Last week I wrote about sketching out a genre unit. Today, we’ll look at the nitty gritty of planning a genre unit. Here are my goals when creating a genre unit: Build on the foundation of the last genre unit during mini lessons (spiral review). Immerse students in the genre by delivering daily read alouds. Give students ways to apply new learning to their independent reading (guided practice). Guided by these goals, my planning revolves around mini lessons, read alouds and guided practice. I want my genre units to be useful year after year, so I plan MORE lessons than any one teacher is likely to need. Having a library…
-
-
Sketch Your Genre Unit in 6 Steps
If you want to teach your reading curriculum through a series of in-depth genre units (if you want to implement genre study), here’s your planning mantra: Collect, Immerse, Teach, Notice, Define, Analyze. In this post, I’ll summarize each of the six steps and explain how you can organize your lessons (all lessons, even the ones that aren’t genre-specific) logically across a unit. Here we go! Six Steps to Genre Unit Collect Quality Texts: This part is all you, the teacher. When you begin planning your genre unit, collect a big ol’ stack of grade-level picture books from the genre (bring one of those plastic crates on wheels to the library…or…
-
Genre Study = Automatic Spiral Review
I don’t know about you, but I feel overwhelmed by the phrase “spiral review.” Sure, you want to give students opportunities for meaningful review, but “spiral review” brings to mind convoluted spreadsheets. You chart out a complicated course only to find yourself constantly treading water. But there’s good news, if you’re a reading workshop teacher (especially if you use genre study), you can engage in meaningful review without the spreadsheets. All reading instruction falls into a few broad categories. In genre study, each genre unit addresses these broad categories and fills in the details according to the genre you’re currently studying. Here’s an example: Instead of having a “text structure”…
