Blog #5-Section 3 But That - Emily Hammett

This chapter reassured my beliefs in teaching reading. It stated that you should begin a reading lesson with a focus lesson and then students are sent off to practice the focus lesson while reading. I have been working hard on creating meaningful mini lessons that the students can then practice while they read. Throughout the past two weeks we have had mini lessons on making predictions while reading, what to do when we come to a word that we don't know, and determining figurative language such as similes and metaphors. After the mini lesson we will read a picture book together and talk about the strategy that we are focusing on. This way the students are able to see it being modeled. Once the modeling is over students will read their books and complete the task on their own. During this time I make sure to pull small groups of students to the back where we round table read and talk about our strategy. After the 30 minutes for reading is over we come back together to see if any of the students found the task while reading. Right now my students are reading Roald Dahl books, so they are seeing a lot of similes and metaphors. We make sure to talk about those skills after we read. I hope this has really helped my students read more fluently and visualize what they are reading.

At the beginning of the school year I felt that a lot of my students were getting hung up on what the words meant or what the sentence said. When they were focusing on these things they were losing meaning of the whole story. The concentration was lost and we spent more time trying to remember what happened rather than enjoying the story.

I really enjoyed the part of the chapter where it talked about finding time for independent reading. Sometimes I feel so rushed throughout the day. I always try to make sure I get everything accomplished for the day, but sometimes there just isn't enough time in the day. I don't want to leave a subject where the students don't understand the concept taught. I want them to understand fully and if they don't I always blame myself. So sometimes I find myself breaking schedule times to make sure the students understand what I taught. If I stuck to my schedule maybe I would have extra time for more IR. That is something that has been added to my "TO WORK ON" list. It's a never ending list! :)