Never Linear

Lesson planning is something that I struggle with. The unit plan and attached lessons, that our cohort needed to complete, was a difficult assignment for me. I couldn't picture where my 23 kiddos were at that very moment, and whether they would be ready for the lessons I was writing. After all, a lesson really isn't any good if it doesn't meet the needs of your kids, right?

That feeling has been combined with my observations on student writing. Seeing their writing folders at conferences, I observed how disjointed the work seemed to be. There were countless sheets of paper tossed haphazardly into a folder, most not connected to one another. Was that the way writing was supposed to work? How would Routman look at the writing?

Finally I am starting to put it together in the midst of my still lingering discomfort around "knowing." I really want to bring in my laptop to record digital stories with the kids. I want to have a purpose for writing, and less of the scattered pieces of paper. I've also thought about using Audacity to create podcasts and audio books that could be compiled onto a cd for all of the kids. My MT has a cassette player/recorder, which I think could be good for testing out. But I'd like them to be able to take it home as testament to their work- "look, I made this! I'm on CD!" I also want to start writer's notebooks, and move away from the loose leaf paper, as I feel like it can be a way to show growth over time (almost like a flip book). Why am I at this point? Well....

"... what good teachers do, evaluate, rethink as they go. Teaching is a
draft-in-process: never linear, always changing." Routman p.149