Module 4 - Reading Reflection

Which of the following comprehensive literacy programs are you already addressing/doing with your students (or have you done, or plan to do)?

After reading these two chapters, I felt a sense of validation about the strategies that I use in my classroom from the comprehensive literacy program. I teach fourth grade and my school uses the reading workshop model of which I use several components.

I enjoy using the read-aloud strategy with my students. I feel that my students gain a great number of skills and strategies from this part of our day. At first, I thought fourth graders would hate to be read to; however, I have discovered that they still love to have stories read to them. These read-aloud texts are usually a high interest and higher level of reading. However, we still discuss making connections, predictions, inferences, questioning, story elements, etc. I feel that I am able to “dive deeper” with these texts because we are discussing it as a whole group with various points of view.

Reading/strategy groups, sustained reading, and individual reading conferences are all part of my individual reading time during the reading workshop. My students who “struggle” benefit the most from reading/strategy groups because I am able to re-teach or hone in on a specific lesson that they may still have difficulties with completing individually. This allows the students to practice in a small group with me before trying it again individually. Also, I enjoy the reading groups because students learn other strategies that other students are using in their reading which I might not have thought of. My students have their individual “book nook” areas where they complete their independent reading time. You can find my students sitting in beanbags, on the floor, against a wall, under tables, or in their chairs. I want my students to feel comfortable when they read so they can enjoy their texts. Sometimes it is difficult to conference with a student if they are under a table or in a tight space. However, I make sure to conference with all my students at least once a week. I will also conference with some students almost every day because they need constant motivation. I gain knowledge of my students’ growth from these conferences and am able to assess them, if necessary, to move them up a level on the Fountas & Pinnell system. Also, I believe I guide all of my students to be constantly questioning their texts because we can learn an abundant amount of knowledge from reading.

I would like to implement more buddy/shared reading during this time but have found students to be more talkative in the upper grades and tend to not take it as seriously. I do pair up with a second grade teacher for book buddies and my fourth graders gain confidence from this situation. I also will be implementing literature groups/book clubs next year since I was able to observe another teacher in her classroom. I feel that older students gain more reading strategies and extend their learning when they are part of a book club. These book clubs force students to talk about their book using their higher order thinking skills. I really enjoyed how the teacher was able to remove herself from the books near the middle/end of the year so it was more student-focused.

As far as writing goes, I would like to improve the most in this area. Our school is focused mainly on reading and writing and sometimes writing can get “thrown by the wayside”. However, I do implement sustained writing, guided writing, individual writing conferences, and journals in my classroom. Just like reading, I want my students to feel comfortable when writing so they are allowed to move throughout the classroom.  I feel that I have more students who “fear” writing so I do model different samples of writing and practice the mechanics of writing.  My school is implementing the writing workshop with the units of study from the Teachers College of Columbia University next year. It will be interesting to see how this changes my format with writing.