Saturday Sayings

 I am so excited to be joining Tammy at Forever in First for Saturday Sayings. I look forward to reading her Saturday sayings every week. They are always insightful and give me plenty of food for for thought. So when she asked for people to join her, I knew I had to get in on this party. So I signed up for the first week. All week long this has been on my mind about what I was going to post. I had plans for reading my book "Making the Most of Small Groups" and finding the perfect quote. But no such luck. So I got out my kindle with the Growing Readers book I've been working on reading since this summer. I was hoping to find a great quote about reading instruction that would just blow everyone's mind. But I found this one instead and felt like it was perfect!

I read this and thought this is what I want to post. I think this describes what blogging has done for me and reading these Saturday Sayings. I love to learn. I'm always trying to read more about reading instruction and other areas of teaching. But I do tend to like to talk to other teachers who feel the same way that I do. But we always learn more from those that think differently than we do. An example of this for me, was when a colleague was talking about how memorizing books wasn't reading. This got me thinking about my reading practices in my room. I'm big on fluency and repeated readings. After my fellow teacher said this to me, I really worked on trying to find evidence to support what I was doing in my classroom. It definitively helped solidify my thinking and practices in my room. On a side note, I recently read an article about the common core and some myths associated with it. This researcher was talking about close readings and how texts needed to be reread to gain better understanding. While this isn't what I'm doing in my room in Kindergarten, I believe it gets them ready for this close reading as they progress with their reading ability. (You can check this article out here)
So I want to challenge you to first, go check out Saturday Sayings at Forever in First and the other bloggers joining the party today. Then to talk to other teachers in your building that might not feel the same as you. Read blogs that you might not agree with and use that to help solidify your own thinking. Thanks Tammy for letting me join the party.
I will be back later today with the magical product swap post. I forgot about that being today and had committed to this project.
I almost forgot. I have an update on Regan that I've been asking you guys to pray for. He went to St. Jude's Monday and they spent most of the week testing and evaluating him. They came to the same conclusions as they had in ATL. He has brain cancer. But they are starting chemo and radiation on Monday. Please continue to pray for him and his family. I have been so amazed by the community I live in. Our whole county has gotten behind this family with fundraising and praying. Thursday was his 12th birthday and Chick-Fil-a donated 100% of their proceeds to the family. It was incredible. So please keep praying!