Wow (I have no other words for this)

For some interesting thoughts on teaching spelling in schools check out this conversation...and after reading this document above watch me put my foot in my mouth :)

Meeting Students Needs

In reading the Mesmer and Mesmer piece about the RTI model for reading and the Hudson piece on dyslexia, I've noticed that both focus on the learner as being capable. The traditional discrepancy model for special education services uses the deficit model- this student is not as smart as others and as the article mentioned, it's more of a wait until it's too late approach. Whereas using the RTI model allows the student an opportunity to improve before being referred to special education services. It focuses direct instruction to match the students needs. Similarly, the Hudson article mentions that teachers should view students with dyslexia not as lazy or simply in need of more practice reading but actually having a neurological issue. This way students can receive intense instruction in reading and improve, instead of letting these students fall dramatically behind without hope for getting caught up. I think it is often too easy for teachers to assume that students are struggling in reading because they are not trying hard enough, especially when students seem to be disinterested in reading. It is truly sad when students feel they are not getting the attention they need from their teacher and end up giving up on trying to improve on their own. Reading these articles reinforces for me the critical role of the teacher in identifying where students need extra support, and rather than refer them to someone else i.e. a specialist, ask themselves what I need to do. As a soon-to-be teacher it seems like an extremely daunting task to be able to identify and meet the needs of 30 or so people in all areas of their education, but critical to student success.

Text Selection and Fake Reading

All of the readings for this course so far keep pointing to the importance of text selection. Whether it's a guided reading lesson, independent reading book, shared reading, selecting the right text seems to be the most important step towards becoming a good reader. My concern, after reading Tovanni and her discussion of fake reading, is how do we get kids to be engaged with textbook material? While the obvious answer might be, "don't use textbooks", the reality is that most school curriculum, even and especially through college, depends on reading textbooks for information.
I volunteered in a school that used those terrible reading textbooks in elementary, so even their class time devoted to reading was with textbooks. I think it's difficult to engage kids in reading textbook material, especially because it's often written so dryly and the material is rarely connected to their lives, which means students often end up fake reading them. So how do we make it meaningful for them because they can't simply fake read all textbook material...can they? What would be the point?
I start to wonder if this is how I read textbooks through school, by not really reading them or reading for answers to questions only. Even when I think long and hard, I can't recall a single textbook having that feeling of specialness which so many books have for me. So have I answered my own question...
Is it possible to make textbook material meaningful for students, and if it is possible how do we do it?

Comprehension Strategies

I found Cooper and Routman to be very similar, one article just details more specifically the comprehension strategies and the strategies are slightly different. One of the key elements of both Routman and Cooper is the importance of modeling. As an adult reader this becomes very challenging for me, because as the authors mentioned we do most of our comprehension work unconsciously, so making yourself aware of how you use a particular strategy is difficult. For instance I am teaching my small group literacy lesson on Thursday and at the request of my MT I am introducing the strategy of questioning. I want to be able to effectively model for them how I would do this but I don't know if I actually do- yikes! I guess I probably do on some level think I wonder how this person is feeling or what was the name of that character. But I am teaching the three levels of questioning with a non-fiction text...needless to say I'm not feeling very confident.

I am also seeing now how students can learn a strategy but not be able to really apply it to their reading. We have been working on inferences in the class I am in and many students understand that they rely on information from the text and their own background knowledge to infer something about the text. However, some students are unable to make genuine inferences, instead using something that is already evident in the text, or making very shallow, or confusing inferences. In trying to probe their thinking I am wondering what they are not getting about the concept. They are practicing inferences with both their independent books and the read aloud but still some are coming up short. I am wondering if other skills need to come before making inferences? Do the strategies need to be taught in a certain order or does it matter?