History
of my teaching and how I have changed as a reading teacher:
In
selecting my book, I immediately was drawn to Making nonfiction and other information texts come alive: A practical
approach to reading, writing and using nonfiction and other informational texts
across the curriculum because of a huge shift in my approach to teaching
reading that occurred this past school year.
I feel it necessary to give you a glimpse into my current teaching
practices of reading and writing and how they have evolved to better understand
my philosophy and how I will connect the framing questions to the book I have
chosen. This upcoming school year I will
be entering my seventeenth year in education.
Graduate school has afforded me the opportunity to, even after a
significant amount of time in education, implement some remarkable changes to
how I approach literacy, even when I believed how I was teaching reading and
writing was effective. While I know the core of my beliefs were solid, which
were that reading should be driven by making meaning and understanding the
miscues of students. Writing should be more about process versus product; I was
unknowingly missing the mark for each of my students. Last year, I had the
wonderful opportunity to take a reading process and a writing development
course that created a HUGE paradigm shift, for me, as an educator of literacy.
Prior to these incredible courses, I was using literature circles and leveled
guided reading groups for reading instruction.
In my school, I am blessed to still have choices whether to use a basal
program or other methods; I use other methods.
Now, I use inquiry/interest reading groups and skill based guided
reading groups. The interest/inquiry reading groups are centered on what
students want to read and learn about and levels are taken out of the equation.
I have students on an IEP reading with students who are advanced; all reading
the same material. My pedagogical
changes came after reading Beyond leveled
Books, Miscues not Mistakes, The Reading Process and an article titled I am not a level 3 reader. How I
approach writing was significantly impacted by reading Donald Grave’s
dissertation and publications thereafter.
Prior to reading his work, I was approaching writing from the framework
of using six traits, which in turn supported students to focus more on product
versus the process. Never before had I
looked at the writing of my students through the lens of writing
development. Once I had a clear
understanding of why my students were doing the things they were doing while
writing, it changed how I approached writing instruction. I finally understood
how to support my students in a process by conferencing and giving them time to
develop their ideas, which ultimately helped them become stronger writers than
I had ever witnessed to date. They were
finally writing with a purpose. Based on
all of the changes my students and I have experienced over the past two school
years, I wanted to continue to enhance current literacy practices in my
classroom. It is with hope that I can
use this book to strengthen my interest/inquiry reading groups because so much
nonfiction text is used. In addition, I
want to share what I have learned and hear what you think and learn from
you.
I am really excited about reading your blog throughout this book. Your classroom experiences sound pretty familiar to mine. I am a true believer in miscue analysis and the absolute benefit it can be if used to inform your reading instruction for students, absolutely! It has to go beyond the marking on a copy of the book and being done. A true miscue analysis can be one of the best things a teacher does for a student. I am excited to hear about how your writing instruction changed as well. I also was indoctrinated into 6 traits. I struggled to teach writing throughout my career and it's really one of the focuses of my graduate studies because I know it can be done better. I am learning so much about sociocultural theory and writing as well as process writing and the amazing benefits it can have in a classroom. Last semester I took English 538 which was writing theory for teachers. It was an eye opener!
ReplyDeleteJulie, I feel as strongly as you do with regard to miscue analysis. In addition to doing Procedure I miscue analysis, I learned how to do over the shoulder and RMA (retrospective miscue analysis)I would record my students while they read and play back the recording to discuss particular miscues as well as good reading strategies they did, discuss how they knew certain words. It was amazing! Did you take the reading process course? I wish With regard to writing, I took a writing development course with Penny last semester. It was amazing. I will try hard to incorporate how I teach reading and writing and weave it with concepts in the book. Don't you feel just understanding behaviors of writing help so much in teaching students writing? Thank you for your comment. I am excited to share back and forth!
ReplyDeleteMinda, I am excited to read what you have found in your book and your insight in the classroom. I will be starting my student teaching in the fall, but know that within a year I will be trying to figure out ways to incorporate reading strategies and writing exercises into my lesson plans. From the readings that I am doing, and this class a lot of it goes back to child psych and Vygotsky's Zones of Actual and Proximal Development. Most non-fiction texts used in schools often times are beyond a student's ZPD and are written on at a student's frustration level. I thought that was particularly interesting because if we are to help the students master reading, comprehension, and writing, how much more difficult is it going to be if they are frustrated and lose interest? and What about discourses? I look forward to reading and commenting more about your blog and learning from you!
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