The curriculum we use at our school is called StoryTown. The teachers guide provides teachers with daily lesson plans and even provides scripts to follow. Comparing this curriculum with the Book Club Plus suggestions shows me that there are many differences and a few similarities between the two curriculums. StoryTown uses more direct instruction. Many of the lessons are about telling the students different things like what rhyming words are and what a syllable is (for example). Then the teacher and the students will do examples all together with teacher telling them what to say. These concepts are later present in a book that the curriculum provides for the students and is read to the class after the teacher tells the students what the concepts are. To me, this is not as meaningful as it could be. Much of the focus in StoryTown to me is based around phonics instruction. There is a theme in StoryTown, and maybe it is the way my CT has presented the material, but I was not even aware of an ongoing theme until she gave me the teacher guide. She does not focus on the theme or ask the students to make connections between the texts or even explore the theme further past reading a story about it.
The Book Club Plus curriculum seems more literacy based. There are still the same aspects and objectives present in the BCP curriculum, however they seem to be more intertwined into literacy and a thematic approach. For instance, many things like phonemic awareness and rhyming can be introduced using different types of literacy and can be supplemented with direct instruction. I liked how BCP has different roles for the teacher in regards to instruction. It seems to me that most of the StoryTown curriculum is explicit instruction and modeling. In BCP, they encourage a variety of teacher instruction ranging from the teacher controlling most of the lesson and students controlling most of the lesson. I think this would work for kindergarten because they do need a lot of direct instruction, modeling and scaffolding at first but as they begin to grasp major components of literacy, they are able to be independent and can take more control of their learning by use of discussion and presenting. When using the StoryTown curriculum, I have noticed a small amount of teacher directed discussion, however the questions were short and there was no student to student discussion.
Both curriculums seem to be theme based. Like I said, I think it is more meaningful to have a theme like BCP where various components of literacy are present within that theme and within valuable literature. Both curriculums seem to be flexible (to an extent). BCP seems to take into account that all classrooms are different and teachers are able to choose literature based on what their students needs are. StoryTown provides themes. One theme later this year is "Down on the Farm." This frustrated me when I found out this was a theme because it is not very applicable to urban children in an urban setting. How will this be meaningful?
I do see reading, writing, listening, viewing and speaking in my classroom. The students do independent "reading" after their journal times, where they look at books. They are not supposed to be speaking during this time so it is meant to be silent reading. They usually look at the pictures and when they ask me to read to them, I have to explain that it is silent reading time and they can use the pictures to figure out what is happening in the story. They also "read" the morning message, which they have memorized, but it is different each day, so they can do the part with the date easily but then when the words change like "P.E. is tomorrow" or "Art is next week," the teacher reads this and if the student can read, they read along too but the rest of the class mumbles with us.
The students enter the classroom and begin to write in their journals. By writing, I mean the teacher has written on the board and in SOME students' books (a few don't have it written in their books but they write it independently) "Mm is for _____" and the students need to trace what the teacher has written and then one student gets to pick the word for that day. M was the letter the first week, and then S. The phonics program chooses the word order and it is not explained as to why. The students must write the word independently or as the teacher to write it and they trace it. They must write it in lowercase letters. These are the journal writing rules my CT enforces. It is not correlated to what the BCP textbook says is appropriate for emergent writing.
The students mainly listen to the teacher read a story during the language arts lesson and they listen to the teacher during the morning meeting where we do calender, what school day it is, and the weather. They rarely receive time to listen to the ideas of their peers.
The students have opportunities to view books during the silent reading time. The teacher brings one bin of books from her library and they are allowed to choose from that bin. There are about 15 other bins in which they are not allowed to choose from that sit in her "reading" area. They also view the morning message written on the whiteboard and they watch the teacher complete the morning meeting activities such as calender.
The students speak occasionally when the teacher asks questions based on the StoryTown curriculum guide. Sometimes she will ask them to predict what will happen in a story when she is half way through. They are allowed to discuss their ideas about math during certain math lessons.
In conclusion, the ideas that are presented in BCP are somewhat contradictory to what I see in my classroom. I would like to try and implement something more appropriate to their age (which they discuss a lot in the BCP textbook.) Hopefully my CT will be open to this.
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