My kids read for ten minutes at the beginning of class – SSR of the novel. Then on Friday we read and process what they read the SSR text for the entire class period.
This, then, represents 95 min. of SSR/novel time – time devoted to reading – done during the week. In addition, roughly two classes are spent on W/Th doing Read and Discuss on the story.
The total time spent on reading activities at level 2 per week, then, is about 3 hours, with 1.5 hours spent on PQA and stories. So that is 67% of the time. The real figure would be less than that, because of the discussion part of R and D which is done in L2. But it is safe to say that the total time spent on reading alone at level 2 is more than half of the week.
Here is a breakdown of that time use:
Monday – PQA, maybe start the story if the PQA wanes. (Step 1/Step 2 are both possible on Monday)
Tuesday – Story with possible bailouts as per that category. (Step 2)
Wednesday – Story continues (rarely) but most likely the reading process starts (Step 2/Step 3 are both possible on Wednesday)
Thursday – two options:
Option 1: Embedded Reading of the Story with a significant jump in new vocabulary (goes against protocol I know).
Option 2: (I am going to test this in December) – process what was read during SSR that week as per what is described below. In other words, start what I used to do on Thursday and to to the end of Friday’s class with it. And Textivate the story reading on Thursday too.
Friday – what was read by the kids during the week in SSR is processed (this is an agreed upon amount of pages with some of the kids having gone far past that amount – they can even finish the book and go to another one – no harm there). As usual, we do that processing using R and D, including a quiz (I ask twenty y/n aural questions that were written during the week by the Quiz Writer). An option to that is to give the kids a translation test – they translate a randomly selected paragraph or page from the text read that week. If the Artist has drawn the material out during the week during SSR, and if there is time, we put that under the document camera and talk about it in L2. Then, if there is more time after that, we play a game of Word Chunking or a listen to a song or work with a poem or talk about a painting. Honestly, though, even in a level 2 class, if it’s not backwards planned (where is the time for that?) the song and poem and painting don’t work except for a few of the kids. It’s a shame not to share this great art of France with kids but I will just have to wait until the kids are older, unless I have to discuss global warming with them instead at that time to get them ready for testing, testing, testing.
I like this level 2 schedule. I like the way I get to start class listening to classical music for ten minutes and let the insane environment of school calm down a bit. The kids seem to very much appreciate the chance for some quiet too. They settle in and read, knowing that they will be tested on the text on Thursday or Friday, the rude unconsious late stragglers come in and don’t get to have any attention drawn to them, and all is good in those first ten minutes. Class is not a struggle to get through because, the way CI works, it just eats up the time – those 38 minutes (48 minute classes) of PQA and the story on Monday and Tuesday seem to go by in a blink of an eye because of the power of CI. The Wed/Thurs. reading of the story is just powerful, much better than reading a novel because the kids can read it effortlessly because of all the Circling done on the first two days of the week. This is my kind of reading – story reading. I just don’t like the novel reading that much. It’s easier and less work, but not that interesting to me or the kids. But the entire point of this is that it is a level 2 schedule.
This year I am not currently teaching level 1 and so I haven’t been thinking about it. So my point in posts and comments over the past three days here about strongly limiting the amount of novels the kids read in level 1 is still something I personally embrace. However, I won’t have to make that decision for myself again because I won’t be teaching a level 1 class again in my career. So I’m just going to leave the topic on the table for others to discuss or not. Level 1 reading – how many novels is best?