Leveled Reading

I know that today it is very common for teachers to use leveled reading within their classrooms. I always thought that leveled reading made sense as long as you aren’t overly strict and limiting about what a child can read. Looking at the article, Let’s Start Leveling about Leveling, an article by Kath Glasswell and Michael Ford that dives into the realities of guided reading.

The article starts by pointing out that leveled reading is not having the success rate in the classroom that most thought it would have. It was quickly clear to me why this might be happening when the article looks at the rage of words in each level of reading.  We see that the highest leveled readers could be reading an average of 800 more words a week than the lower levels. In this example, the strongest readers get the most practice at reading words, and the gap between the high-level and the low-level can unintentionally widen.

It seems important that teachers consider other factors when making a decision about a child’s reading level, such as reader interest, vocabulary, and background knowledge. Finding a good match between a reader and text extremely important so as not to limit the child’s reading variety. When putting children in a leveled group they are put in a category that defines them when the children within the group are very different and have different instructional needs. Children need a variety of texts that can provide them a challenge and offer high-level thinking and independence.

Overall teachers must be more flexible in their approach to using leveled texts in the classroom. Giving students an option and not limiting their growth and love of reading is very important. The authors offer some good suggestions about how to use leveled reading in your classroom and overcome the obstacles it can produce:

•        Encourage students to read books that interest them and support them through shared and paired reading
•        Choose authors that write books at multiple levels so children can find accessible titles by the author
•           Meet more often with children who have greater needs
•       Establish cross-age grouping for reading

Comprehension

While reading a portion of Catching Readers Before They Fall, I was very intrigued about the chapter on comprehension. The book points out that teachers are trying to increase their student’s comprehension while reading. Thinking back to learning to read myself I can remember feeling like the focus was on how well I was reading but not how much of the text I was understanding. I am currently observing a third grade classroom and I feel that although many of the students are “reading well” that they are not reading in a way that they are actually understanding or following the story. It seems as though especially when they are asked to read out loud that they are focused on reading fast and proficiently, but it seems to me that they are only reading the words and not thinking about what they are actually reading.

This chapter discusses the idea of implicitly teaching reading process strategies to students or now. While I always considered myself a “good reader” I still think that I would have benefited from someone clearly pointing out these comprehension strategies. The book mentions an example of a student who was considered a good reader and always made good grades in elementary school but struggled when entering high school and college because she wasn’t taught to examine the text and use strategies to deepen her understanding.

I think it is important for us as teachers to make sure that students ask questions of the text and make mental pictures of what is happening. I also think it is very important for us to teach our students to summarize and point out the main ideas of a reading and participate in discussions about the reading. Overall I think we need to make sure that our students know that a proficient readers doesn’t just read well aloud but used different strategies to help themselves understand and make meaning of the text.

Sound it out?

While reading, Sounding Out: A Pervasive Cultural Model of Reading, for class this week I was forced to look at my own use of the phrase "sound it out". I am ashamed to admit that I have been using this phrase with students frequently. I am currently shadowing a third grade teacher and on my first day in her classroom I heard the phrase at least three times. This article has made me look at what teachers and students really mean when they use this phrase.

Even though I have been learning about different reading strategies for the past few months, I find that when I start working with children I catch myself saying "sound it out" when thats not really what I want them to do. I could relate to one example from this article in which the student is reading a sentence and says "bee" instead of "dragonfly". The teacher tells her to sound out the word but is also pointing to a picture of a dragonfly on the page. The teacher is saying to "sound it out" but is actually using a very different strategy. I believe that it is very important for teachers to be able to state the different strategies to students instead of labeling them all as "sound it out". I believe that this is why when students were asked to explain what makes a good reader, most of them used the phrase "sound it out" when many of their peers where doing other things that were making them successful readers.


The author of this article also points out that this strategy is a cultural model that will not serve all students well. Using this phrase may cause students who experience difficulties with pronunciation to feel discouraged and "bad" about their reading skills. As we discussed last week it is very important to children to enjoy reading and not to be discouraged. If we are only offering children one tool to use, we are setting them up for failure and disappointment. 


As mentioned in the article teachers should be trying to get students to combine letter sounds but to also do many other things like looking at the rest of the sentence to see what words make sense. I know that it is my responsibility as a teacher to make sure that children have a range of strategies to solve words and help them effectively use those strategies to access visual information in efficient ways.

New Expectations

Many people today are familiar with how to help children become better readers but fewer people are aware of how to help children become successful writers. In the Article, Every Mark on the Page: Educating Family and Community Members about Young Children’s Wringing Cusumano recommends that instead of focusing on the conventions of a child’s writing that we focus on the message and the content of the story that the child is writing about. When children are first learning to write it is suggested that they first draw a picture, and then write their story. When this happens the picture often acts an outline or prewriting technique for the child to think about and arrange their story.

When trying to help a student with their writing it is suggested that we focus on the meaning of the story and the basic elements. These elements include: does the story have a beginning, middle, and end, is the writing from left to right, did they leave spaces in between words, have they used any punctuation or capitalization? Looking at all of the positive things that they child has done is important. After you have found some items that the child needs to work on you can read books or examine other writing pieces and point out these elements instead of critiquing the child’s work. When working with parent and showing them how they can help support their own child’s writing it is best to begin by using a different child’s work. This will help remove any emotional connections and they will not feel like they need to defend their child’s writing.

In another topic of discussion this week is teaching children to read. We are focusing on phonemic awareness in young children in kindergarten and first grade. First I believe we should define phonics. Phonics refers to the knowledge of letter-sound correspondence, which readers use to visually examine letters or combinations in words and produce a sound that corresponds to the visual stimulus. When trying to make children notice individual sounds in words it is best done by playing songs, rhymes, and pointing out sounds throughout the day. It is extremely important for children to develop phonemic awareness as it has been shown that it is correlated with reading and spelling achievement of students through grade 6. Students should begin by examining words that they know and are familiar with. These can be in songs, poems, or books. Children can begin examining rhyming words or words with the same letters at the end.