It took me a while to find the box in the garage with old books that my children have long since abandoned. Years before I decided to change careers to teaching, I gave away many of our childrens books, but kept a dozen or so that held special meaning. I was happy to find the three Robert McCloskey books Make Way for Ducklings, Blueberries for Sal and One Morning in Maine with pictures and text that transport me back to my New England roots. I was a bit surprised when my daughter saw the books asked with concern if I was giving the books away. They have a special place in her heart as well!
As a parent of two teenagers, I read the article on Emergent Literacy with interest. Although much of the information was familiar to me from parent practice, not teacher practice, the literacy strategies are much the same. The article’s recommendations to surround children with books, read aloud to children early and often, model reading to kids, are all recommendations that we followed in our home to promote early literacy. The reality that we have one child who is well above his grade level for reading and one child who is reading below her grade level, tells me that following these early literacy strategies and activities are not the only factors in reading success.
The Albright article on reading picture books to adolescents provides an interesting idea for supporting middle schoolers in content area instruction. This high interest reading strategy was successful in engaging middle school students with alternate materials to the standard text. The students’ ability to create their own connections and meaning during the read-alouds was exciting. The model emphasizes the need to follow the three steps of planning, preparing and producing when considering a picture book read-aloud for this age group. Now that my own struggling middle school student is required to read to learn, this might be an effective strategy to help her in social studies and science.
I think that it helps to to get kids interested in reading early on as the article states. But I do agree that read alouds and surrounding students with books doesn't always make a student a good reader. My parents did not spend a lot of time reading to us but I grew to love it. But I was never a strong reader. My brother, on the other hand, hated and still does hate reading. Its not that he does not like having stories read to him. He struggles with reading from a learning disability. Sadly, he still struggles with reading at 26 years old. He often has a family member read things to him because reading is such a challenge for him that he struggles comprehending what he just read.
ReplyDeleteHowever, my brother might not be good at reading he is amazing with numbers and drawing. I think we need to understand that each our students have different abilities and while they struggle with some it is the job of the teacher to make them well rounded in all areas and push them in the areas that they struggle to help them become better at it.