Full-Day kindergarten teachers refine their balanced literacy skills
Teachers in Prince William County’s full-day kindergarten program recently spent time away from the classroom practicing new approaches for developing student literacy. The School Division brought in Dr. Janet Richardson, a nationally-known consultant in literacy instruction, to help build the teachers’ skills in guided reading, one of the components of balanced literacy.
Balanced literacy is the Division’s instructional model for delivery of language arts instruction, and these teachers spent two half-days in March learning first-hand the difference guided reading can make in literacy development.
Balanced literacy offers a graduated level of support for teaching the language arts to children. The process begins by reading aloud to children and introducing them to the world of books and literature. Students then move to “guided reading,” where they begin to read the words themselves but with heavy support from teachers and others. Finally, students gra
duate to independent reading when they show that they are capable of navigating the text on their own. In a balanced literacy program, guided reading proves to be a key component in nurturing successful early readers.
The two-part professional development activity with Richardson provided teachers with a unique chance to observe the techniques they learned on actual students, and then to practice under supervision from an expert. In each of the half-day sessions, Richardson demonstrated the guided reading lesson with kindergarten students from Minnieville and Mullen Elementary Schools. Teachers were then grouped together to review assessment data for individual students and were asked to plan guided reading lessons based on the needs of each child. Finally, the teachers got to try out their individualized reading lessons on the students while Dr. Richardson oversaw their progress and offered advice.
In this unique development setting, teachers were able to learn, watch, and then practice the new techniques they had learned. Along with the consultant and their kindergarten colleagues, teachers refined and re
vised their learning about guided reading in order to apply new instructional strategies in their own classrooms. The teachers who participated learned a great deal, and all of them were excited to try out the new strategies with their own students.
These most recent development sessions were the second time this school year that full-day kindergarten teachers were given the chance to enrich their training. Additional sessions with Richardson are planned for next year with the newly expanded team of full-day kindergarten teachers.
4/10/06
