Angie Smith Blog Post #4 - Routman Chapter 4: Teach with a Sense of Urgency
As a special education teacher I feel like I have always taught with a sense of urgency, but not as Routman explains teaching with a sense of urgency. My students come to me behind their peers, most significantly behind their peers. Parents want their child to "catch up" in hopes that they can mainstream into a regular education classroom with their same aged peers. Routman states that teaching with urgency is about "making every moment count." This chapter has challenged me to reflect on my teaching practices and think about why I do what I do. I have been able to find areas where I believe that I am doing well, and areas where I need to make changes. The majority of my students are significantly language delayed. Routman discusses giving these students the opportunity to hear, speak, practice, and interact with language rich stories and literacy as opposed to learning skills in isolation. She encourages us to give our language delayed students the opportunity to discuss stories in progress to help them strengthen their language and vocabulary. Routman states that she often writes her own texts for students in her lowest guided reading groups due to the difficulty in finding meaningful texts at this lower level. I struggle with finding text that my students can relate to and that interests them at lower text levels. I like the idea of writing my own reading text that is related to our unit of study or about topics that my students express interest in. I enjoyed reading this chapter, and I am excited about challenging my students in appropriate and meaningful ways by teaching them with a sense of urgency and joy!
As a special education teacher I feel like I have always taught with a sense of urgency, but not as Routman explains teaching with a sense of urgency. My students come to me behind their peers, most significantly behind their peers. Parents want their child to "catch up" in hopes that they can mainstream into a regular education classroom with their same aged peers. Routman states that teaching with urgency is about "making every moment count." This chapter has challenged me to reflect on my teaching practices and think about why I do what I do. I have been able to find areas where I believe that I am doing well, and areas where I need to make changes. The majority of my students are significantly language delayed. Routman discusses giving these students the opportunity to hear, speak, practice, and interact with language rich stories and literacy as opposed to learning skills in isolation. She encourages us to give our language delayed students the opportunity to discuss stories in progress to help them strengthen their language and vocabulary. Routman states that she often writes her own texts for students in her lowest guided reading groups due to the difficulty in finding meaningful texts at this lower level. I struggle with finding text that my students can relate to and that interests them at lower text levels. I like the idea of writing my own reading text that is related to our unit of study or about topics that my students express interest in. I enjoyed reading this chapter, and I am excited about challenging my students in appropriate and meaningful ways by teaching them with a sense of urgency and joy!
I love the idea of writing the texts that would be useful and meaningful for your students! We often spend so much time look for and through resources without ever feeling like we found all that we needed. You know your students better than any one else. Surely, the text that you produce would be best suited to your students' needs. I would love to hear how it works out if you decide to give it a try!
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