Between consulting, maintaining a daily blog and websites to support literacy instruction, working on a professional book and a myriad of other projects related to teaching and learning, like most educators, we are very busy. And did we mention that between us we have half a dozen sons and we both have husbands and a host of things that we like to do like read, watch movies, exercise, garden, and play the ukelele? We’d like to say that we spend equal amounts of time at work and play but the reality of our existence is that more often than not,  the scale tips in the direction of work. We struggle to balance the competing forces of our lives and oftentimes, feel like we are fighting a futile battle.

In education, we encounter competing forces that leave us with similar feelings of futility. Now more than ever, we struggle to figure out how much teacher guidance we provide and how much choice we allow students. How much whole group instruction do we need and how often do we conduct small groups? How much direct instruction do students need and when do we allow children to explore and discover new concepts and ideas for themselves?   Do we ask text-based questions or should we allow students to make connections and achieve their own insights and ideas about the story? How much do we prepare students for assessments that claim to determine college and career readiness and how much do we nurture goals for lifelong learning?

B is for balance.

On this blog, we have long advocated the need for balance and when we look deeply at the Common Core standards and consider the implications for the next generation of literacy teaching and learning, there seems to be a resounding message of balance.  If we are going to arrive at a place where students can cite evidence, make logical inferences, and read, write, and speak independently and proficiently, then it seems that we must be mindful of the way in which we release responsibility for learning to our students. If the scale tips too heavily in the direction of one teaching structure over another (for example if we favor guided reading over read aloud or shared or independent reading) then what we are more likely to have students with reading processes that are imbalanced in some way. Perhaps they read well in narrative text but struggle with non-fiction. Perhaps they can decode but struggle with deep understandings of text. As we wrestle with the competing demands of instructional decision making, it is important that we strive to maintain balance lest we arrive at a place that falls short of the goals for independence and proficiency. Here are a few areas that keep surfacing as places we need to focus on balance:

• Decoding and negotiating the print vs. reading for meaning. (FYI-next week’s posts are about foundational skills.)

• Connecting to text vs. text-based responses.

• Student choice vs. teacher direction.

• Informational vs. Literary texts.

• Small group instruction vs. Whole group instruction

• Instructional level texts vs. Grade level texts
  

This list goes on and on. Basically, look at your schedule. Whatever you love, whatever you favor, become friends with its opposite. Do you love the Common Core? Spend some time with people who hate it. Do you hate the Common Core? Spend some time with some people who love it. In our work with students, just as in our personal lives, we are creatures of habit, and these habits can cause us to overlook the necessary counterpoints to our strengths. Any strength taken to an extreme, becomes a weakness.