Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Thoughts about independent reading...
I'm using my blog to think with Debbie about (at this moment) independent reading...as far as school goes...I think it's crucial...we need...as teachers...to open up space for our students (and ourselves) to have this time...you don't become better at something unless you have time to practice it...the statistics that Debbie is sharing with us (see handout) validate that the more we read the better we get at it...now if I could just convince the data-driven machine that informs decisions in my school district to think this way...we may not have as many children struggling with EOG assessments...over the course of Debbie's demo...we explored several platforms that provide opportunities to share...socially what we are reading...like shelfari, glogster, story bird, book seer, good reads...these seem interesting and I'm wondering how I might bring any one of them into my classroom practice. Thanks to Debbie for giving us space to think about all of this!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I'm right with you on this Tony. Kids who read get better at reading. And yea, it's a struggle when we know this but the powers that be are pushing something else on us. It gets even harder when the parents of students we teach buy into it as well. For example, I had a parent come to me at the end of the year, angry at me, accusing me of not doing my job, because her child did not pass the reading test. When I pointed out that he grew significantly, that comment fell on deaf ears. This parent was convinced that her child's failing of this test was due to the content that I failed to teach him. In the end of the conversation, unable to censor myself, I decided just to keep it real, telling her that the results of these tests have a huge margin of error so she shouldn't look at them scientifically. And I also told her that kids who do well on reading tests aren't always those who turn in all of their ELA work, they are the kids who read. At this point, she began yelling at her child for not reading more even though she tells him to every night. He ended up passing his retest, almost scoring a 4, and I've been left trying to figure out all of the things that were reflected in this whole incident. It speaks to the nature/validity of "the test", the perception of society, and also a host of other intangibles...stuff outside of my control but nonetheless will reflect the degree to which I am an "effective" teacher. Like I said, I'm right with you on the importance of the issues raised in Deb's demo, thanks for creating a jumping-off point for some of my ideas in your blog post.
Post a Comment