SFA

Home

Chat

Blogs

Collection

Directory

Home : 2001 : July : 13

SFA
By Janet

This may not be what you wanted to hear, but I HATED it! I hope I emphasized the HATE enough. It is so scripted that those magical teaching moments are down the drain before you can get to them in book club. The students
rarely, if ever, get to choose what they are going to read. The primary students have a difficult time doing the meaningful sentences, while the older students get tired of the same routine year after year. I became bothered by the fact that you have a certain number of minutes to complete different parts of the program i.e. 20 minutes for read aloud, which was okay but if the students

found something they were interested in we couldn't really stop to explore that topic (even though it would still be reading) because that was something to be done at the end in book club not during the beginning during read aloud. The treasure hunts are dry and boring, often nothing more than comprehension questions. The writing assignments are not useful, because SFA does not allow time to expand on them from one week to the next.

Before I sound totally negative, SFA did help increase reading test scores, but it is also the reason I left a teaching job I enjoyed very much. I just couldn't stand being a puppet any longer. I also wasn't crazy about changing students every six weeks and reteaching my rules. The final thing is it takes a lot of prep work to get everything in the program done.