Everyone can read... with the right techniques!

The first article that I read was the Pinnell article. It was wonderful for a future educator to read because it encourages teachers to "learn about learning." The teacher that they used in the article as an example, used many strategies in her classroom that helped her students with reading. The article firsts discusses how it is important to observe your students and study their interests in order to create lessons that promote their interests in reading. The articles also stresses the importance of testing out theories with your students and implementing them into areas of your classroom. A good teacher will never know if an idea will work or not unless they are willing to try. If the idea fails, it is important not to get defeated. The articles also talks about how it is important to enjoy reading and writing with your students, and make it enjoyable for them.
The second article that I read was, Excellent Reading Teachers. In the article, it provides many examples and ideas of what excellent reading teachers do in their classrooms. The beginning of the article contains a six point checklist of what excellent teachers do. I think that two of these items really stuck out to me. Excellent teachers know a variety of methods of how to teach reading. They know which methods to use on which children and what strategies will work and which ones will not.  They are also good reading "coaches". They are able to help their students learn techniques and strategies in the areas they need the most help with. I think that this was a great article, because it reminded me to remain open minded and flexible about not only reading instruction, but every other aspect of the classroom as well.
Question to consider: When you have been teaching for a few years, do you think for yourself as an educator, that it would be beneficial to take refresher courses on teaching reading?

Real Life Inquiry

      For my real life inquiry I went to a local Elementary school and observed a reading lesson that was conducted in a first grade classroom. The goal for their reading lesson that day was to identify cause and effect within the story. The teacher asked the class to get out their reading books from their desks and they all opened to a story about kids who invent great things. They read the story as a whole group using a choral reading approach. The teacher would stop every two pages or so and ask them a question or two regarding the information in the story.
      After the class read the story as a group, the teacher told the children to find their partners for peanut butter and jelly reading. The children got up from their seats and found their partners. They re-read the story with their partners. I observed that when one of the children get stuck, their partner would help them sound the words out. It was nice to see a new strategy that I had never observed before and saw the benefits that the technique had.
     After the peanut butter and jelly activity, the teacher pulled up an interactive vocabulary game on the classroom smartboard. When the children were asked to go to the board, they had to first read the sentence, and then fill in the blank with the word they thought belonged.
   I really enjoyed this observation opportunity. It was nice to see choral reading take place as well as a new strategy that had great benefits to the children. They were able to help each other out with their struggles and work as a team.