Basal vs Literacy Day

I’m not sure if my classes in elementary school used the Basal reading series, but the descriptions of what a Basal reading class would look like sounds a lot like what we did. We had a series of books with passages in them; we answered questions before the passage, then read the passage, and then answered questions after we read – which is pretty much what the Literature based Basal series is. While it got a bit repetitive, it seemed to work and get the point across to our class and it did enhance our comprehension skills. Now with the debate between which Basal program is better, the Literature or the Phonics, I think it’s a tie. Both teach skills that are necessary and I don’t think that you can place a higher value on either one. Students need to phonemic awareness in order to read and in order to truly comprehend what they are reading, but they also need the comprehension skills because without the ability to comprehend what you are reading, reading becomes pointless.

In the classroom that I am in right now, the teacher uses A LOT of reader and writers workshops. One of the reasons is that we have a lot of AIG students in the classroom and they are not always pulled out so we have a lot of different students that are reading and writing on different levels and she needs to be able to work with each group individually. One of the things that I really liked was the suggestion to do individual reading for about 20-30 minutes and then partner reading. When the students in my class are asked to do quite, independent reading, there are some students that do read but for the most part, the students just want to talk to their friends. If the students were asked to do partner reading, they get to read possibly two different books, talk with their friends, and still work on their reading skills. I also really like the idea of having a literacy day maybe once every other week or maybe once a month. I think the students would get a lot out of spending one day every now and then focusing on different reading and writing activities. However, if you were to do this, I feel that doing it in a school that uses the Basal program would not be the best idea. They use a very set structure for their reading program and veering away from it might confuse students that were used to using the Basal readers, regardless of whether it is the literature based or the phonemic based one. But I do hope that one day in my classroom we can have literacy day and that the students will enjoy it as much as I would have!!