Thursday, November 17, 2016

Blog 5 - Final Tatics for Successful IR

In the previous blog I discussed the first four tatics for a successful IR, which all have made a huge change in this time in my classroom! These final five are making a great improvement also.

Tatic 5: Differentiate instruction and conference. How can we know if are students are actually learning and understanding during IR time, if we do not conference with them? This time needs to be used for instruction (and not just as free time). A great way to improve the success of your IR is to sit down with your students and discuss the books they are reading. You can also make sure students are reading text that are appropriate for their levels.

Tatic 6: Use a catch to refocus the group. This is another tatic that you have to be monitoring your students for it to successfully work. We have all had that moment where we are working with one student, and the rest of the class is slowly getting off task because they realize you are not paying close attention anymore. By having a catch ready to refocus the group and get them back to work, it saves you from having to fuss at students, and quickly gets them back on task.

Tatic 7: Let the students speak. Students want to tell you what they are learning and reading! There have been several times where I have just let me student talk, because many times they just want to be heard. By letting them discuss what they are learning and reading, it gives them a way to feel that what they are doing is important, and you a quick way to assess students' understanding!

Tatic 8: Partner reading and book clubs. My students love to read together. Now, they are sixth graders and sometimes this does come with some chatting, but often times if they know I am going to ask comprehension questions or conferencing with them, they know that I am going to hold them accountable.

Tatic 9: Assess students progress. This is all for the teachers, in my opinion. This helps you as a teacher see if your IR time is successfully working, or if adjustments need to be made for your students. Assessing does not have to be a big formal test, but can be short conferences with your students.

Tatic 10: Assessment choices lead to independence. This is hard for educators, because you're giving students a choice and you may have multiple assessments going on a once. However, we all know that some of our students do well on standard assessments while others do not. By giving them the choice of their assessments, they can truly show their knowledge, and even their creativity.


I have thoroughly enjoyed reading No More Independent Reading Without Support and have found some many great things that are working for my classroom IR time!

2 comments:

  1. Tatic 7 seems to be hard for some teachers, including myself. I am learning that more and more students are becoming auditory learners and what better way for them to learn from each other than to talk about what they have read? I guess it is hard because I want order in my classroom, but with the right ground rules and classroom management, this could be so valuable.

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  2. Getting students to talk with meaning about what they are reading is really hard for my students. Sometimes we have to have organized chaos in our classroom because the ones that are talking are the ones that are really learning.

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