My students have been cruising along with our word study learning this year until tonight. I've decided to hit the brakes even though I already put the wheels in motion for Unit 12. See I got a little confident and didn't take the time to look at our post assessments for Unit 11 before I hit the gas pedal and began Unit 12.
Lucky for me, I'm paying attention to the traffic lights and seeing too many yellow and red stop lights. While I see green in certain areas, we are able to identify multiple ways to record different sounds and learned how to spell trick words, words that are tricky to spell and may not follow a typical word pattern or rule. We need to practice more to identify different types of syllables and choosing to use ee or ea when spelling new words. Sometimes when the first user manual doesn't answer your questions you have to turn to another resource. Lucky for me, Word Journeys by Gansky and Words Their Way by Bears are waiting for me upstairs.
I do need to explain to parents tomorrow that I'm not proceeding with Unit 12 this week and reviewing/relearning concepts from Unit 11 this week. They will need to hang on to their helpful tip sheet until after Spring Break. I'm also glad I'm taking a step back because that is what is good for students. It's not good to keep going forward and ignoring the traffic lights even if the company says I must drive a certain make and model.
And that would be why a textbook cannot be the only resource for learning. Love your analogy of the bus and the traffic lights.
ReplyDeleteYou're so wise to use your intuition (and brain!) to do the right thing for your kids. The analogy you came up with is beautiful.
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