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.