Written by Before teaching Grade 7 English, I was a Grade 6 Literacy teacher. There are (I have come to realize) a great many differences between these two disciplines (but perhaps that is for another post).
Because English is new territory for me, I have just started to have my whole class read the same novel at the same time. At first, I thought that there was no way I could possibly have a “personalized” reading program with me calling the reading shots and all of my students just following along dutifully (like that ever happens, anyway). But switching into English from Literacy called for different approaches and one of those was having the whole class read the same text together. While we have read one text (the play, “I, Claudia”) together (with moments of success…more on that in another post), “The Book Thief” is really the first reading mountain my class and I have started to scale together.
The following posts are my attempts at documenting a 21st century approach at a whole-class novel study.
Because we have just started this in class (on January 9th and 10th), the next posts to follow will be chronicling my real time successes, struggles, failures, and joys at applying my pillars and attributes of 21st century learning to this unit of study.
Great post, Celeste.
I recently wondered if we need upper-year literacy courses? Or does “English” wear both hats?