Erin Docherty, Blog 2  TEACH WITH THE SENSE OF URGENCY-Routman

     After reading the chapter on Teach with the Sense of Urgency I was highly motivated to “make every moment count.”   It had a lot of relevant information for teaching special education students that I could use in my daily teaching. I really enjoyed the emphasis on promoting the joy in learning, as I feel all children should find reading/learning fun.

       On page 48 it talked about working towards independence.  The part where it said we teachers must “at the same time provide the conditions –respect, joy, engagement, success and encouragement that make continuous learning possible” made an impact on me.  I love that statement, as I feel like it’s an important thing for children to be successful at reading and enjoy learning.  When children feel as if they are making progress towards their skills they become better at the skills.  This in itself helps them become independent readers.
     I like the try it/apply it on page 53. They gave good examples of things to ask and think about for reading fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.  Taking breaks while reading to engage in discussions about what they read helps with comprehension and understanding.  I also really enjoyed the part about interactive reading.  This is the approach that I take during my teaching.  We often read and talk as we approach a story in our reading books.  The stories are of high interest and the students can relate to the stories easily. Yet, to really gain knowledge of understanding, expand on vocabulary, and comprehend what is read we discuss the stories as we read.   

     Routman also gives examples of how creating your own texts is important when teaching reluctant and struggling readers.  They are more apt to reread something they wrote and become more interested in reading what they wrote to others.  She emphasizes that poverty stricken schools can do well with reading-writing tasks just as other schools but they benefit greatly from creating their own text and using them to make worksheets (cloze activity) cut up sentences, etc..

     I liked her principles for instruction and learning:  Students become readers and writers by processing massive amounts of text, the more meaningful a task is, the easier it is for students to learn:  the brain is a pattern maker and finder, and you only have so much time:  use it wis