Today’s workshop at N will be based entirely on materials brought by the teachers. We have an assessment workshop with written texts straight from the classrooms and then will have a workshop for peer evaluation of our new teacher narratives and a rubric produced by one of the teachers. I am happy that the teachers feel comfortable bringing their materials to the group and that there are many pieces to choose from.
One message which is being communicated by the participants is that they are constantly surprised that they are now going back to classroom activities and teaching strategies from the past. They are realizing that it is legitimate to use “forbidden” activities from the Whole Language days.
I’ll write more after the session.
I know that this is probably only rhetorical nit-picking, but if I may – it’s not “legitimate to use ‘forbidden’ activities”. If they’re “forbidden”, using them, pretty much by definition, can’t be “legitimate”.
On the other hand, if the pendulum is really on the back-swing and teachers today are realizing that phonics uber alles may be getting kids to sound out words correctly, but certainly isn’t bringing about reading in any broad sense of the word, please keep up the forbidden work. For what it’s worth, you have my permission, and blessing.