Michelle Butler - November Blog Post - Ch.4 - Teach with a Sense of Urgency

Michelle Butler – Blog #4 – Routman Ch.4:

Overall, I enjoyed reading this chapter. It was a good review of best practices for teaching reading. However, the part of the chapter that I marinated on the most was the discussion of the 4 phases of learning. As good teachers, our daily lesson plans should always include each of the 4 phases of learning:

1.     Demonstration

2.     Shared demonstration

3.     Guided practice

4.     Independent practice

I feel that I provide sufficient opportunities for numbers 1-3. However, due to the population that I teach, we really struggle to get to number 4. Independence is hard for my special learners. They really lack the confidence “to give it a try”. We spend a great deal of time encouraging, building self esteem, practicing with EVERY skill. Even after “heavy” modeling and practice, most of my students will freeze in fear when asked to read to me or when given a writing task. They are so afraid that they will get it wrong that they will struggle to even give it a try. Right now, we are really working on writing – which is directly impacted by other academic and functional strengths and weaknesses such as speech and language, auditory and visual processing, reading ability, sight word reading, gross and fine motor skills. Since most of my students have significant deficits in all of these areas, they are already fighting an uphill battle when it comes to reading and writing. At this mid-point of the year, my students have the foundation mostly in place (letter names and sounds, letter formation, fine motor skills to hold a book/pencil, some sight words) so that they are able to attempt reading and writing. My goal for the 2^nd quarter is to move them towards independence on their instructional level as much as possible.