Lit Lab Model

Knowledge, a valuable tool within itself, becomes quite useless when buried unused beneath layers and layers of more knowledge. Ken Stamatis modeled Literacy Lab within one of our own 10^th grade English classrooms on Thursday, driving home this very point. As he opened the class with a ten to fifteen minute brainstorm of the derivative, spect, within that same time period, all students were engaged and exposed to a whiteboard covered with vocabulary words and a discussion of their meaning. He also managed to shut down the only possible behavior problem, drawing in this same young man by asking him for assistance in handing out papers. Next, sharing a read aloud, Stamatis modeled the use of retrospect and exposed the students to a young adult novel. There were multi-purposes for all of his activities. Each involved reading and writing, exposing the students to writing strategies and young adult novels. With a quick four word assessment he instantly knew who understood what he was modeling and who did not, using small group tier 2 to address the later while others read their individual books. None of the above is new to those of us who attended Ken Stamatis’ classes or Lit Lab at Harding University, however, knowledge becomes like an encyclopedia if not used, something to look up and read about. Every now and then we need refreshers to revive the knowledge buried within, enabling us to put to practice what obviously works for the students. Thank you Ken Stamatis and our 21C team leaders for making this happen.