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What value do children get from sitting at an easel and drawing or writing? And how does that connect to reading and making them better readers? These are several of the questions posed to us occasionally by teachers and principals as we introduce the easel and other “work areas” (so named because they are places where specific work goes on, not just places to be busy doing whatever you like) into classrooms for the first time. This slide show is documentation created by Lynn White to answer, in part, these questions for us and others. Lynn White is a nationally-recognized first grade teacher. She took a sabbatical from her regular job in the Winnetka, Illinois schools during the 2004-2005 school year and came to work with Reading In Motion. We knew this would be an exciting opportunity for us to learn from Lynn, as she had taken one previous sabbatical in 1998-99. On that sabbatical, she helped us create an earlier portion of our arts-based reading curriculum. Lynn’s assignment with us this time was to help us refine our new music-based kindergarten curriculum. The goal of the curriculum is to give every child the skills they need to be reading at grade level, as defined by DIBELS benchmarks, at the end of kindergarten. Lynn’s main focus would be “work areas”, as the whole group instruction and small group instruction had already been created and piloted. But, in order for teachers to be able to manage small groups without additional adults in the room to keep the other children occupied, we needed to know more about work areas. Lynn was just the right person at the right time! Some may know her as a co-author of chapters in several books about the Reggio Emilia schools in Italy. We know her as an amazing teacher who uses many modes of instruction every day – whole group, small groups, one-on-one, project-based, emergent, and work areas. We could not have done small groups and work areas without her expert guidance, initially. When the year was over, we asked Lynn to create this document of the learning that she saw in the easel area specifically. We hope others will find it as eye-opening as we have. Go to The Possibilities of Learning Through the Easel Work Area >>> |
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