Varley - Post #2 Kidwatching Article

When I first read the title of the article I read, The Habit of Kidwatching by Timothy O’Keefe, I have to admit it sounded a bit invasive and creepy. Thankfully, once I read the article, I found that it was, in fact, the opposite. Kidwatching is really what teachers do every day. We watch our kids. When they walk through the door in the morning, we notice their mood; when we teach a lesson, we note their behavior; when we conference with students, we note their academic progress. So, it seems that kidwatching, in the simplest format, is taking what we naturally do as teachers and documenting it.
I think that this would be very beneficial because, although I am watching and taking mental notes about my students all day, often by the end of the day I can’t remember half of the things that I noticed. By writing down these observations, we can then begin to see patterns among our students’ academic progress. For example, if I keep track of not only how many pieces my students have published in writing, but also the date they begin each stage of the writing process, I am now able to see, on average, how long it takes each student to publish a piece and how many pieces they are publishing a month. Now I can take that information and use it to inform my instruction. Possibly, I notice that one child spends one day on drafting and one week on revision and editing. That could tell me that that student may not understand those stages in the writing process and they could possibly be avoiding their work rather than asking for clarification, which would tell me that I need to work with that student and reteach those skills.
 I also loved how O’Keefe talked about “coaching”, which is what he does during reading conferences with his students. The comparison to coaching was easy to understand. Similar to a coach, we as teachers, need to first watch the students to see how they are doing with the skills we have taught them. We need to look for areas of strength and of weakness, which in this case would be where they are making miscues in reading and why. After we have studied the student as they read, it is important to ask them some questions about how they handle situations that may come up while reading, such as what they do when they see a word they don’t know. Asking students what strategies they use while reading can give us a glimpse of how they process what they are reading so that we can build on their preferences and give them reading advice in the way that they will best understand it. That leads into the next section that O’Keefe brings up, which is giving advice to the reader based on what you have learned while watching them read and interacting with them regarding the book they are reading.
Another thing that I loved in this article was that O’Keefe would actually record the students reading on tape and have them listen to themselves read in order to hear the areas where they can improve. I would love to try this in my classroom to work on fluency. Overall, I think that kidwatching is definitely something that I want to make a habit of because the best way to help my students grow is to know my students well so as to build on their strengths and strengthen their weaknesses.