“Any reading program
that substantially increases the amount of reading students do will impact
their reading achievement.” Reading is the key to growing as a reader. While
Routman goes on and explicitly says that just reading will not help our
students if they are not understanding what they are reading, reading is still
truly at the core. Routman says later on that practice, with feedback, will
help our students to grow as readers. At the beginning of the year, I was
really good at monitoring and conferencing with students while they were independent
reading. I took the time to know my students as readers and had a good idea of
what they could read. Now, half-way through the third nine weeks, I feel, and
know, that my students have grown as readers, but I no longer know them as
readers. I have gotten busy and/or slack about completing individual
conferences, and documenting them. After book clubs, a poetry unit, and
biography unit, I feel that the choice and time from independent reading has
been lost. The amount of time I’ve given
to students to read independently has dropped by 10 to 15 minutes from the beginning
of the school year. If we’re lucky, students have gotten 10 to 20 minutes to
read independently a day. I hope to get
back into student-selected, ‘just right’, sustained independent reading though
to finish out the school year.
The assessment
chapter was a great spark for me and provided so many tools and resources to
support monitoring students during independent reading. Informal reading
conferences are how I have gotten to know my students as readers. I like
Routman’s list of questions she asks during reading conferences, and how she
has applied the standards on the high-stakes testing into her conferences. She
asks students not only about the main idea and vocabulary of their book, but
also dives in and asks the students to get a deeper understanding of the text
by asking them why their character behaved in that manner or more fully
understand the author’s purpose. Routman’s rubric on page 113 went the extra
step for me. I have conducted reading conferences with my students but never
knew how to continually hold them accountable other than our conferences. This
rubric can not only hold students accountable, but also shows the evidence that
students are progressing as independent readers. It is one thing for a teacher
to know that their students have progressed as readers, but we must have the
evidence to share with parents, other teachers, and administrators, to support what
we already know.
Helen, I also really liked the rubric for reading conferences in the Routman book. Like you mentioned, it's a great way to keep students accountable and share their progress with all stakeholders. The focus you've placed on holding conferences in the beginning of the year was a great start to helping you learn about your readers. Because you've done this, you have a better idea of how they've grown as the year has passed. I've been just as guilty of letting conferences slack off as the year goes on due to other requirements. It's great that you've recognized this and plan to incorporate more reading into your day. You can also conference about reading students are doing in relation to any inquiry research they're completing. Talking to them about how they conduct research or design projects covers many of the reading standards.
ReplyDeleteHi Helen,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you found these chapters helpful. Conferencing has been one of the most effective strategies I have implemented into reading/writing workshop because it is both an instructional tool to provide feedback and support to students and it is an assessment tool because it provides me with information to guide my planning.