Reading or You're Not a Little Kid Anymore

Learning to read is the main focus throughout elementary school. However, the style of reading must change as students enter Jr. High School and above. By sixth grade, figuring out all of the words is a small part of the reading process. Students must learn to decipher meaning, especially in difficult text. Reading for the Gist, understanding the W's (who, what, when, where, why, and how), and comprehending important details becomes the focus.

Although comprehension strategies are taught in the primary grades, the techniques should change as students enter the intermediate grades. That is our objective currently in language arts class.

Our notes from yesterday illustrate our focus:

01/07/08 NOTES Reading Nonfiction 1


1.Skim
2.Read & Highlight
3.List W’s
4.List facts
5.Write a topic sentence/Gist Statement


Basically we are breaking down nonfiction articles trying to glean the most important facts and information. One particularly difficult sentence from an article in Science News Online took almost one half hour just to figure out. The sentence is written with a complex style, and uses vocabulary that was unfamiliar to many sixth grade readers. These three copies of the sentence show the process we went through to break it down and make it easier to read.


"The team has withheld from its article critical code-breaking details that could abet would-be hackers."

The team has withheld from its article critical code-breaking details that could help would-be hackers.

The team withheld details that could help hackers.

Our goal is to break down the meaning to the simplest terms, to make reading and understanding easy. This takes an immense amount of hard work and brain power. Students have been giving a great amount of effort as they are learning new reading skills.

Topics of discussion include:

Learning to Read
You Don't Have to Get it All
What Did the Writer Feel/Think as he Wrote
Reading Rate
How the W's Guide Thoughts
Predict and Revise

Rambunctious Reading

Not to say that my students started out slow this morning, but this is a picture of one of the boys. This called for desperate measures. What's a reading teacher to do. Wwwweeeelllllllllll, how about some

RAMBUNCTIOUS READING!

I am always looking for new and exciting ways to make learning fun. One method we use daily is singing in the classroom. Students sing as they read the lyrics. Now, we have another way to actively learn to read. Rambunctious (energetic, boisterous, lively) Reading is a method where students work in pairs to improve their reading. One student acts out the words as he reads. The listener actively listens, affirming thoughts and statements, and commenting to the reader.

We are reading an excerpt from I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew by Dr. Seuss. Students having been ouching from kicking a hard rock and sailing along. This active reading gets everyone involved--even boys that start the morning looking a little rough.


Great job to our Study Island Students of the Day--Jacob T., Dustin C., Emily S., and Trevor G.