Last week we had the county's Director of K-2 Reading come and do a demonstration lesson for our kindergarten teachers. We don't usually get to watch lessons from outside of our school, so this was a treat. Besides, how many Directors of Reading do you know that would come into a kinder class and demo a lesson?
This week our reading coach, Melanie Holtsman, took the big leap and taught a different type close reading lesson in the same kindergarten class. Melanie was not a kindergarten teacher but she is a risk taker and willing to put herself out there for the greater good. As you can see from her video, she is a natural and the age of the students really doesn't matter. She's simply a master teacher. She crafted her lesson around her learning from the Summer Institute at Teachers' College so she used the idea of visual text - in other words, looking at pictures! Now doesn't that make sense? What I notice when I watch the video is this new verbiage she uses, like, "I seem to think... " "I'm starting to think..." "My thinking is growing and changing..." She also asks for evidence, evidence, evidence. That's what I see as different so that she moves the students into deeper thinking about the pictures - uh, excuse me - visual text!
Make sure to go to Melanie's blog and let her know what you think about the lesson. Before the lesson, Melanie told me she'd probably pass out, but looks like she managed pretty well! Thank you Melanie!
I learned so much from doing this. I hope everyone jumps in and takes a risk with this new strategy and vocabulary. I think this will lay the groundwork for what we are now asking our intermediate students to do. The kids absolutely rocked!
ReplyDelete