Coaching and Conferring with Readers

On the very first page of this article an interesting point is brought up...why have we focused so much on writing conferences and not reading conferences? Even for myself I always feel much more prepared and confident to conference with my students as writers as opposed to readers. My writing workshop is better developed than my reading workshop, and my students seem to be more sustained writers than readers. I love and value reading to its core...I am wondering why my classroom doesn't necessarily reflect this.

"Conferring with young readers...first involves research in order to learn where the child is as a reader and understand the child's intention, then deciding what we should teach, and then teaching in a way that can influence what that child does on another day with another book."

I found this to be a powerful quote because it goes along with what we discussed in class today as far as lesson planning goes. To do this model effectively, we can't plan a year, a month, or even a week ahead...we have to let our students' needs guide our decisions and our teaching.

I appreciated the section of the article that discusses how coaches should intervene as little as possible while readers move through text. Our job is to "help readers develop unconscious habits." We are there to scaffold the reading work we hope will happen rather than to stop the reading completely to discuss all the strategies they can or should use.

"But in the end, children need to read as best they can, without our presence to hold them up."

I appreciate this idea as well, because it's something with which I struggle. It is really hard not to correct every miscue or attempt to turn each one into a teachable moment. We want our students to be proficient readers, but we want them to do it immediately. Oftentimes we shortchange them by giving them too much help because we do have this goal in mind. It is important for us to step back and give them the tools to become independent readers and problem solvers. We won't always be there when they are reading...they have to be able to do it themselves!

Shared Reading: Reading with Children

I like that this text explicitly states what the teacher's role is in shared reading as well as what the guiding principles for selecting texts are. Shared reading does give students the opportunity to observe and practice "good" reading. I think it really fits in with the OLM model - this is our chance as teachers to do the "I do" and the "we do." Shared reading, like all aspects of balanced literacy, needs to be very purposefully planned. As teachers, we need to know exactly what we think students should take away from the text and conversation. The discussion we have along with the reading is also extremely important. Demonstrating our thinking and guiding students through their own ideas is where they get most of the value of the shared reading experience. Again, this article brought up the idea of reusing a text several times for different reasons. I am not sure that I ever reread a text last year...but I definitely will next year! I noticed in step six of the outline, the note says, "Children should think of shared reading as fun." This stuck out to me...I want children to see ALL reading as fun! Under the instructional purpose headline, it says that texts should reflect language arts standards as well as other content standards. Using texts that correlate to science and/or social studies is a great way to incorporate cross curriculum structure. I am wondering if it is important to use a text that has information that supports content that has already been taught or information with which students are at least somewhat familiar, however. I could see my students getting caught up in the science or history rather than focusing on the language or skill that I am hoping to teach.

Side question: What is a Wikki Stix?