We have been really enjoying our journey implementing the Four-Block Model in several classrooms. As with anything new, we have discovered a few things we had to problem solve our way through. Our school has gone through a huge AAC overhaul over the last 2 years with a large number of students receiving high-tech devices in a very short amount of time. Teachers and paraprofessionals continue to adjust to the change and some are finding it difficult to model on devices.
At the same time we are overhauling AAC we are also working on how we teach literacy. After a wonderful presentation at ATIA, we began doing shared reading lessons in several classrooms where we have early emergent readers. We are following a modified CAR strategy during these lessons. The teacher reads a page and models commenting about what is happening on the page. Next, they ask for or invite participation from students (this could be just pausing or asking “what do you think?”). Once a student participates, they respond by repeating what the student said and adding information. Often this requires some creativity to relate what the student has said back to the text (try working the word “bathroom” in the book “Brown Bear”). You can download the CAR visual we use here.