Ladybugs 1-4

These chapters had so many ideas I cannot wait to use in my classroom. The use of thumbs on your chin instead of raising hands is brilliant. I often will call on students who raised their hand simply because they saw other students raising their hands and didn’t want to be seen as not knowing the answer. The only potential issue was that I might not see the thumbs of some students. It is similar to the issue of kids who raise their hand at chest-level though.

The dialogue on page 48 was so inspiring. I was thrilled to see how the teacher used a common occurrence (students making something and wanting to show it off) to scaffold her writing by encouraging her to immediately seize the moment and write a short story. This “teachable moment” can be life changing for students. 

Even the way the teacher said, “You know how to end a sentence, so you can do that yourself” empowers the child to independently write what she can without the expectation that the teacher will do it for her. It is a fairly common struggle for teachers to patiently wait for a student to write something that the teacher could write much faster (like fixing punctuation). HOWEVER... speed and efficiency is not the point of teaching! We already know how to write exclamatory sentences, so taking over a student's work is counterproductive! If a student can do something, take a step back and let them do it. [mini-rant over]

I also enjoyed reading the chapter on launching readers. Although not much was brand new information, I like the reinforcement of ideas/techniques. When authors I trust agree with each other, I feel more justified in my pedagogy and more certain of the expression of these ideas to administrators.