FB Post - DITHOR Teaching Tip

[austimr]

Hello All!

This Teaching Tip was posted on our Facebook page today and was requested to be posted on our forum as well. If you would like to follow HOD on Facebook, all you need to do is to "like" our page and you will get our daily posts. Our Facebook Page is http://www.facebook.com/heartofdakota.

Blessings,
Mike

Teaching Tip:

In getting started with Drawn into the Heart of Reading, I would encourage you NOT to overthink it. Instead, I would boil down starting DITHR to these quick easy steps:

1. Choose which genre to begin with for your child. Typically this should be a type of literature your child likes/loves to read. This will encourage a good start!

2. Open up your Student Book to that genre and decide how many books your child will read for that genre. To keep it simple start with the fewest amount of books feasible. Often this is 1 or 2 short books at the younger reading level and 1 book at the upper reading level. Keep the readings short.

3. Fill in the calendar with the pages to be read each day. The calendar is in the Student Book behind the genre description sheet.

4. Choose one simple kick-off idea from the first day of plans for that genre. Keep it simple, so it goes quickly. Later, once you're comfortable with DITHR, you can choose to do a kick-off up big. For now, keep it short and sweet.

5. Begin the next day. Then, just do a day of plans each day. If your child bogs down in the writing, write for him/her. Or, write part of the page and have your child just copy one sentence from a marker board that she/he has dictated. The focus is on the reading and discussing, not the writing.

6. When you get to the project at the end of the unit, give your child a day off from DITHR while you pick the project from the 3 project options right during your normal DITHR time.

7. When working on the project, do not let the time go too long each day. Just cut the project off each day in tiny bite-sized pieces. If the project goes over 5 days, wrap it up.

8. When you get to the start of the next genre, give your child another day off from DITHR and do steps 1 - 4 above right during the school day during your normal DITHR time. This way, there is no prep. or planning in the evening.

Happy reading!

Carrie

[keyjoh]

So glad to see that you posted this here as well.
Thank you!!

[countrymom]

Great tips.! Hoping the "big" tips will be posted here as well because I am not on facebook

[raindrops]

Thank you, Carrie! Sometimes I want to print off every post of yours so I will never forget it... maybe this one could be sticky'd and any other really helpful dithor threads attached to it.

It will be a few years before we use dithor.

I am highly resistant to facebook (just seems obnoxious to me). I know I probably miss a lot but still, I don't want to "get into" facebook, so thank you for sharing this here.