Chapter 5 – Assessing and Teaching Developing Readers
This chapter begins by pointing out
the pitfalls of using one method of teaching reading to the exclusion of all
others. If you only teach one method of reading you end up with “word-callers”
who have no sense of what the passage they just read means. Phonics must be taught in conjunction with
other reading strategies not in isolation or students will not become effective
readers and writers because many phonics programs focus on the rules and not on
decoding.
The chapter also informed me of
something I was doing wrong and had no idea! I make Cloze activities all the
time for my reading and Latin students but never knew that you are supposed to
delete every fifth word. I would just choose words at random or words they were
having trouble with to help focus on them.
I engage my students in a lot of retelling,
even though I didn’t know what it was called. I must often employ this tactic
with poetry and pair up students who groan whenever I say Plath with the
students who look like they are going to stand up and clap. This pairing allows
the enthusiastic student to give an impassioned reading and heighten the
enjoyment of the listening student. I also do a summarizing activity called ‘60
Second Shakespeare’ in which students get up individually or in groups of two
to act out the previous night’s reading of whatever Shakespeare play we are
working on. The must act out the whole
reading in under sixty seconds and they are allowed to speak. Some of the most eager
student involvement I have ever seen is the day after we read Caesar’s death
scene. They all wanted to act that out.
Students must increase their time
spent reading. The book shows multiple studies that just reiterate what most
educators know, kids who don’t read outside of school are behind kids who do. I
try to encourage reading outside of school by assigning booktalks once a month
for all of my students. They must get up and give a three minute presentation
on a book they read FOR FUN. Not for another class or for me but for enjoyment.
These booktalks help students see a myriad of genres and styles and find books
they like to read.
Chapter 6- Informal Assessments of Reading
Informal Reading Inventories are
very flexible and show many variations of what students are capable of. I love
that the chapter broke down each step in detail and then included a handy
summary for refreshing your mind right before you give an assessment.
The independent, Instructional and
Frustration levels seem to fall within the Zone of proximal development theory.
I like this it ties together many reading I have done over the course of an
almost obscenely extensive education.
I don’t like to put reading levels
directly on books. I think at the higher grades it discourages lower readers
from reading (the shame factor) and encourages higher readers to read lower
level books (the laziness factor).
I like the way the book says to
talk about lexile levels but parents and students inevitably want to know what
grade it matches up with and sometimes I find it easier not to throw the lexile
number at them unless the news is positive. Should I tell parents every bit of
testing information? I think sometimes more information will do more harm than
good.
I love portfolios for my reading
classes to show them how far they have come and all the cool stuff they have
done throughout the year. This chapter gave me some great ideas on how to
better organize them! I think portfolios show more about student achievement
than an end of the year exam because exams have so many variables like students
health that day, test anxiety, change of environment, and students home
environment. Once again I love that summary list! The suggestion of
photocopying the best work from multiple portfolios to use as examples was
something I had not thought of before.
I like the idea of parental input
and parent conferences about portfolios but I am not sure I could get all the parents
in my district to go along with it. I know for a fact that some of my students
live on their own or with siblings, grandparents or foster parents who may or
may not have the time or the inclination to participate in their education on
that level. What happens if I send a paper home for a foster parent to fill out
and he laughs and says, “I don’t have to do any damn homework anymore” and won’t
fill it out? Or if I send one home to a grandmother who is doing her best to
raise her grandchildren but was never taught to read? I will have just alienated
guardians and students. I think I will stick with the student/teacher and
student/student conferences.
No comments:
Post a Comment