Balanced Literacy - 100 Minutes

I am SO excited to be joining in on this book study! I have been read the first few chapters of Lisa Donohue's book and now that school is officially out (hip-hip!) I can sit down and devour the rest. Hope you join us in the awesome book study!

Students need time for:

-explicit teaching

-guided learning

-independent work

"Technology should never be an additional thing to teach...but instead be an integrated component of daily instruction." (p. 14) Love this! I get asked all the time by other teachers how they should teach their students to use a computer program or an app. I constantly tell them "don't" because all they need to do is show the kids what they should be doing and the students will catch on (with a few exceptions) and run with it. Our students know how to use technology better than we do most of the time.

"The concept of anything other than the 21st century is ancient history to our youngsters." (p. 14) 

Enough said.

"...routines need to continue to deepen and become richer as the year progresses." (p. 15)  This was an "ah-ha sentence for me. I constantly revisit our Daily 5 routines, but I seldom deepen them. Lisa Donohue, you are brilliant!

"Once routines become stale and mundane student engagement quickly decreases." (p. 15) Students need a variety of choices with "familiar routines."

Lisa goes on to talk about "The Basics" of the 100 minute literacy block. I loved this part of the book because I love, love, love seeing into other classrooms and that is what this section felt like to me.

100 Minute Literacy Block

Reading Time - Whole Class - 20 to 30 Minutes

(this is what I think of as Shared Reading in my classroom)

-introduce strategies

-model thinking

-student discussion

-question students (Blooms Taxonomy)

AWARD Time - Individual/Small Group Work - 40 minutes

-students work individually on skills or with the teacher

Writing Time - Whole Class - 20 to 30 Minutes

-introduce writing strategies

-model writing

-discuss writing

"Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape." (p. 18)

Lisa ends with a section titled "100 Minutes in Action" that gives us a glimpse of this process over a couple months. This part is priceless! Can't wait for more :)

How to deepen my routines. This part made me think so much. I've started to come up with some ideas that will be shared later on!

I don't have a "100 minute" block of time next year. Sad, right? So I will have to figure out how to break this up in two sections. I can totally do it, but I wish I had that 100+ minutes.

-How do you all "deepen" your routines?

-What do daily schedules of other teachers look like with the 100 minutes built in?

Make sure to link up with Beth over at Thinking of Teaching with your thoughts and follow along with us on this awesome book study journey!