I agree that it is vital that we attain students’ opinions/views of their reading/writing when assessing them. It helps me understand a child better if I know their opinion on how they feel they are progressing with the different subjects. I love to converse with my students to gain an understanding about their abilities along with their dislikes/likes. I try my hardest to know my students personally since I am with them for 8 hours a day. I love getting to know my students and their families. I take time out of my weekends to visit my students during their extra-curricular activities and show my support for them both academically and socially. I socialize with the parents during the students’ extra-curricular activities which gives me additional insight into my students’ behaviors and overall interests. My students chose/read books that interest them and are on their independent/instructional levels. Reading something they are interested in helps them become stronger readers.
Comprehension
Strategies PowerPoint
I found it interesting that the three
common causes for lower reading comprehension is unfamiliarity with the text
features/demands, undeveloped attention strategies, and inadequate cognitive
development/reading experiences. Many of my students have a wonderful oral
reading rate and show great fluency. However, they struggle when they are
tested on overall comprehension. Throughout this class I have come to the
realization that “comprehension is the reason for reading” and I added more
emphasis on this skill in my classroom. My students know that they should read
as much as possible and to always read with a purpose so they can make
connections with the text and build their schema. I use the “think aloud”
strategy when I read any texts to my students to demonstrate the skills necessary
to become a great reader. My students use sticky notes and their reading
journals to record their thoughts, new ideas, questions, summaries,
connections, etc. I pull small groups according to the students’ weaknesses and
strengths in order to strengthen their reading skills (i.e., predicting,
inferring, synthesizing, evaluating, etc.). I believe writing about their reading
helps students think through difficult parts in the text and become stronger
readers.
9 Best Practices
PowerPoint
Whenever I introduce a new topic, I
always determine my students’ schema and background knowledge of that topic. I
then can model and scaffold my students’ learning to best fit their needs. I
often have my students take notes or summarize their readings. I agree that
this task promotes greater comprehension because they have to write about what
they’re reading in their own words and therefore, they are seeing it for a
second time. In fourth grade, we take notes in our journals and use two-column
notes, outlines, and an abundant amount of graphic organizers or flipbooks. I
agree in providing effective praise as well as constant feedback to my students
because they look forward to the personalized comments. Effective praise and
personalized comments build students’ confidence levels and students in return
will be more tenacious and dedicated to the tasks at hand. I like the slide
about assigning homework and practicing skills because I believe students need
to review notes and extend their learning outside of the classroom; however, I
really enjoyed when it stated, “parent involvement should include facilitating
the process but not solving problems for their children” (slide 28). I still
find parents completing homework for their children in fourth grade and it is
aggravating when the students “understand it at home” but then “crash and burn
in class”. I stress that the importance of homework is to practice the skills they
learn at school and to become more efficient and effective with these
strategies and topics. Overall, I use several of these strategies because my
main goal as an educator is to increase student achievement and success.
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