Reading Post #3

In response to Ch8: Assessing & Teaching Older Readers, I was able to make several connections with the section discussing how older students don't understand what they are reading. My first year (2 years ago) of teaching was with a self-contained 5th grade class. After spending the year doing DIBELS, using the Scott Foresman curriculum and then working with the strategic readers for the last trimester of school, I found that many of our students were excellent at decoding and using different reading strategies/techniques to meet/achieve success with rate and fluency, but struggles terribly with comprehension. I was truly amazed at how difficult it was for my students to respond in written response to comprehension questions following the reading.

Now, as a middle school math teacher, I can't stress to my students enough how important language, vocabulary and comprehension is. In class I have my students use an ongoing word wall of Common Math Language, unit vocabulary posters, a running list of Word Problem Solving Strategies, and students are required to answer any word problem using complete sentences with complete/proper punctuation.

I also find it completely frustrating when OAKS season rolls around, I take my MATH classes to the lab to begin testing, and then am faced with the dilemma that at that very moment I am having my kids complete a READING test, just as much as they are taking their MATH test. This past year I had the opportunity to sit with one of my ELL students who is just a whiz at math. His first round of testing I had him sit by himself and test. He missed "Meets" by 7 points. The second round, I made sure myself or another teacher was able to sit next to him in case he wanted the questions read to him. Sure enough, he asked for the majority of the questions to be read, and Met. Later I asked him why he felt he was successful this time around. He told me he thought it was because when an adult read to him things sounded more clear and it was easier for him to understand the task he was being asked to do.

It is very true that we need to be concerned about our older students' reading abilities because as they get older, so much of what students must learn comes to them through reading. We are asking them to read all different kinds of texts. One of the hardest things for me to do with my math classes is explicitly teach how to "self teach" themselves by reading examples and text in a math book. I sometimes forget how that is a learned strategy and that I cannot assume anything.