I believe I am in the majority when I say that I feel like I have tons I need to teach, but do not feel I have the time to do it all. Mainly I feel like I am able to get all the items introduced and taught, but making sure every student has learned it? That I do not feel I have time for, especially with seeing 85-90 students a day. Thankfully, this chapter made me feel a bit more at ease specifically the part that says to limit the work you take home. I am not a person who takes work home unless it is the weekend, otherwise I just stay late and work on it at school. There have been too many times to count when I brought work home to grade and it sat in my car.
What I found incredibly interesting was when Routman talked about commenting on student work, and said that commenting does little to improve their writing. It was interesting because I have read a few books that say commenting is much more important than the grade or score. I know Routman did not mean, do not comment and do not give the child any feedback. She wanted to emphasize verbal feedback with conferences, which I think is much more meaningful to see the student face to face when discussing their work. This is something I definitely need to do with writing and my projects.
Routman also discussed eliminating or reducing daily worksheets or isolated exercises. I have never been a huge fan of copying workbook sheets. However, I do like to do daily language exercises a few days a week as a bell ringer. Again, I don't use the textbook examples. I often create my own and relate them to whatever is going on in the world, or "their" world. It is a good attention grabber! I will keep this in mind when I am tempted to make copies of worksheets with content the students cannot relate.
With the help of this book, I finally have answers to some ongoing questions and new ideas that I had not thought of before. I am well aware of what I need to work on, and actually look forward to fixing those problems.
