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Home : 2001 : August : 13

Reading
By Suzanne

Dear Sheila, I teach fourth grade in NY State where we face the pressures of testing as well. I struggle with the same issues as you. I've been teaching with trade books for years now, but I feel as though I am ruining
the children's love of reading because I am "basalizing" the books to death. It takes us two months to read a book. So, I've been trying to figure out a new plan. I recently attended a workshop on reading comprehension. Although I didn't find the answers to my problems, I did bring home a little "food for thought." (I should tell you that the conference was on Reading Comprehension

for struggling readers.). The instructor suggested that we should teach comprehension skills (all skills, for that matter) using what she called "considerate text." Which means, for example, instead of trying to teach figurative language within the course of the book Shiloh, I might begin the reading period with a mini lesson on figurative language using a few short paragraphs of an unrelated text (or one of those short passages from those many skill books out there), which contains examples of figuative language. That way, I do not have to stop over and over while trying to enjoy the novel I've selected. A few years ago, while reading "Stone Fox" I was disappointed and amazed at my students' lack of emotion at the end of the book. I think it was because they lost the flow of the story because we stopped all of the time to discuss similies, metaphores, vocab, mult. meaning words.....

I think that I will continue to read (and enjoy) the novels, but teach the skills using a carefully selected text or passage. I think that this might help for tests as well. Just a thought, not an answer.