Here’s an inspiring, thought-provoking e-mail I got today from Karen. She gives insight into what I might notice in her classroom.

“We had a great time and I look forward to seeing you soon. Let’s set a date, maybe for August, for you to come visit my classroom. It would not be disruptive at all. You could stay over and come into the classroom for a couple of days if you wish. Waiting until August would give me a chance to get used to the group; “boot camp” would be over by then. You would still see plenty of strategies, but would not be bored by watching the initial (repetitive) implementation of the strategies. Routines would be more in place and there would be some level of autonomy among kids who can handle it. You could be a fly on the wall, or take on any level of menial tasks if you wanted, or even wander around and speak to children about what they are doing. You could also work with individual children on “irregular sight-words” flashcards (same words for reading and spelling) because these particular words would come in very handy when teaching adults.

“These are the words that tend to occur very frequently even in simple text, but cannot be decoded effectively. Examples include words like through, of, could, they, have, do, and word. I find that if I just have them memorize this list right from the beginning, reading jumps to a new level. If you don’t directly teach a certain amount of these words up front, reading becomes almost impossible even with the most basic “baby” books. The concept isn’t mine, but how I teach the words represents years of tweaking and revising on my part. I’d be happy to share.”