Gallman November Blog

Chapter 4 Teach With a Sense of Urgency

I was very pleased with this chapter on teaching with a sense of urgency and what it taught me. Routman states that teachers should make every moment in the classroom count. This sounds like it should just be common sense and a natural thing, but it is very hard to accomplish. It seems like a million things often happen in one class setting and before you know it it's time to move on to something different. I love when Routman says that we need to keep our expectations high for our students. I definitely agree that we often require very little of our students and I feel that they need more responsibility with certain things. I am going to start requiring and expecting more from my students in order to help them become more independent readers and writers. However, the biggest responsibility is on the teacher. As teachers, we need to be sure that we are constantly modeling the things we expect our students to do. It is important also for teachers to make sure learning is enjoyable, every minute should count with students having some fun with what they are doing. My favorite part of the chapter was when Routman talked about interactive reading. Whenever I read to my students, I hardly ever give time to talk about the story before I am done reading. Giving them time to interact with each other and talk to a partner during the middle of reading is just one more way to maximize class time and make very minute count. I have learned some things that I can do in my classroom to help ensure that there is little time wasted in my everyday instruction.