Focus Ch 4

As I read through this chapter, I couldn't help but think, How does this apply to me, a high needs sped teacher? I have one student who reads about 200 words and one that reads 34 words. Yes, we work on sight reading with MOST of the students, but we spend LOTS of time on letter recognition and recognizing their first name and when they get their first name, we work on last name. (I currently have 3 that recognize their first and last name, and 5 that don't even recognize their first name.) Reading really is not high on our priority list here. We do focus a lot more on functional tasks.

I did consider my son though. He is in second grade and is above grade level in reading, however his fluency is low. He doesn't really enjoy reading. His love is math, which he also does very well in. I have had these grand ideas of him reading chapter books, but so far, he's said they are too hard. I'm thinking it's more that there are a lot of words on the page. I'm thinking that over his Christmas vacation he will be reading a lot!!! I'm actually looking forward to it. I think that a trip to the library is in order.

I will say that when I was reading the chapter I felt that the fifth grade reading list that was mentioned had books listed that I would not WANT my son reading in the fifth grade due to the content of the books. Some of them I read as a high school student and the content is just too much for fifth grade. I shared some of this with my staff and one of my staff mentioned that her high school daughter had to read a short story last night that was full of curse words and gambling, which is not appropriate for her daughter to be reading. I worry that we may be pushing the wrong kind of reading. I have no problem pushing kids to read more and do better, but the content needs to be appropriate.