Mrs. T is a second grade teacher in Highlands Ranch, CO. She has been teaching for 17 years and has had the pleasure of teaching grades Kindergarten through sixth grade! She has taught at several different schools in both California and Colorado in a low income school, private school and a gifted school. Through her experiences she has been given the opportunity to learn and teach through several different literacy curriculums and styles.
Through her experiences she has the philosophy that a balanced approach to literacy is the best for her students. In the past there has been the argument that there is a phonics and a whole language approach and then the balance of the two. Mrs. T. looks at the balanced approach a little different. Balancing to her means blending the use of guided reading (http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/de/pd/instr/strats/guided/guided.html ) with the use of a basal program (http://www.eduplace.com/rdg/hmr05/index.html) that includes phonics and explicit vocabulary instruction.
Mrs. T used guided reading for several years in California. She appreciated it’s flexibility and levels for each student but thought the strategy lacked structure and consistency throughout the school. It also lacked a grammar element that was necessary for state testing. She also used Houghton Mifflin’s reading program. She appreciated the scope and sequence and the structure of the program and it’s use was consistent across grade levels but felt that it lacked differentiation among her students.
Today, Mrs. T. uses a combination of both programs to help her students become literate. She finds this process time consuming but a necessity for students.
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