Counting Plan

Two cups of coffee, two halves of plain bagel, two tablespoons of cream cheese, eight hours of sleep, and one happy morning. I often think of counting things on a regular basis, as strange as that seems. I tend to think quantitatively about the frequency of things, for example, yesterday I had the hiccups three times and sneeze seven today. There are so many numbers that rule our daily routines and affect our lives that we rarely think about. I think it is safe to say that the most commonly counted item for adults are calories, whether they are consumed or spent and for children how many songs are on their ipod or levels achieved on a video game. I think it says a lot about a person, if you asked them one quantity from their day or life, what would they say? 


In the teacher world, my focus is completely different. How many of my students say please or thank you? How long does it take the average student to go to the bathroom and at what length of time should I be concerned? How many students are present today? How many copies do I make of this assignment? How many pages did they read for homework? My daily life is consumed by numbers at school, and I am only a reading teacher. The increasing amount of data driven instruction adds to those numbers, how many students mastered the concept? How many words did they read in a minute? What is their AR level and how many points is that book worth? It is truly shocking when you think about the countless numbers we encounter regularly. 

I would like my counting plan to tie into my research topic. How many minutes are students given to write (or read) in one day? This count will be collected as a poll from all teachers anonymously. In that poll I would also ask the subject they teach. Moving to Common Core Standard Course of Study, literacy should be present in every classroom regardless of the subject. Students may read nonfiction texts and respond to them, they should read and write word problems in math, they should be able to explain and justify their answers, they should be able to explain the process they followed to reach that solution, etc.

I would like to count this because research states that students should spend at least 90 minutes a day in literacy. I am afraid that although they are getting a 90 minute literacy block (in some grades), that instructional time is being somewhat lost and the 90 minutes are not preserved. Another concern may be the honesty of the teachers completing the poll. Using the information, I would be able to support other teachers to incorporate reading and writing in their lessons, or encourage teachers to find other ways to allow students additional literacy time.

By including literacy in all classrooms, reading and writing become interdisciplinary and will make up for the instructional minutes lost in Language Arts class. These results may also support the need for additional time spent reading and writing or homework, to insure that 90 minutes are spent daily. The connection of literacy between the classroom and home is also supported by the research I found. Literacy cannot stop at the end of the school day, they need to see the continuation of reading and writing in all aspects of their life. To truly be proficient according to Common Core, students need to see the ties of literacy across all subjects and dedicate the time to practicing those skills. Through this counting plan, it would confirm or deny the need for additional efforts in all classes to allow for literacy to take place, and may even prove that this may be an immediate concern. If proven that very little time is dedicated daily, then it would further emphasize the need for writing workshop in all Language Arts classroom, and may change the way that my school looks at literacy and our curriculum. Additionally, this could lead to action research through which a team of teachers really evaluates and practices a variety of ways through which literacy can be used in other subjects (math, science, social studies, even the specials classes – art and music). This counting plan may lead a realization and confirmation that there is not enough time truly utilized for literacy in the day.