Sunday, November 26, 2017
Amy D. UoS Reflection
Allowing students to have plenty of time to read independently in class created (and continues to create) anxiousness for me because I feel like I should be doing more word work or vocabulary and grammar teaching. The big difference is how engaged and involved in independent reading my 4th graders really are! When I introduced personal timers, students immediately began using them and polished their readers log recording! The results were students really paying attention to the amount of minutes and pages they were reading which pushed them to read a little faster. Of course, we talked about not reading too fast and forfeiting understanding for speed. One other reflection is exchanging book groups for book clubs. Students responded much more positively when given book choices (book tasting) rather than being plunked into a group with a book chosen for them by me. Taking time to help students understand levels of text complexity, rather than a letter level guided students to make good choices when offered a range of books to choose from. I will continue to use book clubs with book tastings to encourage rich book talks rather than traditional reading groups. There is so much more that I've discovered during this course, but these are a couple of things that really changed my thinking about teaching reading.
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Amy,
ReplyDeleteI love what you did for your class with the timers! I think this is something I may need to do for my class.
I love how you are teaching them about text complexity instead of levels. The levels idea has taken on a bigger role than I believe was intended. Kids may be more motivated to choose a book they like if they know how to assess it versus just choosing something from a particular level.
ReplyDeleteI have noticed with the kiddos that I have worked with, even the first graders, that they are very aware of their reading levels. They talk about being able to move up a level and they often look at the level of the book before they even read it. Sometimes balking at reading a book if the level is what they consider too high or low for them!! This is something that I am trying to move away from with my kiddos and focusing instead on what a "good fit" book is for them and how to find those books that work for them.
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