The weeks of the school year keep going by faster and faster. It’s Friday before I know it! But this just reminds me that I have to make the most out of each week, taking opportunities to practice my teaching and classroom management skills because this semester will be over before I know it.
In my Emergent Literacy class, I read an article called “She’s My Best Reader; She Just Can’t Comprehend”: Studying the Relationship between Fluency and Comprehension by Applegate, Applegate & Modla. The first sentence in this article struck me with disbelief “If reading fluency contributes to reading comprehension, then highly fluent readers should be expected to perform well in comprehension when reading materials at their current grade level.” (512). I thought that this couldn’t be true! In my classroom, some of our “best readers” aren’t really good at reading. Yes, they may read the words super-fast, giving them great fluency, but do they comprehend all that they read. No, they don’t, which doesn’t make them good readers. In order to be a good reader, they have to have not only fluency, but be able to form a general understanding of what happened in the text. Most of these students aren’t able to do this. One of the results of the study of the article was “the fact that fully one third of our fluent and “strong” readers struggled mightily with comprehension at their current grade level” (518). This is true in my classroom, not off of our string readers have trouble with comprehension, but some of them do. I learned to not judge a reader by their by their fluency ability or comprehension ability alone, they both play into being a “strong” reader.
When I was in my classroom on Friday, an announcement came on saying something about representatives being on campus and being able to meet with them. I asked my CT about who they were and she said they were a part of the union for the teachers. I asked what the benefits for being a part of the union were. She said that they fight for what they think is right about the benefits for teachers, and that they go and lobby for the teachers. This reminded me of a part of Nickel and Dimed when the author talks about wanting to start a union for the Wal-Mart employees. In the book, it talked about how the employees weren’t encouraged to form a union because they, apparently, steal of your money, among other reasons. When I had a discussion with my CT about unions, she said that it is beneficial for her to have joined it, but some teachers don’t. It just got me wondering about joining a union when I become a teacher because I’ve heard that a lot of teachers do. This just means I have to do some research on unions for teachers.
In my Teaching Children’s Literature class, my teacher talks about ways we can use literature to introduce a lesson or teach the students something. I think this is a wonderful idea, but unfortunately, we don’t always have the time to read a book and discuss its concepts. I experienced something like this in my classroom. My CT and I noticed that our students need help understanding when to use proper punctuation. She planned on reading a book or two to introduce proper punctuation, but we just did not have the time to read the books. I really wish we did have the time to sit down and read because I like when Sara does this in class. It really seems like it would be extremely beneficial to the students. My CT does this with other concepts and it is highly effective.
In my Classroom Management class, I read about building trust and a caring community in the classroom. One of these ways is to meet the needs of the students so they know that you care about them and their well-being. In turn, the students will develop a trust in you, creating a community atmosphere in the classroom. I experienced something like this in the classroom this week. On Friday, the students had to take a number of assessments in math, reading, and science. My CT has the students put up “corrals”, folders the students can put up in their testing spots so they have their privacy while testing. If the students were done early with their test, they had to keep their head down so the other students could focus on their test without disruptions. This let them know that we care about their testing needs, creating trust in us as teachers, knowing that we can meet their needs. During the math and science assessments, I read aloud the exam for the students. The first time, I noticed I was going too fast for some of the students. They had to ask me to slow down. I realized that I needed some kind of method to let the students know they were ready for me to move on. So for the science test, I asked the students to raise their hands to let me know they were ready for the next question. They seemed to like this method because it let the students have sufficient time to complete the question without the fear of having to catch up. Doing this let the students know I care about them and their testing needs.
Overall, this week went really well. I am beginning to feel more comfortable putting my input into some of my CT’s lessons, although it is something I still have to work on. I’ve noticed the students really like and appreciate my help and they are not afraid to ask for it. Some of the students really like to read with me, showing off their skills or just getting a little one on one help. I’ve also noticed some progress with one of the students and his spelling. He would always ask me how to spell so many words, and I would always tell him to sound it out or I would sound it out for him and he would guess the spelling. But now when he asks how to spell a word, he just has me come over and he stretches it out and I make sure it is correct, He even memorized how to spell “because” a word he asked me to spell numerous times. It’s great to see the progress the students are making!