Last month I traveled to Northern Virginia to present a session on comprehension strategy instruction for a school beginning to learn about our Making Meaning® program. The school leaders couldn’t have been more gracious (true Virginia hospitality) and their high expectations for both student and teacher learning was obvious. We met with the teachers after the students had gone home. Picture sixty teachers in a media center for two hours with report cards due the next day. The audience was polite (as Virginians typically are) and had thoughtful discussions but it’s tough to know what people are really thinking when their plates are already so full. I left feeling that I had done my job but not sure that I had met their needs. Later that evening I received the following email forwarded by the Literacy Coach from the school and was reminded of what sets our work apart.

To my friends at DSC,

I hope you go to bed tonight with the knowledge that you’ve made the world just that much better of a place for many kiddos and teachers out there….

I will be completely honest, I was really treating this afternoon’s in-service as something else to get done on my very busy “to do” list. I even brought some work with me thinking that I could sneak it under the table…teachers can be such bad audience members!
 
I was so pleasantly surprised with everything about the presentation! All of what she was sharing makes complete sense as to why my sixth graders struggle so much with the deeper-level-thinking type of questions on ecart and the SOLs. When we are reading and discussing a novel we do at times get into much more inferring type of discussions. However, I never give them a chance to spend more than one day with a short piece of writing or poem to explore such open-ended discussions like was modeled in Making Meaning.

I will admit that I spend way too much time with multiple choice tasks and test taking strategies. The most powerful thing that I walked away with today is how much we can teach by letting go of “the correct answer is...” mentality!
 
Sorry for the bit of ramble, I haven’t been this excited about something related to new curriculum ideas in a really long time!  I will stop by to talk to you about how I should get started with this looking at the second half of the school year.
 
Thanks,
—Kim