Your Students Before Implementing Miss Mueller's Resources within your class
Your Students After Implementing Miss Mueller's Resources within your class
Reading
I find that the students in my class dread when I tell them that it is silent reading time. What happened to the days when we were in school and loved to read. I remember the times when a book was so good that I could not put it down. I used to hide the book underneath my desk and continue to read while the teacher would conduct their lesson to the class. Now I notice that the once books being hidden under the desk are cellphones. Students filling their minds with games on the computer instead of literature. I knew that I had to do something that would change the perception that students have towards reading in my class. I decided to go on an adventure to help students become more motivated in reading. I found three resources that you can use to incorporate reading within your classroom. But, first I will share my love for reading in this song!
Reading and the Ontario Curriculum
Reading is one of the four strands in the Ontario Language Arts curriculum. The Ontario Language Arts curriculum states that students will:
R1. "read and demonstrate an understanding of a variety of literary, graphic, and informational texts, using a range of strategies to construct meaning" (p.11).
R2. "recognize a variety of text forms, text features, and stylistic elements and demonstrate
understanding of how they help communicate meaning" (p.11).
R3. "use knowledge of words and cueing systems to read fluently" (p.11).
R4. "reflect on and identify their strengths as readers, areas for improvement, and the
strategies they found most helpful before, during, and after reading" (p.11).
Incorporating reading within the classroom does not have to consist of formal textbooks or novels. When you look at R1 of the overall expectations for reading in Ontario, students will understand a variety of literature. I like to incorporate video games as one of the variety of literary texts that students will learn to comprehend. The site provides multiple games from kindergarten to grade 5 where teachers can assign their students to play one of the various games that help students learn about reading. The game that I played is Transition Stars: Bug Rumble. This game told a story that took place in outer space. It described a planet and it was trying to help students under the format of a story so that they would be able to comprehend it better while they were reading it. The game gets students to read the script of the story and fill in the missing transitions to complete the script. I used this game with one of my students who has an IEP and accommodation in reading. My student never reads during the silent reading period. The student was given the choice to work on this game instead of silent reading. I found that the student enjoyed the game as it incorporated gamification of winning a star when completing the task properly and moving on to the next level. The student is very artistic and demonstrated that they comprehended what was going on in the story by drawing pictures of what happened to the people on the planet throughout the story. Although this site is great I find that it is more for the younger students as it incorporates cartoon figures that older students in grade 5 and up will not be as interested in.
I find when I work with students in my class one-on-one when they lack having proper reading fluency it can change the way they interpret and comprehend a text. Reading Rockets provide already designed lesson plans that educators can immediately modify and use within their class. Reading Rockets provides a particularly good lesson on teaching about phonics and reading fluency.
The video teaches about the List-Group-Label activity that can help teach students about vocabulary and comprehension of words. Students are paired in groups and match the words in groups that relate to each other. The groups then present what they have found to the other groups in the class. I have used this strategy with a grade 6 class. Although, I modified the activity and used sentences from a novel that the class read together. I find that with the grade 6 class, they are a very chatty bunch and will often become distracted by one another and disengaged within the lesson. I had to make sure to pick the groups wisely and I walked around to each of the groups and spent time with each to make sure that they kept on task.
Standardized tests have shown that girls are overwhelmingly exceeding in reading comprehension compared to boys. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/09/why-girls-are-better-reading-boys/571429/ The Atlantic article describes these statistics and reasons why girls may be more interested in reading than boys. One of the issues was the material available for boys in literature. I find that in my classroom, I did not realize that I could be the reason why so many students dreaded silent reading time. Edutopia provides a list of books that incorporate diverse characters and storylines. I am in a classroom that has students from many different cultures and religious backgrounds. The books that were in the classroom, I find had more white female main characters. I wonder if the students in my class may dread silent reading time because when they read a book that is at the back of the room they cannot relate to the main character. I am going to make sure to incorporate more diverse books within the classroom.
You Now Know 3 More Resources to Incorporate to Teach Reading!!!!
Dowell Middle School. [McKinney ISD Media]. (12 2010). I Like Big Books- Dowell Middle School. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/tuZSfvHHMr4
Education.com. (2019). 5th Grade Reading and Writing Games. Retrieved from https://www.education.com/games/fifth-grade/ela/reading/
Ontario Ministry of Education. (2006). The Ontario curriculum grades 1‐8: Language [Program of Studies]. Retrieved from
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