I love going home exhausted but knowing that I was 100% engaged with my students the entire day and made every moment that I had with them count.  Yes, there are days when I might need to respond to an email for a few minutes while my students are working on an activity, or when I extend recess a few minutes longer on Friday in order to get my Friday Folders done.  There are so many things to think about/do on a daily basis that it's hard sometimes for teachers to focus only on the kids.  But I think it's a great goal to have, and it makes me feel like a successful teacher on the days that I reach it!

I appreciated the four phases in Routman's optimal learning model, and the insistence that "we think about teaching in terms of our students' needs and interests.....we no longer jump right in to provide the expected word or response but now give children an opportunity to problem solve on their own" (p. 47).  It's hard not to immediately help a student when they are struggling, but using this model of gradually releasing responsibility, students should feel more successful independently and know that it's okay to struggle and get frustrated.  They should have the tools to know what to do independently when this happens.  One thing I found interesting in this chapter is that Routman mentions several times the importance of mutual respect between teacher and student, and how having a good, trusting relationship is key to student learning.  I have personally witnessed how important this relationship-building is, and I spend lots of time with my students in and out of the classroom getting to know them and establishing trust so that they will trust me with their education.

Another take-away from this chapter is that it's important that we make learning meaningful, and don't just teach skills in isolation, but apply them to other contexts.  In fact, Routman discourages pull-out programs that will take students away from reading and writing immersion in the classroom.  Sometimes, it's hard to move away from the "check off" system of skills.  We want to make sure that we're "covering" all of our standards (in every subject - not just ELA), and sometimes in looking over the standards as I'm planning, I realize that I haven't explicitly taught how to find the main idea and supporting details, for example.  So I will plan lessons for a couple of weeks that will focus on that skill using short reading passages (since they will see these on standardized tests).  I don't necessarily see anything wrong with this method, but I am also reiterating it while my students are doing research for our animal writing unit.  It is probably more meaningful to them to summarize the main idea of an article for the purpose of writing their animal papers than it is to find the main idea of an unrelated reading passage.

Finally, I loved the section on interactive read-alouds.  Reading aloud to my fifth graders is one of my favorite things I do as a teacher.  I related to Routman when she said that she sometimes didn't want to interrupt the flow of a story by stopping to ask questions.  I hate doing this, too, but there are so many great things to discuss in the context of a read-aloud!  I tell my students all the time, "Sorry, I can't help it - I'm a teacher" when I feel like I'm stopping too much during a story.  But maybe I can just read all the way through sometimes for the effect of the story, then re-read another time for the teaching points.