Mosaic Background

Our district is adopting Balanced Literacy.  See my earlier post.Our school has decided to have a Book Club to get us started. 
We are reading Mosaic of Thought.
We had our first gathering yesterday.  Our main discussion focused on the background of the Comprehension Strategies.
Here are some points and questions from our discussion.
Aha! thoughts:
-Just knowing the words is not enough.  (We have been giving a fluency measure as our main data source. Why?)
-Thinking, thinking, thinking- Let's encourage it. 
-Comprehension should be "caught not taught"

What do we need to start doing/thinking:
-Model thinking more explicitly
-Use "turn and talk" with a purpose
-Re-read books and encourage kids to re-read more often

What do we need to stop doing:
-Using the outdated basal! (Hurray!)
-Stop using large quantities of worksheets (Yes, some of the teachers in our building live for worksheets!) Food for thought: It says in the book, No student ever asks when they are going to get their worksheets back!
-Reading texts that don't spark interest in the students. (No boring books!)

Now on to questions:
-How will we assess the skills? (Since we do need grades at some point.)
-How to structure intervention time? (Do you have this at your school?  We use support staff and teachers to do reading/ math interventions and enrichment.)
-How can we become consistent? (We have little to no consistency now, while using the basal.)

Please leave a comment if you have an answer or thought on any of the above ideas.
Our building would really appreciate as much input as possible as we embrace a new way of teaching. 

EmilyK & Antoinette