I was a little puzzled by the article for this week.  It was about coaching reading, but it did not seem that it was coaching meaning.  It seemed to me that it counteracted everything that we talked about last week. I have worked with beginning readers before and I know how important coaching can help a reader's self-confidence.  I am confused however as to how we can coach the reading AND the meaning.  The article did not seem to directly encourage any sort of meaning.

 I really enjoyed all of the activities that Classrooms That Work gave about forming words.  I remember doing a few of these activities growing up, and I think they are a great way to interact with your students.  I have found several such activities on Pinterest that I think would be fun also.

http://pinterest.com/pin/105130972520956868/

Reading Building Blocks

Until I had read the first two chapters of Classrooms that Work I had forgotten how much we as active readers take for granted the level of fluency that we have achieved.  As far back as I can remember I was always encouraged to read aloud and independently.  It is important that as future educators and/or parents that we not forget that the process of learning to read is crucial to learning in general. 

I never wanted to read aloud throughout my early years of education.  Even now as I am in college classes I still cringe when a professor asks me to read aloud.  It's not that I don't know how, but it's the fear of messing up in front of my peers.  I imagine that if I didn't know how to read that reading independently would also emphasize this fear.  It is important that we encourage all of our students to read aloud and for comprehension.  I really liked how the book emphasized reading into every activity that you do in your classroom.  Reading is an essential part to daily life and doing so with every activity will help your students understand that it is important, regardless of how often they are exposed to it in their lives at home. 

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For example, as soon as I learned how to read I was eager to read stories to my younger brother like my parents had read to me.  He was encouraged to learn how to read at a young age because I could already do this.  I really liked how the book emphasized having older children read to the beginning readers.  This helps to build confidence in both of the students.

I really liked the idea of having reading journals to documents not only what the students are reading, but also how long they are reading.  This would help me as a teacher to visually see which students need more exposure to reading in school.  It helped to emphasize the point to me that we should not only make a comfortable reading spot in our classrooms, but they we should schedule personal reading time everyday, which is something I did not always have in my school.

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How do we as educators provide a comfortable reading environment and the time away from instruction for reading?

Being a "Read" Model

As I began to read through the article by Bell and Jarvis I was shocked.  I remember having a letter every week and doing different activities related to that letter such as the macaroni projects.  I never thought how detrimental that could be for developing readers. Young readers do not retain the meaning of the symbols that they are reading when they are sounding out letters one at a time.  It makes much more sense for them to use context clues to build upon words that they already know.  I also really liked the example with the journals.  I would like to incorporate a mail system in my classroom so that my students can use it to communicate.

  I remember spending a whole week with this book.

 I was also reminded of my time tutoring a small group of first graders.  They were often very confused by large words when we were reading together.  My initial strategy was to sound the words out with them, but I now realize that they did not retain any meaning for the words that they were reading.  They were very upset when they didn't know a word and when asked to write out their thoughts they did not feel like they knew how.  It is very important to realize that young children's self-esteem is very fragile and they desperately want to be grown up like their parents and siblings.  I think it takes a strong commitment between the parents and the teachers to build and nourish the self-esteem of a developing learner.

How do we as educators stay on the same page with parents about modeling encouraging behavior?

Chapter 3 and Jones Family

I found the readings for this week to be very interesting.  They helped me to better focus on the literacy history paper because I was able to ask myself the questions that were found at the end of the reading for the Jones' family. As I read through how the Jones family used literature it reminded me of how my family utilized writing.  My parents are both very strong believers in writing literally everything down.  My mother has several cookbooks full of recipes that she she has collected and my father has notes in nearly all of his manuals for the different machines and vehicles in our household.  Books were always abundant and available to be read at anyone's leisure.  It made me feel very sad that not everyone grows up with that many opportunities to learn.  I really like the activities that the book, Classrooms That Work, provided.  I remember doing several of those activities in my early grades education.  I was a little confused as to why you were not supposed to correct the students handwriting.  It seems to me that you would want to help the children and allowing them to write in an incorrect forms seems counter-productive. 

What are some activities that you remember doing in your early education that were not mentioned in the book?  Do you feel like they enriched your learning?