Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Teaching Essentials
I received Teaching Essentials in the mail yesterday and jumped right into reading the first two chapters. I love the tone of this book. Reggie respectfully welcomes her students to the learning community with high expectations and tenderness as they in turn take risks and became active learners. The constructive way she poses a mix of questions, the positive approach used to self correct, and the resulting celebration of the students’ writing is exciting to read and watch in the videos. Reggie demonstrates an incredible bond with her students; that connection comes through the process and power of writing. Now I understand all the excitement created by Regie Routman at NRES.
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I too dove right into this book and found that Regie has such a wealth of information and experience to share! I loved her comment, "One key question to keep in mind for all of our teaching: Is this a practice that occurs in the real world? If it is just a school thing, we need to question the practice." She really emphasizes showing and explaining to our students how important it is to consider the "authentic and valued" audience and purpose behind our writing. It was interesting to read that as writers, we often "jot down ideas, draft, revise and edit as we go along, without a graphic organizer to plan before we write." So much to ponder and implement with our students. I keep seeing the buzz words "authentic" and "meaningful".
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