Katherine Malmquist, August Post 1: Section 2: Why Not? What Works?

In section two, Miller states, “IR is an essential practice, one that develops background knowledge, improves fluency and comprehension, heightens motivation, increases reading achievement, and helps students broaden their vocabulary” (12).   This statement caught my attention because one of the biggest challenges our students face is their lack of exposure to the real world.  They are familiar with what their parents are able to share with them but often they are unfamiliar with experiences that are a mile away from the school.  Or they experience the “real world” through television shows, which often are not age appropriate.  Elevators and escalators are part of my “normal life”, yet I have worked with students living in rural areas who were amazed and even scared when they went to the Haywood Mall because they had never seen or ridden either one before.  This is helpful in explaining the importance of modeling reading behaviors as well because we have to teach readers what to do if they do not know the words.  It is not going to help the student to be able to read the word escalator if they have absolutely no clue as to what an escalator does.  By making the students accountable for what they are reading and learning, we are able to see them take ownership of what they might not know and then learn from it. 

The two biggest worries I have when my students are choosing books are:

1.       Will the students be able to read the book in its entirely or are they going to tire of the book before  they are able to finish the book? 

The author talks about the amount of time that we should be spending on IR with our students, and   “that different time allocations should be provided for students at different stages of     development“(18).  The reading stamina is what I worry about with my students when we are choosing library books.  It’s a constant struggle for me because I want my students to challenge themselves and read some of the longer books, but I don’t want them to be unsuccessful if they don’t want/can’t finish a book that they have chosen.   Yes, this is why we start small and let them work their way to longer books, but they usually find the longer books more appealing. 

2.    Are the students able to comprehend the material they are reading, even if it is on their “reading level”?  A second question would be, is the material appropriate for their age level?

On page 22, the authors quote other studies and say, “the word reading level and comprehension level of a given student do not always align”.  I want to challenge all students to read books that will make them grow as a reader, but I also know that there are some concepts introduced in the story that they may not understand.  This is where it’s important to know what books are available in the library and what materials have been purchased. 

As the media specialist, it is very important that I am choosing quality materials that will support a variety of reading levels.  I need to find high interest materials in a variety of formats and genres.  It is in my experience that we have a lot of students who are interested in nonfiction, and we need to encourage this growth as well as encourage them to read other genres.  We are very lucky that in the past ten years the format of nonfiction materials has changed, and they have become more child friendly.  I think that these changes have gone a long way in making non-fiction more attractive to our students, and we are able to take their interest into the classroom to help them grow as readers. 

From the reading, I took that it is important to have time for the students to read independently but that we must use that time to help foster their growth as readers.  I thought that the section was contradicting in areas because it seems like they said we should do this in one area, but then they changed their mind and said we should do it differently in another.