One of my assignments for teacher’s college is to find a problem in my placement classroom and to try and fix that problem during my time at placement. From September to November, I attend my placement every Wednesday for a full day of internship. The issue my associate teacher and I discussed was the fact that there are three students in the class who are reading at a grade three level when they are in grade five. My goal is to close that gap by doing guided reading with those three students.
I used ministry approved book collection called Reaching Readers to design literacy packages for when we read as a group. In the reading packages I have included:
- A tracking list for the books we read together
- A list of reading strategies for the students to refer to when they come across a word they cannot pronounce
- An outline of what we will be doing together as a group before, during, and after reading
- One work sheet that has a list of vocabulary words and three questions to answer after the reading.
- As well as a list of 140 vocabulary words for the students to read as I follow on my own sheet, keeping track of the words they can read.
Our First Guided Reading Session
Before we went as a group to do reading, I took each student individually out into the hallway to do the assessment with the 140 vocab words. Each student had his or her own list of vocab words and I had my own list to follow along. Students got a check mark beside the word they read correctly and an X if they did not. This is so that I can compare and contrast the words they were able to read and not read to potentially design an activity that focus on the words they are having difficulty with. I will also be able to track the students improvement as we keep practicing the list of vocab words. The idea was to have them read the list to me individually, and then as a group read the list of vocabulary words together, that way when they go to read the words next time, they know how to pronounce the words they couldn’t before. However, we ran out of time and did not get to read them as a group in our first session together.
I originally thought our first session together would only be about a half hour, to write in their tracking sheet, go over the strategies, read pages 3-11 together and answer the three questions after reading. Unfortunately we took an entire work period. However, we also had to move around quite a bit and had a lot of distractions. Whiteboards were being installed in classrooms that day so we started out in the library but had to leave because a class came in to do work since their classroom was getting white boards installed. We found a table in the hallway to work at but the students were very distracted by the amount of traffic in the hall way.
On the positive side though, I found that the list of strategies was extremely helpful for them. Once they came across a word they couldn’t pronounce right away, we referred back to the list of strategies. The student would pick a strategy and use it to pronounce the word. The students were very successful with practicing their reading strategies.
I also found that going over the list of vocabulary words they will see during their reading. The Reaching Readers book collection has highlighted words throughout the reading with a small glossary list at the back of the book. On their work sheet page, under the before reading section, they have a list of those highlighted words that they will see in pages 3-11 of the reading. Each student took a turn reading the term and definition before we got to reading the book. They did not have any issues reading the highlighted vocabulary words in the book because we had gone over them before.
On the outline page in the reading package, I included additional strategies for comprehension. We went over those strategies together as well (making connections, looking for important ideas, concluding). One of the students had made a personal connection to the Bird Watching book we were reading and after he was finished discussing his connection, I pointed out to him the strategy he used. I found that by pointing out and discussing the strategies the students were using, they began to use metacognition during their reading. I believe if we can keep this up, their reading levels will increase maybe a little bit quicker than what I had originally thought.
Each student took a turn reading a page from the book. While one student was reading, the other two were following along in their book. I found that taking turns was a lot more successful than when I had students reading individually on their own because I found that when they had to read the book on their own, they were getting overwhelmed. It was a lot of reading to do individually. As a group and taking turns, they were still following along, however it was someone else doing the reading. They were not as overwhelmed and could think about their reading strategies as they read.
I think that for next time, instead of having the students write out answers themselves. I will ask the students questions and scribe it for them. The focus for this literacy group is to improve reading skills and I find that it takes them quite a while to write things down. I also need to find a quiet work area for us to minimize distractions and hopefully to minimize the amount of time it took to get through half of the reading we did together.
Our Second Guided Reading Session
This week I expected our guided reading session to take less time. However, we almost took the whole period again when we only read the second half of the bird watching book. This week I did not have students do any writing before or after the reading in hopes of saving time. They had their reading strategies chart available to them and during their reading they were using their strategies.
I am wondering if I should start taking the students one at a time because then they aren’t missing the majority of their work period, just a small portion. I’m also wondering about taking them one at a time because when one student is reading and struggling with a word, the other student will say the word. I would rather have the student who is struggling with the word work through it and use the strategies. I also find that although the three students are at the same reading level, there is a student who is a stronger reader at that level who sometimes gets impatient with the other readers.
So far, we have been reading the bird watching book that is at their reading level. I think I will try a higher reading level for the stronger readers in the literacy group and try another level 3 book for the reader who I believe is struggling a little bit more and who sometimes gets embarrassed when reading in front of others. Next week, I am going to take them one at a time to see if it will be a more successful reading session.
Teaching & Assessing 