This idea of a struggling reader is something that I have definitely had thoughts and fears about as a future teacher. I hated reading growing up nor was I that great at it. This picture embodies the kind of reader I was. Reading was not one of my leisurely activities growing up as a student. The first thing that stood out to me from my experience as a student and the readings this week was the using tapes/podcast of books to engage students into reading. Growing up, I would have to go home and buy the podcast of the book we were reading in order to be able to stay on top of assigned readings or to be able to understand what was going on in class group readings. I was a very slow reader. Podcast allowed me to engage in more of a story-telling than trying to read the words for completion and not understanding. From my experience, this improved the reader I was.
Another huge strategy that really might be the greatest thing a teacher can do is creating a supportive relationship with the students. The line that resonated with me the most was the following: "...people who have repeatedly failed at something usually cope by focusing their lives elsewhere to avoid still more failure." (Daniels and Zemelman, 2014, p. 280) I would not say that this is 100% true about my reading experience, but applies to multiple experiences in life. As a future teacher, I need to be sure that my students are able to move forward from past failures, establish their trust early on, and feel confident that there is the ability and time to improve their reading abilities. Being intentional about getting to know each students does seem a lot more work for a teacher, but it will set up for a much more successful and potentially an easier year, because of the initial time and effort to show support for the students. Word Count:328
Hey Caroline!
ReplyDeleteSo many good points in this post! Definitely with you about the fear of having students come into my class without great reading skills. I’m hoping that the Literacy Mentor program in our other class will ease some of these concerns. You also mentioned how podcasts were especially helpful for you and I think that this is a great idea because you’re right, it does allow students to get into the “storytelling” of the writings without having them get too bogged down with the length or complexity of the piece that they’re reading. I’m definitely going to keep this in mind later down the road when we start planning lessons of our own. Great post!
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