Saturday Sayings: Day In and Day Out

This week I attended an emergency school board meeting with around 300 other people to hear what the community thought about our recently failed levy.  The school board had three options:  run the levy again in May, run it in August, or leave it be and let our budget committee figure out what stays and what goes in order to make up for a loss of about 3 million dollars.  Three million is a lot, especially for a district like mine.  

Over the years I've heard rumors about how poor the funding is in my district but nothing ever seemed official enough to quote.  All of that was confirmed by our school board chairman at the levy meeting.  He reaffirmed that Idaho is the second to the lowest state for funding and that my district is one of the poorest in the state of Idaho.  Do the math.  That would put my district towards the bottom of the barrel in the whole country.  So the rumors are true and worse than I could have imagined.  

Yet I don't believe a stranger would walk into my school or my classroom and feel sorry for my students or me.  Maybe it's because I've spent all 20 years of my teaching in the same district and don't know any better, but I don't think we act like we're poor or disadvantaged.  We educate and inspire just like anyone else.  Having said that, I notice the perks of working in some of the nearby richer districts, and at times, I salivate.  What would it be like to have the resources they have?  But I have 20 years of proof that I, the teacher, am what really counts and makes the difference day in and day out.  Cunningham and Allington are right.  For good or bad, what I do in my classroom from 8:10 to 2:35 matters the most.  

Granted, money helps.  The money to pay for more teachers to bring down my teacher-to-student ratio of 1:25 would help immensely.  We need our 3 million, but money doesn't guarantee good teachers and good teaching.  Poor teaching occurs in rich districts as well as in poor ones.  What's important is that my students have no idea there are rumors about their district and that the rumors are true.  The quality of instruction is what should protect them from those facts.  I plan on keeping it that way.

Bang for Your Buck!

Over the years, I've learned a thing or two from Patricia Cunningham.  This post is about one of my favorites.  I love the way this activity teaches young readers how to use strategies when they read.  Follow along and see what I mean.

1.  I put this sentence on the board and ask the kids to read it with me, inserting the word "blank" at the end.  

2.  I tell them that their goal is to figure out the mystery word, but it has to make sense and sound right.  Volunteers give me suggestions, but I make sure they read the sentence and insert their word so we can all hear if it makes sense and sounds right.  If it does, I write their word on the board.  For lack of time, I only take four suggestions.

3.  Of course, I then tell them that readers are never guessers.  (Actually, I say, "Readers are never..." and they finish my sentence.  That's how often they've heard me say this.)  They have to get their mouth ready, so I uncover the first letter of the mystery word.  One at a time, I ask them if we could keep each word that has been suggested.  "Does it look right?"  I erase any that don't look right.

4.  Now I ask for new suggestions, but it has to make sense, sound right, and look right.  Again for lack of time, I stop at four suggestions.

5.  Before uncovering the rest of the mystery word I say, "Lots of words begin the same..." and they say, "...but they don't end the same" in order to reinforce how similar words can be.  In order to figure out the mystery word they have to get their mouths ready and slide to the end.  As I uncover one letter at a time, they make the sounds and then read the mystery word.  In this particular instance they didn't guess the mystery word, but they used some great strategies to figure it out!

I pretty much do one of these a day until every name in my class has been used.  I use various sentence starters.

Dejia is...

Dejia can...

Dejia likes...

Dejia was...

etc.

After several days, I also use mystery words that start with blends and digraphs.  

Twenty-three times over they hear the same strategies repeated in a meaningful context.  (What's more meaningful than their names?)  I've made a list of the many strategies that they hear over and over through this one activity.  Talk about getting a lot of bang for your buck!

Does it make sense?

Does is sound right?

Does is look right? 

Get your mouth ready.

Slide to the end.

Look at the whole word.