Authenticity Within Reason (A Preamble)

The old saw "nothing exists in a vacuum" has no greater applicability than in education, a field of work and of thought whose highly-nuanced contexts too often lend themselves more to ineffability than to expression.  Having said this, there are some activities that I would urge any E/LA teacher toward and some I would dissuade them from:

Do:

• Model fluent reading to students (and allow students to model for each other) for no more than 25 minutes in a 90-minute class
• During reading, stop at appropriate intervals to ensure comprehension
• Require students to take notes as they read
• Show students how to take notes
• Give students a time limit for all activities
• Model the steps of the writing process (brainstorming, pre-writing/planning, drafting, revision, editing, conferencing, publishing/submission) and take the appropriate care and time when going through them 
• Subordinate boring/menial tasks for homework (e.g., drafting, recall questions, "fluff" sections of text, etc.)
• Subordinate recall questions for quizzes, quick comprehension checks, and refreshing everyone's memory of the previous class's reading at the beginning of a new day's reading
• Permit students to use a Writer's Notebook to take notes and use it on all tests and quizzes
• Prompt students to share their sample sentences using each day's vocabulary word(s)
• Prompt students to create and answer their own and each other's open-ended questions after reading
• Have students critique each other's writing within the parameters of Author's Chair

Don't:

• Skip chapters, pages
• Assign reading you know students won't/can't complete
• Assign inauthentic work (e.g., a study guide chock to the brim with recall questions)

As we move along through the school year, I'll be adding to this list whenever there is a need to.  More than anything, though, I'd like for you to e-mail me if you have any questions, problems, or concerns with whatever's listed here so we can meet one-on-one to discuss and/or arrange a workshop.  

At the top of my own concerns lie Ms. Petrie/Barry's class and Ms. Colontrelle/Mr. Blazure's class as they currently have the most students who need intensive support.  Complicating this is that fourth and fifth grade teach LA at the same time, so slots for me to come in will be on a "first-come, first served" basis...as long as I'm not called into one of the above fourth/fifth grade classes.  

So far I've been concentrating on writing process sub-steps, but I'd very much like to start doing vocabulary and reading strategy regimes in your classes as well.  

***
One final note: whatever I impart to your students shouldn't be viewed as something "special" to be done for that day alone; these are research-based, best-practice methods of instruction that, once disseminated, need to be actualized in your classrooms as often as possible, whether of the reading or writing variety.  So if you have an issue with incorporating into your lessons any of these methods, please let me know as soon as possible.