reading

Home

Chat

Blogs

Collection

Directory

Home : 2004 : January : 29

reading
By Maggie

Hi AW. I'm a reading teacher. I'm at a couple of schools. I cover grades 1-6, and then I also work at the high school level. The most I see at one time is 5 students. And a few I do one on one. I absolutly love it. You'll
need to see what your students needs are. Most of the kids that come to me up through 3rd grade have decoding issues, 2nd and up also have fluency problems and comprehension problems. I work with fluency in every class. We do repeated readings with short poems. They take them home and read them to their families and bring them back to the next class, where we reread them and then start

another poem. That only takes about 10 minutes or so. Then we read books that are short and geared to their reading levels for comprehension. I work on the 7 strategies that good readers use, one strategy at a time until they master it. I also do mini-lessons on phonics and tie it in to what we are reading. I do other things too but it depends on the students' needs. Some of my students need very direct, systematic phonics skills becuase of their reading disability.There are some good books out there that you might want to check out. Timothy Rasinski has several and is one of my favorite authors. One is called "Phonics to Fluency", Another is "Help for Struggling Readers", and another is a book just devoted to Fluency. They have some great ideas that will be helpful to you. If you haven't read "Mosaic of Thought" by Ellin Keene and Susan Zimmerman you might want to. It's a great book. There are so many things you can do to help these kids. You just have to see what their needs are. As far as teaching the five block way, I would say don't. They are ovbiously struggling and need more intensive help. I hope this is helpful to you.