Teaching Reading - Part 1

Teaching reading to K-2 used to scare me. Really really scare me. It seemed like magic that these teachers could somehow get these wiggly kids with short attention spans to go from recognizing letters to READING. There must be magic dust involved. My teacher training focused on  grades 3-8 reading, you know.... when they could pretty much already read.

As an instructional coach, I've had the privilege to partner with our fabulous D101 K-2 team of teachers the last 4 years. I also had the chance to spend a week learning to teach 1st grade reading at the Teachers College in NY last summer with Lucy Calkins. I'm not scared anymore, I am still in awe of K-2 teachers, however I feel like I'm starting to be able to articulate in my own head some key moves for teaching reading. I plan to have multiple posts on this, but I'll start with what's been working with my own 2nd grader.

Full disclosure: ALL CHILDREN ARE DIFFERENT which is why teaching is so challenging and exciting - I'm just sharing my experience with this one spunky 2nd grader. This type of instruction is called startegy instruction.

STEP 1 - Choose an awesome book- Pick a book that is interesting to both you and your child. This book should be SLIGHTLY above where your child can comprehend on their own. You can test this by having your child read one page. If they make just a couple mistakes, but generally get the gist - you are good to go. You might also choose a book with meaty content that your child can easily decode, but that's very interesting to discuss. Your child should be interested in the book - you might try the site Good Reads or google "best books for 3rd graders" for ideas. Chloe and I choose Because of Winn-Dixie.

STEP 2- Switch off reading every other page - By taking on part of the reading load, you are not only giving your child a break but you are sharing in the experience of reading. You are making it a bonding experience while providing an excellent model of fluent reading.

STEP 3- Listen to your child read- are there decoding issues?  This might be trickier since you don't have training, but you can do it! What types of mistakes is your child making with decoding? Is it that they are just skipping hard words? Mumbling through them? Stopping all together when they get to a word they don't know?  Note the problems and get prepared to teach into them. For Chloe, my very much NOT precise daughter, I noticed she was just flying through the page. She'd replace words with other words and mumble through tricky words. Even when things didn't make sense! So we made this goal together and it sits by her each time we read.

STEP 4- Ask questions and see if you can come up with a thinking/comprehension goal- As I listened to my Chloe fly through pages and I asked a few open ended questions, I realized that she was really taking things at a surface level as she read. I wanted her to pause and think a bit deeper, maybe even start to infer. Because of Winn Dixie has some awesome character development, so I choose a goal centered on thinking about characters both on the inside AND outside.

STEP 5- Let the CHILD do the hard work - These are the goals Chloe and I will work on for the whole book. She doesn't write about them, we just discuss. When we read, we always look at the goals first. When I'm reading my page I try to model when I have to STOP, and re-read because it didn't make sense. I try to model what I'm learning about characters on the inside and outside. But here is the hard part- when Chloe is reading I work VERY hard not to jump in too soon and ask - "did that make sense" when she starts mumbling. I will stop her, but I want her to learn to stop herself so I let her struggle a bit. When I ask about characters I try to leave my questions open ended to see if she can figure it out, "so what did we learn about Opal there?"  It's not easy, I often slip and jump in too soon.. but I'm working on it!

I'm new to this blogging thing, but if someone wants to know something else about reading - post a comment. I'd love to hear what parents want to know more about!