I chose Catching Readers Before They Fall because I am a teacher of children with learning disabilities. I want to help them before they fall and get too frustrated. After reading the first page, I knew that I had made the right choice in a book selection that would benefit me as well as my students. "By expanding one's knowledge of the reading process in all its complexity, any teacher can increase her repertoire of teaching reading to children who struggle" was the key phrase that hooked me. I thought now I have to read more!
"Struggling readers are not doing the kinds of thinking that proficient readers do in their heads as they read. They have not learned ways to fix errors or even recognize when they have made an error." I see this every day when working with students that have learning disabilities. When a student makes an error and doesn't even realize it, still baffles me after 20 years of teaching. I know that student knows his/her sounds and what they just said wasn't even close to the spelling, and they move right on as if nothing were wrong. This is the puzzle I want to solve!
"How a teacher understands reading process determines how he or she assesses, plans, instructs, and supports students." I fully agree with this statement. The teacher is the key to this process being successful. The more we as teachers understand about the reading process, the more beneficial we will be to our students.
I hope that together we can help our struggling readers. I agree that we, as teachers, are key to our students being successful. The more we can understand the more beneficial we can be to our students.
ReplyDeleteWe are learning and growing together as a team, and I appreciate you both so much! All students are interesting, but trying to figure out the processes of struggling readers can be intriguing, as well as trying to figure how to keep strong readers learn new skills.
ReplyDeleteHi Tracey,
ReplyDeleteI am glad that you have already found your book choice to be helpful to you and have connected to the author's experiences with struggling readers and how important it is that we understand the reading process of both struggling readers and proficient readers in order to provide them with strategic support. Many times as teachers we can focus on decoding and students are working on "reading" but they miss meaning. If we believe that reading is meaning we have to work on building comprehension and helping students engage in self-monitoring. Knowing when you aren't understanding or when you aren't "getting it" helps students to then employ a proficient reading strategy such as going back to re-read or working to ask questions. I'm excited about this book too!
I like the premise of the book you are reading and it certainly would be helpful for all teachers (not just special ed) to have professional development in this area. I noticed while reading other blogs that the comment was made that we need to teach students with learning disabilities the same as others and not to teach according to labels but to the person. I guess what I am most baffled about is how so many students are not able to read very well by the end of middle school and not much effort is made to help them acquire the basic skills they missed out on in earlier grades. It's almost like they have been accepted as a non-reader and nothing is ever going to change. I hope you will keep sharing what the book recommends doing for those struggling readers so I can help them along.
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