There is a kind of reading routine or cycle. Whether we are in a typical story week or in a plowing week doesn’t matter, there is a loose sequence of events that I move through whenever we are doing reading:
- 10 min. of SSR
- translation of what we just read
- R and D
- dictée (optional)
- quiz (optional)
And back to the top of that cycle. Loose. Not too planned. Not trying to cram everything into one day. Whenever it happens. It’s just a reading process that works. I am not trying to standardize anything here or say that it is right for someone else. It’s how I mainly spend Fridays with level 1 and level 2 kids.
I have come to a point in recent years where I realize that I must stop overplanning all this stuff and just trust more. Too many activities make us crazy.* The Weekly Schedule that I just published here is a routine, that’s all. It makes me not have to plan a thing. And so with this reading cycle, the same thing is true. It’s just a routine.
(You can plan all you want – I’m done with that. I find that the more I plan the more awkward and stilted my classes feel and I loose that natural interest and mojo.)
*Thomas Merton said:
“To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone with everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”