Chapter 4

Chapter 4

1. During familiar text time, students get to practice new skills and reading strategies while reading a familiar text. This works like a safety net for making and correcting mistakes.
a. This is a great strategy for both individual work and a class as a whole. For an entire ELA class, it seems that this would work well when introducing new reading skills or even something like literary elements. When I taught Animal Farm, I had my students work in a task rotation activity using familiar children’s books to help them focus on the elements of a fable, as well as some literary elements we had been working on, such as symbolism and metaphor, and a new one for them, allegory, which is integral to the novel. This activity with the familiar children’s stories at first seemed like it was below their level (to them), but then they realized that many of the things they were doing with these books easily transitioned over to really helping them with the novel.

2. Self-assessment directs the students’ attention to the use of various strategies and the effect their implementation has on the reading.
a. This idea combined with the chart for self-assessment of reading strategies is a great tool that I have never thought of using. While I have had students do plenty of activities that involved reading strategies, I’ve never had students actually reflect on their own reading skills and ask themselves questions about it. This would make any student fully aware of their thought and strategy process while reading the text that day. A chart like this would go great while doing independent reading during 10 minutes of class time, especially if combined with meaningful questions or a study guide.

3. When showing a student a new strategy to help him with his reading difficulty, the teacher also gives the student a rationale for including this skill in the program.
a. I am beginning to realize how organized and structured this reading program is, and I really enjoy it. I like that after figuring out what difficulties the student posses, I know that I can easily find and use some strategies to help with my student’s inefficiencies. The example of realizing that the student has a miscue problem and then having her ask herself what word would make sense in the context of the reading paints an excellent picture of how this process is going to work.

4. It is suggested that after the reading, the diagnostic teacher has a mini-lesson that demonstrates a new writing skill or format to coincide with the reading passage. This interactive writing helps the teacher and student create a meaningful piece of writing together.
a. I really like that immediately after reading, we go right into a writing assessment. I can use this opportunity to focus on a lot of different things, such as a writing format, techniques, or conventions. I teach a new writing skill every day, either focusing on technique or grammar, and we practice it in our essays and writing assignments for the entire week. For example, if I show students how to use an apostrophe, we will continue to use apostrophes for the rest of the week, and then I will ask them to work it into all of their major writing essays. But with this process I can now focus on other reading or writing strategies that I haven’t had the opportunity to work on yet, such as character sketching or using imagery.

5. Students are taught to match books to their reading level by using the “thumb” technique. They use their fingers and touch every word on a page they don’t know, and if they reach their thumb by the end of a page it is beyond this level.
a. This idea is great! I have never heard of it, but I am going to start using it for independent reading or my 12-1-1 students. This teaches the student to think independently and figure out for himself if this book is beyond his ability. I can just tell the student to either pick a moderate or challenging novel; if he has used three or four fingers, the book might just be challenging enough to begin using those reading skills that we have been practicing. If there is only one finger used, then we may need to try a more difficult novel. The student can judge for himself what would be best suited for his reading level.