The following passages really caught my attention:
"Every year, every student needs to spend hundreds of hours actually reading, writing, and speaking for intellectual purposes." How can we expect students to become readers without allowing hours and hours of time to practice. There is a huge gap in my classroom between the readers and non-readers. I have six kids in my class who are reading chapter books, 4 who are right on grade level, and the rest are below. Many are well below grade level. It's obvious which kids have been exposed to books their entire short lives, and which see books as foreign objects.
"Wide, abundant reading is the surest route out of poverty and the limitations that impose themselves on the less literate." I often look at my kids who are "have-nots," and wonder what the future will hold for them. This line really inspired me. I could be one of the biggest factors in these kids' lives to free them from generational poverty, simply by turning them into readers.
On page 105 Schmoker quotes Smith 2006, saying "When we unnecessarily elongate the process of "learning to read," we postpone "reading to learn" --learning itself-- by years. It's that simple. Students aren't truly mature readers until they can read and recognize about 50,000 words. This many words can't be learned by having students sound out, syllabicate, or learn each one. The only way they can be learned is for us to insure that they read, by today's standards, enormous, unprecedented amounts of reading material." Obviously for students to become readers they must learn basic decoding skills, but one of my frustrations with our reading curriculum is that I feel like it introduces new skills too slowly. It feels like we are "unnecessarily elongating the process of learning to read." Schmoker says, "Virtually any student can learn the mechanics of reading to decode grade-level text in about 100 days." Are the publishers of our curriculum trying to stretch to skills over the whole first grade year, rather than the first 100 days?
It is so apparent of who is also being exposed to reading, writing and math at home. They are so much further ahead because they have been exposed and practicing for so many more hours it is a dramatic difference. I find it so hard however because my struggling readers who need constant practice reading and being read to are not getting it at home and there is so many hours in the day along with all the other students! I find reading the fundamental of other skills. My struggling readers cannot do math independently because they cannot read the problem, they cannot write because they are not exposed to the vocabulary or structure of sentences.
ReplyDeleteI know that I have advocated for a "book camp" concept for elementary students in the summer time. (Think summer school for reading and early literacy activities). How can we create opportunities for our "have nots"?
ReplyDeleteBook Camp is an awesome idea!! I want to hear more about it!
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