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Home : 2003 : August : 4
OK, here are my best answers to your questions. I only have a year of experience with 4-blocks,
Writing block: I am a freak about having the students write. They had a writing related assignment for homework every night. The concepts covered in writing for first and second grade are actually quite similar. I started with a review of sentences: what they are, how to know if you have one, punctuation, for the entire class. I think that was basically the first quarter. From that point, I basically taught 2nd grade mini-lessons. The individual conferences really help with the 1st graders especially. My class was small, so I met with the struggling writers 2X a week and the others 1X a week and went through their writing with them. My expectations were very much based upon what each individual child could do, and those were communicated in the conferences so students weren't put in a position of feeling different than someone else. Let me also say that I had some very gifted writers, but overall my class turned out to be excellent writers by the end of the year. I had 1st graders who were writing full stories with beginning,middle,ends that actually had multiple characters and events in order, etc. everything you would expect of 2nd graders. My 3rd/4th grade co-worker was consistently amazed at the products they were turning out. I think the high expectations paired with appropriate support really worked well. Guided Reading: I did use both 1st and 2nd grade books. My students each had 6 reading books!!! We studied each story for about 5 days. I varied the difficulty of the story each time. At the beginning of the year, I chose the easier stories that I knew would be more entertaining for the students, especially since the 2nd graders had read them the year before. We ended up doing most of the stories from each book, all the way through the harder 2nd grade book. The book "Guided Reading the 4 blocks way" has tons of ideas for how to work with the stories. I varied the way I taught and what the students did based upon the difficulty of the story and what I wanted them to learn. If I chose a harder story, I may start with echo reading or teacher reading and then eventually have them read in partners or groups of 3. If it was an easier story, I might start with shared reading and eventually ask the students to read on their own. This is another block where I worked to give each student what they needed. I had a few 2nd graders who were excellent "coaches", so if I were pairing students I would use them with struggling readers. If I had a story that some would find hard and others easy, I would vary the activity accordingly: some would read along, others with a partner, others with me. ("three ring circus") Again, I tried to provide the extra support for those who needed it. I hope these answers help! Sorry it took so long!
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