Anne Maddox #4 "Teach with a Sense of Urgency"

The title of Chapter 4 "Teach with a Sense of Urgency" suggests to us to teach like we are going to a fire, which I often find myself doing!  Instead of teaching with a fury, Routman hopes to guide teachers to help our students find joy and passion in reading, and further their autonomy in their own learning and problem solving.

The Optimal Learning Model contains four tiers for teachers to aspire to achieve.  I am in agreement with the author that teachers must have a mutual like and trust of their students, along with success with meaningful tasks which will create a love and pride of their work.  Like Routman, I also do most of my teaching as Shared Demonstration and was most pleased to have this method validated as a powerful teaching method by Don Holdaway. It was also a nice validation to have Holdaway state that we should be choosing challenging above level texts for shared reading.  This statement varies widely from school to school. Some schools require that one read texts on level, yet others require that books be chosen  to challenge students above their level.  
 Considering our students' economic level and background, evidence shows that the students who are the farthest behind need their reading, spelling, grammar, and writing all integrated so they understand how they fit together.  This way their knowledge can be applied and used over and over in relevant ways.  Most of our children do not have parents who read each day.  If our students aren't seeing reading at home, then they probably aren't doing much reading at home either.  Teachers are their role models and we have to give them the practice.  I know I need to continue to progress from the Shared Demonstration and use more of the student initiated learning because that is how our students will achieve higher levels of understanding.