ELLEN
BERG
Diary #27
"Sit!
Read!"
My Students Get Serious About Ella
Tonight I spent a large amount of time reading books or magazines with my niece. Since she was a tiny baby, Ashley's parents have read to her and bought her books. She has not only been exposed to fiction, but nonfiction as well as she has selected magazines from the rack or her father has read the sports page from the local paper aloud her. (He spouts a lot of pro-Mizzou propaganda, but I am teaching her KU's "Rockchalk Jayhawk" cheer to give her a balanced view of the world. Go Jayhawks!)
I am learning a lot about how good readers are grown as I watch my niece grow as a reader. At just shy of two years old, she is a reader by choice. She sees reading as an important and rewarding activity and eagerly seeks out people to read to her. "Book. Sit!" she commands. I can already see the development of good comprehension strategies as we read together. She interacts with the text and pictures as we read. As we came across a picture of a boat in National Geographic, she gasped and said, "Boat! Wow, wow, wow!" When we read about the extinction of prairie chickens, she clucked like a chicken. She points and turns back to pages that delight her.Ashley also is beginning to make text-to-self connections. When she sees a picture of a woman who looks like her mommy, she says, "Momma!" When she sees a picture of an SUV (or, once, a bottle of Heineken), she says "Dada!" She is at the most rudimentary stages of developing an awareness of text and reading comprehension, but even two months shy of two years old, those skills exist on her level.
Quality skills from quality books
I am becoming ever more convinced that we need to put more effort into reading instruction in the primary grades. Go beyond simple phonics instruction to teach comprehension skills with quality children's books. Make reading time a positive, inviting experience, just as my niece's parents have done for their child. I think this is especially important for our students who don't have parents like Ashley's, where literacy in the home is nonexistent. It is with this thought in mind that I return to my classroom for our second week reading Just Ella. In an earlier entry I described my fear of inadequacy when it comes to teaching a novel. By the end of the entry I had worked through most of my questions and settled on a general course of action.I decided to concentrate on a few skills for our unit. I wanted to have students practice making, revising, and confirming their predictions. I also wanted students to make their own choices about what words to study, so they are collecting unknown, unusual, or interesting words to add their own dictionaries.
I also wanted students to continue to make their own connections with the text, though in a less structured way than filling in text-to-self charts. Finally, I wanted students to use the text to support their ideas and questions about the text during class discussions. To address these skills, I have spent time giving mini-lessons and have assigned short tasks to be completed after each day's reading. (To see the actual activities, go to the syllabus page of my website and click on Chapter Notebook Activity.)
Currently I have set up a schedule of reading and activity work Monday-Thursday with whole-class discussions on Friday. My students choose how to use their time during the first four days of the week with the understanding they are expected to be prepared with their notes to participate in the class discussion on Friday. They may read alone, with me, or with a partner. They may do all the reading at once, or read a chapter, do the activity, then read the next chapter. If they finish early they may read ahead or use the time to talk with me, read something else of their choice, or work on another project. They may read in hallway, on the floor, or at their desk. So far, so good.
Predictions and connections
Before beginning the book we created a prediction chart and recorded our predictions about what Cinderella's life might be like once she left her stepmother's home for the castle. Given the information they had going into this novel, their rosy predictions were right on target. I was happy most of them believed Cinderella's new life would be heavenly, because it is giving me a chance to help them understand how our predictions change as we discover new information and how authors sometimes deliberately mislead their readers for effect.
We are continuing to chart our predictions, adding evidence to old predictions, crossing them out completely, or even revising them. It is an interesting experiment that I think will teach all of us a lot about how authors give us clues to help us along.
For the vocabulary words, I think I am going to start a class "Vocabulary Wall" where kids can write any word and definition they want to share with the class. I want them to do more than just collect and define the words they find; I want them to see words as unique ways to communicate their ideas.Finally, to push my students to continue to make connections, I have asked them to make a note of anything that made them angry, laugh out loud, or surprised them. They can ask questions or make comments, but the idea is to teach them to expect to interact with what they read, to be active participants with the text. When we come together to discuss our week's reading, I am asking them to bring their connections to the table. I am hoping that as I validate their ideas about what we read they will develop more confidence as readers. So far it has worked.
Knocking on wood
Quite frankly I expected more resistance from my students than I have noticed so far. (Knock on wood--as I write this I am afraid I am jinxing myself!) Students are on task and making responsible choices. Our discussion last Friday was content-rich and thick with ideas and participation. There are a lone few in each class who are resisting this task; a very few are unable to complete the task without more support, and the others have other, more individual issues blocking their paths. My students are taking on this task with a seriousness I did not see earlier in the year. How did we get to this point? How did very difficult, generally below-level readers become serious about reading a text? Proficient observers, predictors, and opinion-givers? I hope that giving my students choices, sharing my own enthusiasm, thoughts, and challenges with texts, modeling proficient comprehension strategies, exposing them to quality literature, and establishing an environment where reading is important, interesting business has contributed to their new attitudes and behaviors. If the research is right, it has. These strategies have certainly worked for my niece.I cannot help wondering where my students would be if they all had parents like Ashley's, but I cannot live in the land of What Ifs. I can only try to create an environment and give students the support my niece has received and hope it is enough.
And, knowing what I know now, I am anxious to begin planning for next year when I can go about this reading business in an even more conscious, deliberate manner. Maybe then it will be as simple as, "Sit. Read!"
