Reading Instruction

      When teaching a child with CLDE, my teaching strength is developing oral language development. Once a month, I require every student to present an oral language report to the class. The topics are assigned at the beginning of the year, and include students' interests and reflections of topics learned in class. The students must bring some type of visual (photograph, illustration, prop, etc) and discuss four things about the topic. This month, the assignment is to select a president (other than Washington or Lincoln since we do an in-depth study of each) and tell classmates four facts about the president. During the month of February in our morning community meeting, I read fun facts about four presidents each day. The oral language report is due at the end of the month so this gives them the opportunity to hear about all of the presidents before making their selection. However, many times the parents encourage the children to do their favorite president. Three times a year, I video the students giving their oral language reports. I can email these to parents, post to my class website, share with my peers, and use for documenting a student's growth over the year. Another thing I do to develop oral language and build reading fluency is Readers Theater. Small groups of students receive scripts on Monday and practice daily for a performance on Friday. In order to differentiate, the scripts vary from group to group according to reading ability.
         I feel like a do a combination of modified-guided reading, read naturally, reciprocal teaching, and collaborative strategic reading. I am not sure that a mixture of strategies is always a good thing for all students. Of course, I am always eager to try something new with my students in hopes that it will improve reading fluency and comprehension. However, is it best to follow the same routine to provide students with that safe, knowing sense of what to expect?
        I LOVED the idea of students recording their thoughts in a learning log. It is suggested as a technique for collaborative strategic reading, but I feel it could be useful with any reading strategy. This is something I would like to incorporate immediately in my classroom. I think it would also be helpful for the teacher to respond to student's reflections to provide feedback. BUT, here I go again...do I bring something new to this group of students or wait for next year and start at the beginning of the year? Can you tell how much I struggle with my issue in the last paragraph?????