I am thinking in some ways of my buddy at Juanita when I am reading these chapters, but I have to be honest. Right now as I read these chapters my mind keeps going to the students in my classroom. We have begun reading conferences in our classrooms, but we whisk through these to have them done by the next PLC meeting. After reading chapter seven in Routman’s Reading Essentials I am beginning to rethink these conference.
First of all they cannot be just something we check off the list of to do’s. This is a real opportunity to see if the students are reading and understanding the text which they are consuming. This can be a struggle many of us go through with our students and one cohort member in particular has a reader who struggles with comprehension. One of the things I did realize last week when working with my Juanita buddy was that the text she had chosen as a just right book was a little beyond her for the time being. She was missing the humor in the descriptions of the characters because the words used in the text were just beyond her realm of understanding. When we discussed the back of the book there were many words that she did not know the meaning of and had difficulty describing the characters in the book using her own words.
This can be said for many of the students in my own classroom, but I can not really know this for sure until I figure out how we can restructure the reading conferences. I have read and re-read the section regarding an ideal reading conference and one of the major things I do not think we really focus on are the goals and strengths for the students. On Tuesday I am scheduling reading conferences. I have five students in particular that I want to meet with because I have not focused on them very much and during library time they each keep picking the same type of books (usually Geronimo Stilton or some other graphic novel). I need to know what their interests are and see where they are at when it comes to reading.
Oh, by the way, the spelling tests are going well. We are going to have a monthly spelling bee now. The students are going to compete by table groups and they each will win a prize. Every Tuesday we have the tests. One of the first things we found was a student who was spelling everything phonetically and a few others who needed some extra help. I will keep you posted.
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1 month ago
Athena, I appreciate your comment about conferences focusing on strengths and goals for each student. For our Informal Conferences at Juanita, I was so nervous that in our conference we never even got to that part. At the end I believed that I had enough info to choose a just-right book for him, but, as I reflect on it now, my buddy left the conference without any goals. I left out what should be the main purpose of the conference, informal or otherwise.
ReplyDeleteWow, I appreciate how you take the readings into your classroom and really use the information so immediately. I haven't done reading conferences with my students yet,but in working with my reading buddy in 5th grade, I am seeing some light. In my classroom we are doing the silent reading and partner reading, but I am not quite sure how my MT knows if the students are reading at their just right level. I am also interested to know about your spelling bees and spelling work. I am going over Words their Way articles and can see lots of good ideas there. Bear says that students in the intermediate stage need word study that relates to what the reading and writing the students are doing.(Bear,p.220) I am unsure of how this would work. So I will be interested to hear how you go about this with your class. Thanks for such thought provoking ideas!
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