Lynn Brady Blog 1: Watching and Listening to Children Read

I love reading and I love to listen to children read so I picked this article. As I read this article, it not only talked about how children read but it helped me better understand the use of a more purposeful observation method,  One that did not necessarily use the normal paper and pencil test to assess a student’s reading.  The article talked about how even your best readers can sometimes seem distracted when reading. This might cause them to appear like poor readers.  If a reader doesn’t have any background knowledge or experience that can be recognized in the reading the text might appear to be poorly composed. Therefore, we not only need to kid watch but we need to text watch as well.  A statement that I agree with in the article was “reading needs to be a time when students learn and understand what they are reading”. Several questions were mentioned to help a teacher do a more informal observation of students reading. I found them to be very interesting. The purpose is to help teachers build their reading program on what students are doing right instead of what they are doing wrong. I really like this idea. This goes along with the term Miscue Analysis. This helps look at what the child is doing right while reading. I read about the ERRQ. This allows the student to take control of his/her reading. It also encourages them to ask questions. I can see where Kid Watching and text Watching could help teachers to better help their students by letting the students have some say in what they are reading and asking questions.