Week 10 Reading

The article I chose was Teaching Flexibility with Leveled Texts: More Power for Your Reading Block.
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/teaching-flexibly-leveled-texts-more-power-your-reading-block

Important things/ideas from the lesson today are:

• When grouping students focus less on discrete levels and more on areas of need.
• Be cognizant of word count in lower level text versus grade level text. Below level students may need to to use multiple texts to equalize the amount of reading practice.
• Provide well prepared and organized multilevel topical text sets to allow students to independently build background knowledge and make connections as they progress to more challenging text.
• Allow students time and freedom to self select text that requires minimal support to build fluency and confidence. 
• While providing multiple levels of text within a classroom library provide an ample supply (approximately 70%) of easily accessible books. 
• Promote reading engagement by supplying alternative and real-world forms of text: magazines, plays, newspapers, poetry, digital and online texts. 

but the most important thing I learned today is that in an engaging and challenging classroom, the teacher must carefully decide the degree of instructional support needed for readers to engage in the text selected.

Week 9 Activity

From Chapter 7, I chose Objective B1-c: Compare these two characters:                    and                       .

The text I will use is Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester. 

I chose this text because I know my reader enjoys stories with an element of humor and silliness. This text has a GLE of 3.3/ AD810Lwhich is slightly above his instructional level. We will read the book together as a first read, I feel he can read the bulk of the text independently. Words such as companions, dreadfully, especially, and gracefully are found sporadically. If the words are reviewed prior to reading for identification and meaning hopefully he will be able to retain meaning while reading. 

I have purchased the book as an audio e-book in addition to traditional print to allow opportunity to listen to the story as well as reread it on his own. The book also can be used for several other activities within this chapter such as:

Objective B1-b: What happened at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the story?

Objective B3-a: Prove that (character/person) is very                          .