This weeks reading from Fox talks about the importance of children's ability to use strategies including cross-checking, self-monitoring, and self-correction to ensure that identified words sound appropriate to the spelling and fit the context in which it is located. As I begin to spend more time with young readers, I am starting to see how important it is for children to have the skills listed above. If students, or any reader in general, does not self-monitor they will look past errors in their reading and writing and this can lead to inaccurate descriptions and understandings of written material. For children who are able to self-monitor, it is equally important for them to know what to be looking for. This is where cross-checking comes into play. This is where the reader must think about meaning and letter/word structure. Students who lack the ability to find words that do not fit in context or match their understanding of the English language will also misunderstand the material they read. Self-correcting seems, to me, to be one of the most important parts of reading. This would be when a student corrects a miscue that they find while self-monitoring and cross-checking. With all of this said, my question becomes: how will I, as a teacher, teach such important strategies to my students, when it has become second nature to me and when I will not have a huge amount of time to spend reading with each student independently? This past year, my teaching program has required me to read a number of articles that have contained new information for me; words I had never read before and concepts I knew nothing about. Some of the articles have even felt like a whole new language. At times, even now as a proficient reader, I find myself making up words that I do not know to get through these articles. A number of times, I have had to reread a sentence or section for clarification. I have also had to go back and redefine a word I didn't know because what I thought it meant did not fit the papers or articles context. Although I am aware that I also follow these strategies to help me correctly read material, I often do it without realizing that this is what I am doing.
One other thing. I continue to get caught up with the fact that I will not be able to sit independently with each of my students and use the teacher prompts Fox suggests, like we have been doing in our literacy class. I am committed to making sure that each of my students gets a little of my undivided attention, however, as my program advances, I am realizing that my time and help is going to be stretched thin.
Overall, I understand the importance but am having a hard time seeing how I can effectively help students learn these strategies without always being aware of their reading. I can only hope that reading more of Fox's book will help me learn what is the most important things to focus on and how I can effectively work with all of my students independently.
I thought about this same thing as I reflected on our Emergent Literacy Profile. Our students need individual time with us, but how do we make that time for them. In our dyad placement, the teacher spends time with students depending on their reading level. Students who are above grade level she only meets with once a month. Students at grade level she checks in with every week for about 10 minutes. Those who are below grade level she meets with twice a week for 10 minutes. She also makes sure they get time with her or another parent volunteer every day. Sometimes this is in reading groups. She does this during individual reading and writing time. There is hope. It may be difficult our first few years to find the time we think we need with every student. The important thing to realize is that there are ways to make this time and to make it work effectively.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to comment on one of the first ideas brought up:
ReplyDeleteI understand this question of how do we as new teachers learn to teach concepts and ideas that are so ingrained into how we operate. We will continue to learn throughout this program, in addition to the beginning years of our careers, and I cannot help but assume that teaching effective strategies will be learned over time, through successes and failures. I think that sometimes we actually learn the best after experiencing what does not work; every child will need different strategies and help in different areas, and as long as we care and do our best to encourage and support their individual learning as best we can, I think we without realizing it, we will be teaching them important strategies.
I have found it interesting to learn about the different reading strategies and then look at what strategies I use without even knowing. I am mostly guilty of skipping words if I feel like can read off and still understand the meaning of what I am reading. However, I wish that was a skill I did not use. I think that it has contributed to my lacking vocabulary. I also can’t help but think I am bad at determining what words carry meaning and significance because I often read something and then have little comprehension. I just wonder, is this something I was taught or just started doing?
ReplyDeleteI too am caught up dreaming about getting to work with each student individually like we did our buddies. However, I think there are some things that can be done to help get an idea of your student’s needs and progress. Combining the name tag / dialogue cards we use in our one class and the written conversations we did in literacy I think would be a great check in tool to use. I believe this would not only take a long time. Maybe I am optimistic, but even if you only did it once a week so certain students got responses on Mondays or that everyone got responses on Mondays it should take too much time or energy. I really enjoyed the written conversations we did and I know my buddy did too.