WSRA

I love attending conferences. First of all, it is a nice change of pace even though getting everything ready for a sub sometimes does not seem worth it; However, when I'm here and learning so much, I know that it is. (Even though I received a message from a student letting me know that Glogster is blocked for them. I've used it in the past. It wasn't blocked then. I created an example; it wasn't blocked for me. Okay -- tangential rant is over.)

Stephanie Harvey was the best presenter I saw today. So much of what she said echoed what we learned by Reading Kittle in our last class. She stressed the 5 principles of reading achievement.
1. Access: Books! Books! Books! (I need to build my classroom library. Goodwill, rummage sales, and flea markets: here I come.)
2. Volume: The more kids read the better the read and the smarter they get. (In our reader's workshop, Deanna and I have been pretty good about keeping reading time sacred. We have to be careful not to cut that time when we have other things we want to finish.)
3. Response: The more kids interact, the more they learn and understand. (This is an area we could focus on. Our students are reluctant to share, so we will need to really work on cultivating confidence and skills.)
4. Explicit Instruction: Kids need teacher modeling and time to practice. (We are moving forward with this. We just discussed how to make independent reading time more purposeful and how to connect it to the overall lesson. Right now it is a "stand alone" rather than an integrated activity.)
5. Purpose: Readers must see reading as a meaningful act. (I think the 1-minute read and the magazines from The New York Times is helping with this. Students are engaged. We could also bring in a variety of texts such as owners manuals and other real-world texts to show that reading is not exclusively a school activity.)

Other thoughts from her that I want to remember:
If we only hold them books that they can read/decode, we limit them intellectually.
All kids get the same instruction. The instruction is not differentiated, the response is. For example, students took part in an interactive read aloud. Some could have read the book on their own, others couldn't. However, all could do the thinking and responding. Student who could not read the book independently showed he understood parallel themes. Student who could read independently did not. We need to be sure we aren't holding them back from knowledge and information because they are STRIVING readers (better phrasing than struggling).

Even in sessions where I didn't get as much and didn't feel the "wow" factor, I had time to sit back, breathe, and think. That doesn't happen often in my regular day, so that in itself was worth the price of admission.