During our eighth class I had the opportunity to put my pedagogy of mistakes into practice. While Stacey was demonstrating modelled reading, I responded to one of her questions identifying a unique word on the page that she could pause and ponder about. My mistake was in continuing on, suggesting she perhaps pose a question to the people about their position on that particular word. Stacey did not pause in recognizing my success and then kindly pointed what I failed to understand – that think aloud practices should be focused on only one strategy at a time. I see now how disengaging a reading class would be if all the students did was listen to the teacher ponder about things and then discuss words in the story. We would never get through a story, and the experience would be lost. If Stacey had not modelled the read aloud/think aloud practice for us, I likely would have missed the opportunity to fully interpret that learning. In practice I would have struggled in the classroom and felt frustration. I recognize that plenty of people in the class gained the understanding by reading through the material, others may have captured this during one of the videos. I needed to make the mistake in order for the understanding to really sink in.
Another learning that I had around reading instruction was an option that is being practiced in Jessica Bonneau’s pre-internship school. Jessica described how her partner-teacher asks the students to read aloud in class, but if they do not feel comfortable they can raise their hand and meet with her privately, later on, to demonstrate their ability to read.
Intentional behaviours like the ones described above positively impact assessment. When we are measuring a student’s progress toward a goal, it is imperative that we can recognize what that progress looks like. This means first and foremost that each student feels safe and welcomed to participate in any capacity they can. Suggestions from Class 10, which focused on assessment, include keeping a running record of each student’s reading behaviours so that we can identify progress and spot patterns or potential problems. This reminds me about how regular reflections are an important aspect of a teacher’s own practice. When we can identify which practices we find success with we can repeat or perhaps refine those activities. Furthermore, we can remove and replace the unsuccessful efforts. Assessment for learning is imperative if we want to continue the positive progress that our province’s education system has plodded through.
I must share about my newfound excitement for high interest and low vocabulary or readability level books. The Hi-Lo category of books was introduced to me in this class and I am very excited to read some of them. One in particular caught my attention, it is called Navajo Code Talkers, and tells a story of how language was used as a weapon. I think stories like this could inspire some very interesting projects. Using books like this opens up a person’s ability to teach comprehension strategies in a class of multilevel literacy learners.
Using and building on prior knowledge is the first teaching comprehension strategy identified in the textbook. This involves collecting information from students that establishes where understanding lies, and it also helps us to introduce vocabulary in a non-threatening way. Other practices include predicting the text contents by reviewing the table of contents and confirming accuracy at various points in the text. Teaching students to make inferences by incorporating thoughtful practice before, during and after reading will help them to build comprehension into their regular reading routine. I especially appreciate the example shared on page 80 where the students are asked to infer what a story titled The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs and written by A. Wolf might be like. (Lynch et al, 2017)
Danny Ramadan’s book, Salma the Syrian Chef, was the focus of our portfolio activity during class 9. I was very fortunate to have been a part of strong group with Robyna, Kassidy, Jessica and Kristin. However, we all made a mistake in our contribution to the padlet that week. I am thankful for Stacey’s feedback regarding the questioning/inferring strategy that we identified we would focus on. This again is the same mistake that I mentioned in my earlier example, which happened on the same day. I am able to recognize the pace of my own learning through this set of experiences. In order to correct the portfolio activity I would narrow the focus to only one, and in this case I would choose questioning. I would replace our contribution under question four to read;
I am reflecting on the questions I asked throughout this book. Which questions was I able to answer?
I am curious about the recipes that were shared in this book! I wonder what foul shami tastes like.