Rearning to Lead

Key Takeaways: 

I’m thinking about this from a 4th/5th grade reading perspective. This is a basic article but it’s good to think about as the year gets going. There are five key components to reading. As a 4th and 5th grade teacher I will primarily be focused on the last three, however I still need to incorporate the first two into some whole group and lots of small group lessons.

Phonics

I’m especially thinking about how to help students with their writing. And I think many of them need support connecting sounds with letters, blends, etc. 

Phonemic Awareness

This is the focus on the sounds of words disconnected from the print letters. This is very auditory. 

I can see using this to help students break apart larger more complex words that students should be encountering in upper elementary. 

Vocabulary

This needs to be a key part of instruction in 4th and 5th. This connects to my first article. Students need to be explicitly taught new vocabulary and need to practice using that vocabulary throughout reading units. This article adds that it is important that students develop the skill of figuring out word meaning using context clues which is a practice students need to be taught and reinforced throughout the school year. 

Fluency

Fluency is critical for comprehension. If a reader is too slow then they will get bogged down and lose the meaning. If they can’t find the expression then things might not make sense. 

I measured this last year, but I could’ve done a better job giving students more opportunities to read aloud. A fluency station would’ve been great. Granted, last year we didn’t really do stations. 

Comprehension

This is when the students are making meaning of the text they are reading. They use all the other skills to have better comprehension. 

We focus most of our time here in 4th and 5th grade. 

Key Takeaways:

Vocabulary is critical. Introduce vocabulary early. Students should hear the key vocabulary multiple times (and probably practice using it) before reading a piece. They should have a good understanding of what it means. This will help them understand the text better.

Students should know why they're going to read a piece. Set the purpose. This makes sense to me when working on shared stories. Do I make them set their purpose during personal reading time (SSR)? I guess it always makes sense to know why you are reading a specific text, but maybe I need to help direct that purpose so students are practicing specific skills.

Students should record and share their thinking about a text.I was thinking of having my students submit video book reviews for a class website this year. The article goes into having students explain what is confusing and how they reason things out. I feel like this would work really well for small group reads and whole class stories.

When students are researching a topic, they should use more than one resource. They can use the internet to find other articles, but THEN (and I like this) they have to explain how the supplemental articles supported them or strengthened their thinking. I can see doing this during a PBL or reading unit.