Reading Records

This section of the book is about the essential reading life. Pick a quote that strikes you as being important to your reading life as a teacher. Explain your choice and consider how it relates to your current teaching placement.

"When teachers begin to keep their own reading records, they stop worrying about book levels and the number of pages and number of minutes students read each day. That carries over to students, who also stop focusing on how many pages they've read" (pg. 35).

I love Routman's idea of keeping a reading record! I wish I had started one when I was in grade school. Imagine the sense of accomplishment I would have now! I can definitely see how a reading record would be a powerful tool for students, being able to look back and see all of the effort you put into reading without the pressure of sharing how many pages you have read each day. I know in my placement the students are assigned 30 minutes of reading each night and then the next day the teacher records their page number. Also, recording pages is done in front of the entire class, out loud, so the students who are not fast readers are made very obvious to everyone. This always seemed a bit strange to me. If I were a student what would keep me from making up what page I was on?

Why not have every student keep a reading log and just take a look at it once a week or so to make sure that students are adding to it and reading a variety of texts. I think it would be much more satisfying for the students and the teacher- you would get to know your students better by seeing what books they enjoy and you wouldn't have to take time to record pages daily. Plus, if you kept one with your students and even read during independent reading with them that could be much more motivating for your students than most of the other activities surrounding reading.

Emergent Literacy

Since I have yet to work with young children in my field experience I don't have many examples of emergent literacy. I sat in for an afternoon with a kindergarten class and observed kids during a math lesson in which they were learning about numbers and instead of writing the number 3, they would draw three things to represent the number. Some of the kids drawings were fairly easy to identify, trees or squares but then other kids drawings would be completely indecipherable for me- looking mostly like scribbles. I found it interesting the contrast between students. I wonder now, after reading the Sulzby and Teale article, if the children who have more experience with literacy in their homes were the ones who were drawing better or if it was simply a matter of varying degrees of motor skills.

While I was observing this classroom I also saw the teacher use different strategies to promote literacy among her students. She used flashcards during transitions while some children were making their way to the rug. The flashcards had the letter and a picture to represent it. The teacher would call on kids to read the letter, say the sound, and describe the picture. I remember finding it so entertaining to watch them during this activity. One child was given the letter N. He would say "N, nnnn, Egg" but the picture was of a nest. She would prompt him again on the picture but every time he would say "egg" instead. I remember thinking that he's right the picture does have an egg in the nest. Being in this classroom for the afternoon reminded me of how much we actually have to learn. All the literacy skills that we take for granted and seem so obvious, actually had to be learned at one point in time- amazing.