Week 5 Reading

This has been an overwhelming year for reluctant readers. In the fall, my second graders were at a stage they really couldn't read a book independently at all. The first three months were intensive with explicit phonics instruction. Attempting to read a story often left them frustrated and beat down. In class, they were expected to be covering second grade material and yet all 10 of my students were still at a beginning first grade level. At Thanksgiving time, I decided to use a book hook I like to use during the second half of the year with first graders. I have almost every available app for Dr. Seuss books on my iPad. On Fridays, we do a student led read aloud mirroring these apps through the projector. We have various methods for the read aloud. One of their favorites is each student is assigned a number, we roll a giant foam dice to decide who the next reader will be. Within a couple weeks the students were checking out Dr. Seuss books from the library and reading them independently. I loved Dr. Seuss as a child. When I was student teaching in a second grade classroom, the teacher had a small group of struggling readers after school. She had bought numerous small group sets of Dr. Seuss books for this purpose. These books are perfect for this age group of struggling readers; repetition of high frequency words, extensive use of appropriate phonics skills for this age group, and rhythm and word phrasing to build fluency. The illustrations in the books are not only playful and whimsical but assist readers in identifying unfamiliar words. Dr. Seuss books can be long and tiring for new readers to tackle independently so practicing them as a small group first really helps students successfully conquer one on their own. It has been amazing hearing them proudly announce each 60 some page book they have completed. From there the students have been trying to find their own personal interests. It has been a struggle for them to independently identify just right books within a library that doesn't have a proper book leveling system in place. Our goal is to by the end of the year have a cohesive school wide labeling system to allow students to quickly and independently identify the reading level of the books within the library and classrooms. This will allow us to get our students one step closer to the age-old dilemma mentioned in the text: Do we give a man a fish so he can eat for a day? Or do we teach him to fish so he can eat for a lifetime?