As the semester continues and the end of the semester draws closer to an end I find myself preparing more and more for next semester. Where the elementary and middle school teachers come back from the WONDERFUL and I mean WONDERFUL Christmas break, high school teachers will be coming back to all new classes and all new students. For me, I will be coming back to an ENGLISH class, I know SCARY!!! After reading my blogs and other posted works many of you are probably cringing at this moment, sorry not my decision! However, I am preparing myself and I am up to the challenge!! I am excited and have been taking many key notes from the course to heart when it comes to preparing for my upcoming class. One thing I have been working on is building a nice classroom library, I was trying to decide how to go about building my library? When discussing the number of books needing in a classroom library, Miller and Moss wrote "more importantly, you need materials that address topics that kids want to read about." After reading this I have decided that I am going to give my upcoming students an interest inventory (something I can have them do while in their career class) to help determine some types of books/magazines that I will try to make sure I have in my library.
Another concept I have been looking at is the idea of having the students respond to what they are reading. Miller and Moss wrote "having students respond to their IR creates time for theme to reflect on what they have read and to push their thinking further by sharing those reflections with others." I love the ideas of having my students reflect and respond to what they are reading. I have been working on coming up with a few different ways to have my students do these reflections. I feel that these reflections can be beneficial in a number of ways and I am really excited to see how they will respond to all of this!!!
Wish me luck on my new adventure!!
You are SO up to this challenge, and how wonderful that you have been able to use this course to reflect and rehearse what you would like to try with your students. Starting with your classroom library and engagement inventories with students will be a great start to your independent reading! Having students respond to their reading is great for formative assessment--a struggle I faced as a teacher was making sure that the response didn't take away from the students' time to read. Good luck!!
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