Webcast

This Reading Recovery webcast touched on some pretty relevant issues to consider throughout my preservice teaching and my current field experience.
Pat Johnson mentioned 4 points on instructional decisions; assessment driving instruction, supporting the reading process system, providing opportunities to practice with real books so children can use this system correctly, and keeping meaning at the forefront. A major point throughout this section of the webcast was the idea to teach through the readers, not the books. What an interesting idea.. not surprising to teachers since I think we all know that this is the most beneficial learning strategy for long-term success, however, I know myself and plenty of other teachers are guilty of searching through certain books to teach lessons through only using that book's content. The downfall of this strategy is the struggle the students might feel to apply the desired learning through different medias and books other than the book they learned it so clearly through. I thought this was a very interesting thing to keep in mind, since I already find myself guilty of this and I barely have much teaching experience yet.

The discussion that Mary brings up about small group instruction was an interesting one. As teachers, we obviously need to focus small group instruction on a more individual basis, which means knowing what our students need. I loved the idea that a small group should consist of differing reading levels so that the students have the opportunity to "cross check" each other while working. She also had some good insight on what books and what book levels to choose. During this part of the webcast, I kept thinking back to my current field experience in my first grade classroom. My teacher pairs up groups of 2 or 3 students to "partner read" books together. As they went off, she explained to me that she does her best to pair up the students based not on what level she thinks they are at, but student who use similar strategies as they read. For example, one student who seemed a very advanced reader was paired with two other students who were average readers. As I sat and listened to them, I realized that the advanced student was able to help the others work on the strategy of using contextual clues to understand their reading. I thought this was an awesome idea to showcase this "cross checking" strategy and was very beneficial to the students during this reading period.

One last idea that stuck with me when I was done watching the webcast was the idea that reading is more non-visual for students than it is visual. This idea is woven through the concept that pre service teachers are told hundreds of times- that we need to teach students to not just brainlessly read the words, but to match that with comprehension and meaning strategies. Here is where the "non-visual" aspect comes in; when a student reads, he or she should be doing a lot more in their minds that we can't see than just reading the words out loud. Whether it be applying background knowledge, using visualizing strategies, or other contextual clues, there always should be other processes going through a students mind as they are reading. Although this can be a daunting idea, I feel it is important to understand while helping our students become successful readers.