Reflection on Reading with Meaning
Developmental Reading 342/TTh
For Dr. Cozens
March 31, 2012
By Teresa Shelton
Shelton1
This book was very interesting to read and I learned a great deal about how to run a first grade reading classroom. The ideas were outstanding and very clear to understand. The fact that she treated the book as a school year to show us how the system should flow was excellent. The book however, left me feeling a bit ill at ease also. When I had completed the book instead of feeling equip to handle the classroom all I could think about is all the real classrooms I had seen the last two years. Only a couple of those rooms resembled this teacher’s ideas. The rest especially the ones without tenured teachers were much focused on their list of accomplishments and test taking.
Also, this book was written as a teacher resource for a first grade classroom. I can see how it would even help up to third grade easily. I believe the fourth grade through sixth should read it not for all the early literacy ideas but for the overall themes in the book. Many of the fourth through sixth grade teachers have lost the joy of teaching reading and passing that joy on to their students. Reading and comprehension is a chore that must be mastered is what I have unfortunately seen in the last six classrooms I have been in.
What I liked most about this book was when she said that the classroom still needed to be a joyful place where we take the time to appreciate all the wonderful qualities of our students. The room is a community and it is the teacher’s responsibility to create trust, build the relationships, and learn how your students are readers and learners. Watching different teachers teach it has become clear that there are more teachers out teaching that have lost sight of this idea. They appear frustrated that their students aren’t engaged or excited to read
Shelton2
and yet the teacher shows no joy in her modeling of reading. I want the students to know I do enjoy reading myself and teaching it to them.
Miller also speaks about the release of responsibility to students so that she actually has more time to teach reading and comprehension. I found that interesting because it goes against the initial thought that everything has to be in place and I have everything under control. After reading it though it was obvious it wasn’t losing control or that chaos would happen. It was actually about being organized enough that you could trust students to do a job on their own. If you model the skill and trust them to do it most students will do it. It would actually be less distraction from the actual teaching.
The section on reading non-fiction I found very insightful. Even in the early grades we should teach how to read non-fiction. Teach them the difference between fiction and non-fiction books as how they are laid out and what they are trying to provide. Let the students practice with a variety of different non-fiction book to create their own questions and to answer the questions. This would again be putting responsibility back into the hands of the students by having them read to understand facts. There has been a new emphasis put on non-fiction and this chapter shows how to incorporate even in the first grade room.
This book was full of excellent ideas and I can see how many can be incarnated into a classroom. One problem I saw was right in the beginning. It was talking about having a large block of uninterrupted time for reading workshop. In some schools that idea would work but in many of the schools the day in the classroom in interrupted almost every 30 minutes. In my
Shelton3
Junior intern classroom students were moving continuous in and out of the room to where the teacher even stated how difficult it made it to have an effective reading time. The teacher herself didn’t have input on how the overall school schedule was created. By the time lunch, two recesses, special, and pullouts for special learning were completed in the day there was only short segments to teach all subjects.
I do find this book to be an excellent resource and will keep it on my shelf to refer back to. Remembering there are many different ideas out there to teach reading but with time I will learn to trust myself and make the decisions that I know will work for my students and myself.
Developmental Reading 342/TTh
For Dr. Cozens
March 31, 2012
By Teresa Shelton
Shelton1
This book was very interesting to read and I learned a great deal about how to run a first grade reading classroom. The ideas were outstanding and very clear to understand. The fact that she treated the book as a school year to show us how the system should flow was excellent. The book however, left me feeling a bit ill at ease also. When I had completed the book instead of feeling equip to handle the classroom all I could think about is all the real classrooms I had seen the last two years. Only a couple of those rooms resembled this teacher’s ideas. The rest especially the ones without tenured teachers were much focused on their list of accomplishments and test taking.
Also, this book was written as a teacher resource for a first grade classroom. I can see how it would even help up to third grade easily. I believe the fourth grade through sixth should read it not for all the early literacy ideas but for the overall themes in the book. Many of the fourth through sixth grade teachers have lost the joy of teaching reading and passing that joy on to their students. Reading and comprehension is a chore that must be mastered is what I have unfortunately seen in the last six classrooms I have been in.
What I liked most about this book was when she said that the classroom still needed to be a joyful place where we take the time to appreciate all the wonderful qualities of our students. The room is a community and it is the teacher’s responsibility to create trust, build the relationships, and learn how your students are readers and learners. Watching different teachers teach it has become clear that there are more teachers out teaching that have lost sight of this idea. They appear frustrated that their students aren’t engaged or excited to read
Shelton2
and yet the teacher shows no joy in her modeling of reading. I want the students to know I do enjoy reading myself and teaching it to them.
Miller also speaks about the release of responsibility to students so that she actually has more time to teach reading and comprehension. I found that interesting because it goes against the initial thought that everything has to be in place and I have everything under control. After reading it though it was obvious it wasn’t losing control or that chaos would happen. It was actually about being organized enough that you could trust students to do a job on their own. If you model the skill and trust them to do it most students will do it. It would actually be less distraction from the actual teaching.
The section on reading non-fiction I found very insightful. Even in the early grades we should teach how to read non-fiction. Teach them the difference between fiction and non-fiction books as how they are laid out and what they are trying to provide. Let the students practice with a variety of different non-fiction book to create their own questions and to answer the questions. This would again be putting responsibility back into the hands of the students by having them read to understand facts. There has been a new emphasis put on non-fiction and this chapter shows how to incorporate even in the first grade room.
This book was full of excellent ideas and I can see how many can be incarnated into a classroom. One problem I saw was right in the beginning. It was talking about having a large block of uninterrupted time for reading workshop. In some schools that idea would work but in many of the schools the day in the classroom in interrupted almost every 30 minutes. In my
Shelton3
Junior intern classroom students were moving continuous in and out of the room to where the teacher even stated how difficult it made it to have an effective reading time. The teacher herself didn’t have input on how the overall school schedule was created. By the time lunch, two recesses, special, and pullouts for special learning were completed in the day there was only short segments to teach all subjects.
I do find this book to be an excellent resource and will keep it on my shelf to refer back to. Remembering there are many different ideas out there to teach reading but with time I will learn to trust myself and make the decisions that I know will work for my students and myself.