LITERACY FOCUS

When thinking about the literacy instruction and assessment in my current third grade classroom, I automatically start to compare what I’m seeing to my most recent clinical last semester at a parochial school in a first grade classroom in Bloomington, Illinois.  The reason I compare the two is because, in my opinion, what I’m currently seeing in LeRoy is of great quality.  To elaborate, I feel as though my class now parallels that of what we’ve been learning in our classes based on the topic of literacy instruction.
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In LeRoy, they practice a two hour literacy block.  This includes language workshop, literacy workshop, and reading workshop.  This all happens in the morning after arrival and check-in.  During the first part of the literacy block, the teacher starts with reading a story to the whole group at the rug.  Here, she encompasses the language workshop part.  Questions are asked by the teacher along with students commenting on the story.  Next, students work on reading independently, besides the guided reading group, who sits at the kidney table with the teacher.  I enjoy sitting with this group and watching what the teacher does and says.  She’ll have students reread based on punctuation, define unknown words, and retell events in the story to build comprehension.  The guided reading groups seem to enjoy working with the teacher.  So far, the students in these groups have also seemed to enjoy the chapter books they were reading.
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After reading workshop, the students do writing, social studies, or science, which are all included under the writing workshop title.  LeRoy Elementary School’s literacy program is interesting and unique because it integrates science and social studies.  While I have not had the opportunity of seeing science taught yet, I have seen a social studies lesson implemented.  Every quarter, the class switches from science instruction to social studies instruction or vice versa.  Science does not begin again until the second week of March.  The literacy program LeRoy offers is one the district has been working on for a while now.  The approach is one of a comprehensive literacy model in which the administration and faculty have gone through professional development upon the recent development of this model.  Here, is a video from the LeRoy school district website regarding the recent adoption of this program.  My CT is featured in this :)

 I love the way my CT conducts her literacy block.  I have taken notes, and I am planning on implementing a model like hers when I become a practicing teacher.  At first, I was overwhelmed when I found out it was a whole 120 minutes.  Because it is broken down into different components, I don’t feel as though it is lengthy, and I don’t get that impression from the children either.  On the other hand, I think that while the teacher is working on the other side of the room with individual guided reading groups, the other students working independently got off task a little.  I wouldn’t consider this a huge issue; however, the students proceeded to be chatty with one another because the teacher either didn’t notice or didn’t feel it necessary to intervene.  I think with a little redirection, the students would have gotten back to work right away.
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In comparison to my last semester’s clinical, this semester I am seeing more of what I like in the literacy block.  While last semester my CT considered what they did as “reading workshop”, I soon found out that it did not have the real components that reading workshop should have.  There was never any sort of mini lesson being taught, and the teacher rarely read with students.  The only type of assessment I saw was the Dolch Sight words, which I implemented myself with all of the students on two different occasions.  So far at LeRoy, I know that my CT runs running records on her students.  This semester, I’ve so far had the opposite experiences when observing reading workshop.  From what I’ve learned in my literacy assessment class, my CT this semester seems to be on point with her instruction.  
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At this point, the only thing I am wondering about is how my CT implements writing workshop because I have not yet seen the true “writing workshop”.  This is due to the large amount of snow days the district has experienced, causing a lot of catchup work throughout the day.