O’Keefe’s early record keeping process is very relatable to
the record keeping that I did in the beginning of my teaching. I felt that I knew my students as learners
due to the quantity of information that I had gathered on each child. My record keeping consisted of forms where I
used a number or a code to record information.
I now see that these numbers and codes are just that- they tell me
nothing about my students as learners.
As we continue
to focus our attention on literacy, I have seen amazing changes in how we teach
our students and how we conference/ assess students. O’Keefe mentions that “sitting with a child
and watching and listening carefully may be the best thing we can do to get to know
our students as readers. A blank sheet of paper and a pen may be our greatest
tools for recording what we come to know.”
How simple the record keeping can be and yet so powerful as a tool to
help us guide our instruction, mentor our students, and help meet their individual
needs. I look forward to kidwatching in
my classroom and using my notes in a powerful way. I liked the idea of record keeping after
hearing the students read for 3-4 minutes and then spending the rest of the
time talking to the students informally about their reading. I hope to learn more about the Reading Miscue
Inventory and use this in my kidwatching and record keeping. While I may not be able to record a sentence
or two on each student daily as O’Keefe suggests, I do plan on taking notes on
my students several days a week.
I loved this section of her book too. It makes reading time so much more powerful if we know WHAT and HOW students are reading. This way we as teachers and can plan meaningful lessons based on our students' needs.
ReplyDeleteWhat a wealth of information you will have after listening to your students read and conferring with them this year! Last year, I gave up trying to find a "form" that allowed me to conference with each child "correctly." I used...a piece of colored notebook paper! I finally felt free from trying to check off every question on a form. Listening to them read and just talking with them about what they read helped me uncover so much more about them as a reader. You are so right, conferring with your students this year even a few times per week will help you "know" your readers in a way that a test grade cannot convey!
ReplyDeleteHi Patricia,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your thoughtful response to O'Keefe's Kidwatching suggestions. I, too thought his simple suggestions were not only powerful but relevant. Having a blank piece of paper and prioritizing listening to a student read and jotting down what we noticed and then taking the time to use that information to guide our conference and our subsequent instruction is what authentic data-driven instruction is all about. Using what we learn to lead our students. Thank you! Dawn Mitchell