DEAR time:
my findings are :
rotating schedules just cause confusion and kids dont settle-but I've
been in rough schools
what worked BEST was build it into the schedule
Use DEAR time to settle the kids for the day--so either before
school, or what works best is after lunch to settle for the afternoon
It becomes a "culture of readers" if kids are taught to always have
their DEAR books with them
Sometimes primary teachers vary things in the sprin etc. by reading
aloud for that 10 minutes...maybe even one day a week with an
on-going novel...
We do Stop, Drop and Read at our school (also K-12). We do it once a
week for 20 minutes, but some of the H.S. teachers have their
students read longer. We do it every Tuesday, but we rotate hours so
the first week we do SDR first hr, the second week is 2nd hr, etc.
This way the same classes are not being disrupted. Most teachers
participate. I know I see a rush of students that visit the library
on Tuesdays to check out materials for SDR.
We not as small as you, but are a single school K-8 district of 520
students. We have school-wide DEAR once per week on a rotating
schedule and that day operates on a DEAR/RAP schedule which shortens
all the other periods to about 35 minutes to accomodate a 20 minute
DEAR time in the morning after homeroom and a 15 minute period to do
RAP, can't remember what the acronym is for, but it is conflict
resolution, community building-type activities/ discussions.
The schedule is flexible in that some weeks, such as the past two, we
haven't had it. We have been doing state testing. It rotates so that
the same subjects don't get hit too often. It works real well until
about grade 5. It gets harder in middle school. It was discussed at a
recent faculty meeting that the tenor has changed but I haven't been
around long enough to know that. I don't know about block scheduling
so I don't know if our setup would be compatible.
We do have a DEAR program. As with everything, we get participation
from 90% of the teachers. We read for 12 minutes and encourage
everyone to read. We ask teachers to refrain from taking attendance,
letting kids in the hall for bathroom, etc. We DEAR everyday but
Mon-Wed-Fri are lessons that reinforce test taking skills and reading
skills. These are lessons created by a DEAR committee and
distributed weekly and every class does the same lesson, we silent
read Tues and Thurs. We do not have accomodations for special needs
students, our policy is that students can read materials of their
choice as long as it is appropriate for school. We have added 12
minutes to the 2nd hour class for DEAR so all classes remain the same
time.
You need to have a time built into the schedule or you will get
howls of protest from you departmentalized classes. You need to find
a few short story books, urban legends, Uncle John's bathroom
readers, etc. that you can check out to teachers for their rooms to
give to kids who forget--or old magazines if you decide to allow
that. Also we stationed a few teachers--guidance counselors,
administrators, me, who don't have a class to be in each hall. If a
student won't read, the teacher sends the kid to the hall and the
person on hall duty writes the discipline report and takes kid to
office. That way the teachers don't have to deal with any discipline
problems. They like that--and in 2 years of SSR in a school of 1100
we have only had to do it twice. We only do it once a week and after
surveying our teachers each year 95% think its great. It has also
increased reading a lot in our school. Another big help is that the
English curriculum now requires 1 book outside of class for each
grading period, so every teacher knows that the student ought to have
something to read.
--
Beverly Nelson
Media Generalist
Spring Grove Public School
113 2nd Ave NW
Spring Grove, Minnesota 55974
507-498-3223
bev.nelson@springgrove.k12.mn.us
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