In my own reading, I used SQ3R. By using this strategy, I felt that I was able to comprehend the text better because even though I wasn’t reading word for word 3 times, the important concepts were reinforced 3 times as I skimmed over it the 1st time, read it the 2nd time and then answered the questions I had come up with. This will probably help me in the future because I normally have a hard time retaining information I have read the 1st time. Hopefully I will be able to recall the text or information easier when I use this strategy.
Important Concepts
1. It was very surprising to me to find out that based upon the performance of a school, a child may or may not be learning disabled. I wonder if the underperforming schools have more learning disabled students?
2. Since I teach Kindergarten, several things popped out to me as I was reading. They said the adult’s style of reading aloud is an important factor in preschool literacy development. It made me wonder if my style of reading aloud is enhancing literacy development or not. It also mentioned the importance of “meaning-emphasis” versus “skills emphasis”. In kindergarten, it is hard to not get caught up in the skills because they don’t have any and in my mind, I’m always thinking they need to know this and this and this before going onto first grade, but because of this chapter, I plan be a little more relaxed in that area and focus more on the meaning of text and not so much the skills needed to read the text.
3. They mentioned that the development of phonological awareness in early readers should be monitored and when a student is lagging behind, an intervention should be happening. Even though this is what should be happening, a lot of times, and my school included, principals focus on the students in the upper grades as far as reading intervention. I have never had reading intervention for my kindergartners. It makes sense for them to “catch” the students at an early age and correct or help their struggle, rather than allowing the student to get further and further behind and then in 3rd grade try and help them.
Implementation
Like I said above, I really plan to not be so skills driven and really focus a lot more time on the meaning of the text. I know skills are still important, so I plan to find a nice balance of the two. I also plan to use a lot more writing in my classroom because this chapter reminded me of that importance when it mentioned classrooms need rich text exposure and writing experiences.
Strategy
I used Possible Sentences in my class of kindergartners. I used it in a different way than I have in the past. I had vocabulary words from a book that I wanted them to learn. I divided the class into small groups and within their group they had to come up with a sentence that would use that vocabulary word. This time, I had each group use the same vocabulary word. I wanted them to see how the same word could be used in various sentences. For the ELL learners, I felt like this really helped them understand the meaning of the vocabulary word by hearing the same word used in various ways.
Better!!!
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