Today was my first day teaching my Daily Five class. Yesterday was a whirl wind as the principal and I met with a potential candidate to work alongside me in the class and teach the class when I'm not in the building. Chris came on board immediately and she and I worked together. I started by sharing my philosophy of reading teaching and the Daily 5 approach. We then worked on our classroom while getting to know each other. She must have been overwhelmed with every thing we did.
But she was here this morning when I arrived and we hit the ground running. For our first day, we had to go to existing classes and pick up our students, bring them to our new classroom and begin our Daily 5 life together.
Our classes are called Reading Essentials-6, Reading Essentials-7 and Reading Essentials -8. You can read about the class at our website at www.readingessentials.weebly.com.
The students were willing to listen to my beliefs that we could take a journey together to improve their reading. They listened somewhat skeptically as they shared their outside interests. With each student, I asked if they had to practice to get better at what they liked to do. "Do you have to practice horseback riding to get better?" Of course the answer is "Yes!"
It is the same with reading. You must read to get better.
Tomorrow is the introduction of Read to Self. We'll see how long middle schoolers can sustain their stamina. We will probably start with 3 minutes just like the Sisters recommend.
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