Karilyn Parker - Blog Post 4 - Routman Chapter 4

The chapter title, "Teaching With Urgency" grabbed my attention right away. Aren't we all teaching with urgency?!? I mean May comes very quickly and I'm currently hearing Christmas music playing! Time is flying by what could be more urgent than knowing that you need to be teaching with urgency.

As I kept reading, I saw the checklist to make teaching with urgency work.

• Students having a bond with their teacher. (Love my students and I definitely hope that they have bonded with me. I love our small group time, because not only do I get to see what they know but also how they are feeling, what they did this weekend, and what interests them.)
• A knowledgeable teacher who models the values of literacy as she demonstrates, supports, encourages, and affirms. (Do I always do my best with this - not always. The struggle is real some days when your own personal child has a double ear infection and your alarm clock sounded way too early. I need to remember to slow down and encourage & support.)
• A collaborative learning environment. (Yes!)
• Tasks and skills that are worth knowing and doing. (My students and I might have varying opinions on this.)
• Successful engagement with the task. (I love when I walk away from talking with a student or group of students and think, "That activity really benefitted them or that activity did not go the way that my mind wanted it to in the construction process. Successfulness and unsuccessfulness with a task still gives me feedback as to what my students need and how I can help them.
• Enjoyment and pride in learning. (This is huge, because you want your students to love coming to your class. You want them to be successful.)

What I have learned from this chapter is to slow down and make the most of my time. I need to use formative assessments to guide my teaching. Whether it be a pretest, quick activity or an observation, I need to know where my students are with each standard and be ready to get on the level of each student to meet them at their needs.

Jill McDougald Nov. Blog Post #4 Teach Comprehension, Ch. 8 Routman

Comprehension is very hard for first graders to grasp!  Most first graders are developing readers trying to figure out how to read words much less remember and understand what they have read.  Routman suggests, "We should teach comprehension right from the start."  Students need to understand  what they are reading to get the meaning of the story.

Our first grade team has added some key questions this year to our shared reading discussion to help our readers understand our stories better.  Here are those questions:  "What is the genre of the story?",  "Who is telling the story?" and "What is the author's purpose?"  We discuss the genre of the story before our first reading of the story.  We discuss who's telling the story and what's the author's purpose after the first reading of the story.  We use the rereading strategy a lot in first grade.  By the end of the week, our students have had the opportunity to reread the shared reading story at least 5 times.

In reading the section called, "Teach Students to Survey Text Before They Begin to Read" my mind started churning.  Later this year, we will be writing nonfiction animal books.  I will demonstrate this strategy to my students to show them how to "hone in on exactly the information they're interested in."

This chapter has a lot of useful information on teaching comprehension.  I realize the most important thing I need to do is make my thinking process visible to my students when teaching comprehension.

Laura Keller - November Blog - Reflection on Conferencing

Conferencing with the students about their reading is extremely intimidating to me.  I have no trouble working with students individually on Math, but Reading is not my best subject.  I am much better when I think I can help with something that has an exact solution.  It is a good thing that we are being forced to conference, kidwatch,etc. with students about their reading.  Hopefully, practice will make the problem much less intimidating.  

One on one observation is very personal to the student.  The most intimidating part of conferencing with the student is trying to record their miscues/mistakes without making them feel bad because they made a mistake.  I am very slow at this.  I held my blue card, a copy of the script, and a clipboard all while trying to Also, I do not want to distract from their reading any more than they might already be distracted.

Also, another hard part, is finding the time to conference.  While working on the Miscue Analysis, I will grab one student at a time, whenever I can.  I have to use homeroom time, independent reading (of course), and bully meeting time.  In general, I am still working on timing in all aspects of my teaching.  I am finally learning to line up and get to the hall quicker, I am learning to collect papers quickly, etc.  So, I hope that with more practice conference will have plenty of time since I am becoming more efficient.

The most important part of the conferencing, has been learning my student's issues with reading.  I realize how much help some of my students need.  In most cases their reading performance is directly correlated to their performance in math or Science.  I tried reading a test to one of my students that is struggling in the focus group and it made a huge difference.  Reading has importance in every subject!

Valen Egan’s November Blog Post 4: Conferencing

I have always loved conferencing with my students.  I feel like it’s a precious time when I can really get to know my students on a one-on-one level.  Many times, I come away from the conferences much more knowledgeable about what my students need and/or ideas that I can implement to help them.

 

Through the years, I have always struggled to find the time to conference as much as I’d like and the format in which to document the conferences.  I’ve set goals for myself to conference with all students once a month and used all kinds of fancy conference sheets, but over the years, I wasn’t satisfied with the time I was spending and the information I was recording.  I’ve learned that I need to concentrate on what works for me as a teacher, and what information will be most valuable for my instructional planning.  So, I created my own reading conference sheet that includes a small section where I can take a running record, ask them comprehension questions on the book they shared with me, a list of reading strategies that I can mark if they need improvement on, and a place for me to write comments or for the student to set a reading goal for themselves.  I’ve also stopped worrying so much about getting 1 conference per month with each student, and I just do it as much as I can.  Taking the pressure off of myself actually lets these conferences happen more naturally which also provides better information.

 

With my focus group this year, I have really enjoyed listening to them read and observe their book choices.  Through conferencing, I have learned that many of them still struggle with making good book choices.  Some want to read books that are way too easy (probably to cope with the fact that they are struggling readers), and others choose books that are way too hard and don’t even seem to realize.  From my running records and diving more into miscue analysis, I’ve realized that pretty much all of the students in my focus group rely heavily on the visual cueing system.  Since conferencing allows a private time with a student, I’ve been able to take these opportunities to show them other strategies that they can rely on when they make errors while reading.  Sometimes just modeling how they can skip the word, read to the end of the sentence (or sometimes the page), go back and think about what makes sense, sets off a lightbulb in their eyes!  I absolutely love these moments with my students and feel they make the greatest impact with my reading instruction.

Routman; Chapter 3: Share your reading life (Jennifer Pitman)

Whoa, this chapter hit home!  The impact of making connections within your personal reading while sharing can open the minds of others.  I believe that's why we all love to hear a book read aloud, go to the live concert, have play dates with friends, etc.  It simply makes sense!  As an elementary student I vividly remember & enjoyed "Reading Rainbow" sharing new books, as well as, our school librarian allowing us to choose a stuffed animal to hold while listening to her share a book to us--this was way better than our round robin class reading that always stressed me out.

We are always told & encouraged to model, model & model again, its the repetition of learning.  I enjoyed how this chapter made it clear to share your own reading habits.  I read constantly and I enjoy my 'GoodReads' App so I can write a review, store bookshelves of books I'm currently reading, want to read, and see what my friends are reading.  I feel it's much like her journal.  I've never thought about sharing more than what's present in my classroom so I love the idea of sharing photos of my bookcases.  I can totally relate to having favorite authors and having my books pr-ordered for the date of release.  I've never  been a part of a book club but one day, maybe when I retire or my own kids get older I want to join one.  I talk to a lot of by bookworm friends by the GoodReads App but I'd love to hear real-live book conversations.

Being involved with our W.A.M.E. school news show, I'm proud that we take time to recognize our class 'Rockin' Reader & Awesome Author' this can help sell an author and gives children the chance to share their findings.

Suits Blog Post 4: Conferencing

During my conference with my focus group, I learned that I have a group of very different readers.  B, I noticed had incredible comprehension skills. He was able to answer all literal questions and showed inferential comprehension abilities even when I did not ask for them.  He is able to take a topic and talk about it at a high level of intelligibility. T, on the other hand, has incredible decoding skills, but retells the story in broken pieces.  He struggles to understand the main characters and how they connect to the plot line.  He is not able to make connections to the texts we read.  I learned that B and T would make GREAT paired reading partners.  Their reading skills complement each other well.  D and C were both students with weak decoding skills.  D is able to make connections and answer inferential comprehension questions.  His inferences are weak.  He is able to answer literal comprehension questions.  C struggles to any comprehension questions after reading a text on his level.  He makes connections to the story, but struggles to stay on topic in discussions.  E and J are somewhere in the middle.  They are both able to decode words well and answer literal and inferential comprehension questions.  Neither of their answers are deep, but they are always correct. They are consistent as well.

The best information I received from conferencing with my group was how I may be able to group them as we complete our oral reading and paired reading assignments. It will best benefit this group to split them into three pairs, T and B, E and J, and D and C.  With D and C, they will need a lot of direct instructions on how to make inferences and even take literal meaning from a text.  I can guide T and B to help instruct each other using their area of strengths.  E and J will be able to work well with each other to grow steadily as better readers.

Decken Blog Post 4: Conferencing

While conferencing with my focus group, it became clear that it will be a struggle to get a majority of them to read during independent reading (IR). Most students in the group are the students that I am constantly watching to make sure they are actually reading and not "fake" reading.  It is very evident that this group struggles with comprehension of what they're reading.  After being given a passage to read, it was a challenge to answer simple comprehension questions about the text. While some students referred back to the text during these questions, it still did not help them gain an understanding of the text.  I do not think they know how to pull meaning from a text or passage.

For example, four (out of six) of the students could not give me the main idea in the passage.  All of them could give me specific details about it.  Vocabulary was a struggle...they did not gain meaning of words through reading the passage.  Which leads to inferencing...only one student was able to decode what was read and make his own understanding of the passage.  In the future, I will focus on helping this group truly understand what they are reading.  I believe that will have an impact on their "love" for IR time, and they may just actually spend that time reading if they're understanding what it is they're reading.