Observations in Reading

     I did three observations in my host school and the classrooms I observed were the 5K class, 1^st grade class and the 3^rd grade classroom for their reading time.   After school I chatted with the three teachers to help gain more insight for my focus questions.  Here is what I observed.

5K ~ The teacher had 5 centers for the children to work in.  The first center was the Writing Center where the children had a penguin word wall with the following words: penguin, bird, beak, egg, feathers, black, white and shrimp.  The children had to write the word, draw a picture of the word (each word had a picture they could copy) and finally write a sentence about penguins and draw a picture to go with the sentence.   The next literacy center contained books and puppets.  The children could do two things: read the books to the puppets or have the puppets tell the story based on pictures.  The final literacy center was working with the teacher on high frequency words in a pre-decodable book they could read.

     When the children were working with the teacher, the child had to give a prediction about the book and then for the word they knew “go” and “the.”  The book had sentences such as “The dog goes.”  The student read the book and when they finished she asked the child to tell her three things that “go.”   As she called the children over the pre-decodable books were based on their abilities.  She also checked on the writing center and talked to the children about the sentence they were writing.  I did notice she kept an eye on the book and puppet center.

1^st Grade ~ The teacher did direct instruction on a phonics lesson.  The children were working on the short vowel sound for /e/ and /i/.  The children had to think of words that began with the short vowel sound and the teacher listed the words on the white board.  Then she gave each child a word and they had to tell her which vowel sound was in the middle.  Finally, she passed out a worksheet for the children to work on.  When they finished she had word work for them with their spelling words.  They could stamp their words, glue stick magazine letters to form the words or use markers (blue for consonants and red for the vowels).  She too called the children over one by one but worked on their DIBBLES assessment.

3^rd grade ~ The children took turns reading aloud the story of the week from their reading book.  I noticed that when a child was stuck on a word the teacher just told them the word and they kept going.  When they finished she asked them about the setting of the story and the point of view.  Afterwards the children worked on their book reports while she conference with them in a small groups of two or three children.  The first group talked about the vocabulary words and the children had to find where the word was in the story, read the sentence and give their own meaning of the word.  The children seemed eager to do this task.

THE INTERVIEWS

     I asked the teachers what area of literacy they see the children struggle in.  In 5K the children struggle with phonics and comprehension, in 1^st grade the area of struggle is fluency and comprehension and in 3^rd grade the area of struggle is comprehension and the ability to put their thoughts into words for a story.  So I naturally ask them how they help the children with comprehension and they were all in agreement that this is a skill they work on all day with open-ended questions that will require them to recall what they have read or heard.  She will also have them look in their books for the answers.  The 1^st grade teacher likes to use the buzz phrase “Now think back to…” and will insert when we read or when we were talking about etc.  She thinks it helps to jog their memory.  

    I did notice a theme running through the conversation that comprehension is an issue.  I did ask if their phonics issues were developmental and the answer mostly was “yes.”   This leads me to focus on comprehension as an area. So I wonder if the children are so focused on their fluency and decoding skills if they are missing the meaning of what they are reading and what does it take to increase comprehension.  So I asked them to think about the children they have with comprehension issues and do they have problems paying attention and do they struggle with fluency.  After thought the 1^st grade teacher answered “yes.”

     So what are the ways to build a 3^rd graders attention span?  Why building fluency leads to better comprehension? And finally, why parents can play a role in helping build attention spans and comprehensions skills at home.