I recently enjoyed a solo trip to Barnes & Noble. This meant I had a solid chunk of time that I could actually spend reading and exploring. I headed to the children’s section, because isn’t that what every teacher does when they are alone at Barnes & Noble? As I walked and read I slowly built a pile of beautiful books that I was excited to share not only with my own children, but also with the learners in the classrooms where I work. After 30 minutes I was getting ready to the cashier when I stumbled across the book Mindful Assessment: The 6 Essential Fluencies of Innovative Learning (Teaching 21st Century Skills to Modern Learners) by Lee Watanabe Crockett and Andrew Churches. I stopped
An informal survey of teachers I work with revealed that very few of them found the time to plan an interactive read aloud each day. To be sure, most balanced literacy teachers are reading aloud every day, but taking the time to plan it seems to be a different question. It's understandable; we already spend so much time planning small groups and conferences and mini-lessons. It's easy enough to pick up a book from my classroom library at the last minute, share my thinking and ask questions on the fly. There is never anything wrong with reading aloud to kids, and there are many circumstances across a day when that kind of on-the-fly reading would be totally appropriate-- think about post-
