JP Pohl   Blog #2
Routman--Chapter 4 Teaching with a Sense of Urgency

This year has been difficult to get started, more so than years past. I have felt like I have been "teaching with a sense of urgency" and not the way as described in the book.

This chapter has reinforced and validated my thoughts, ideas of teaching. In the classroom, I am continuously modeling, talking out loud and raising the bar for my students learning. As described by the Optimal Learning Model, I like to turn things over to the students after Christmas Break; meaning that the students are doing majority of the talking and teaching with little to no assistance from me.

In the section of Integrating Basic Skills into Challenging, Relevant Curriculum, I like to think that I am already providing my students with these skills. Although we do spend time on letter names and sounds, I hit a skill and go. I will return to the skill later in the day with another story and hopefully the students can recall the skill and we can build on it. I am a huge fan of inventive spelling. At the start of the school year, I try to stress how important it is to say an unknown word slowly in order to stretch the word/ chunk it out so that all sounds may be heard and every year I am amazed at how well the students can perform this task with relative ease. The words are sometimes spelled correctly and even if they are not spelled correctly, you can figure it out. What I do struggle with, and let me be honest, where I could use the most help is writing. However, after the last D6 University class, I learned that not all writing has to be prompted. I have allowed the students to write more about what interests them and not so worried about tying everything into our reading.

I enjoyed this chapter, as it made me feel as though I am "teaching with a sense of urgency" and joy!