Like this:

I like the idea of viewing school as their job.  It gives them a feeling of importance and responsibility.  When you phrase things like that to a 1st grader it can work wonders.

The author used her share time to not only help other students learn about and get to know each other, but she also used it to get to know her students and their interests and reading backgrounds.  I love the way she took something from each child’s explanation of their favorite book and turned it into something she could use in future lesson planning and interactions with that particular student.  This gave her the opportunity to know which students are being exposed to text outside the classroom and which ones might need extra support.  Also, this gives her some ideas when choosing just right books for individual students.  She can pull a dinosaur book for Johnny, a princess book for Hayden, and a Dora the Explorer book for Sandy and know they’ll love it and enjoy reading it.  It is so important to make them experts in something they love.

She also handled the students reactions towards each other very well.  When one student pointed out the condition of another student’s book and hurt her feelings, the teacher turned the words and the situation around to make it a positive one.  A worn cover could mean that she has read it millions of times.  She did a good job of making each student feel as though their selection was the most important and interesting one in the class.

She also models for her students and is explicit about what she expects from them.  She also used personal experiences that the students can relate to.  The experiences may also help take some of the pressure off of them for the assignment.  If they see her doing it one way, then they can better understand it and do it just like she did.

I also like the way she compared adult reactions to books to student reactions to books.  She noticed that we all basically go through the same motions when choosing a book: look at the title, illustrations, blurb on the back, and maybe a paragraph in the book.  We do the same things with our students, and we need to focus on making them readers for life, not simply readers in the classroom.

Sometimes when we teach a print strategy, it can be geared to specifically to one group of students, or even one student in particular.  This can cause us to lose the other students along the way.  It is ok to teach these particular strategies in smaller, guided groups.  We must learn to be flexible.

I liked her focus on readers as good thinkers.  It is not only important for them to read and interact with the text, but it is also important for them to interact with each other as a way of building their reading abilities.  By interacting with each other, they are learing how to think about the text out loud. This will help them learn to do this on their own when they are reading independently and will help build their comprehension skills.  It is a great way to use modeling.  Interacting with each other through conversation and pairing activities can prove to be very useful in the classroom.

I think it is important to reflect on what they’ve learned.  Bringing their attention back to something they have previously discussed can be a great way to recall information and build on it.  Too often we learn material or strategies and never revisit them.  This can often lead to the loss of that information, which can be a tragedy.  Kids love to show what they know so this is a great way to let them do that.  Reader’s theater, literature circles, and book talks are a few examples of great ways to use this in your classroom.  My cooperating teacher has a Harry Potter day right before Christmas break as a wrap up to the semester.  On this day, the students use centers to review things they have learned in literacy, math, and science, while tying it all together with Harry Potter (a book they used as a read aloud throughout the semester).  The kids love it and it helps them recall prior knowledge in a fun and inventive way.

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