I agree with you that some of the ideas that Smith talked about were suprising. I enjoyed your comparison to your personal experience with 4th grade and his idea of making word perfect reading a prime objective. Reading out loud can be extremely hard for some people especially in front of peers. That was a unfair exercise I believe to place on a student. My nephew reads great, but it is almost as if his brain is reading faster then his words come out. He will actually stop talking while he is reading sometimes because he finds it easier and faster to read without speaking. It is interesting.
"Make word perfect a prime objective...." What a powerful example from your fourth grade class to show how that teacher took the love out of reading through demanding word perfect reading. This is a good one to draw on as you begin to build your reading program. Interesting thought that "reading is about getting the meaning correct, not a particular word..." Some people would suggest that you can't get the meaning "correct" if you can't get a particular word correct. Hopefully, Smith (as well as the running records and miscue information) shed some light on this for you in that people can construct meaning from print without recognizing and saying every single work correctly. We see words in chunks of three to four--not as individual letters or words. If teachers start with the smallest parts of language that can make comprehension more difficult for readers.
I agree with you that some of the ideas that Smith talked about were suprising. I enjoyed your comparison to your personal experience with 4th grade and his idea of making word perfect reading a prime objective. Reading out loud can be extremely hard for some people especially in front of peers. That was a unfair exercise I believe to place on a student. My nephew reads great, but it is almost as if his brain is reading faster then his words come out. He will actually stop talking while he is reading sometimes because he finds it easier and faster to read without speaking. It is interesting.
ReplyDelete"Make word perfect a prime objective...." What a powerful example from your fourth grade class to show how that teacher took the love out of reading through demanding word perfect reading. This is a good one to draw on as you begin to build your reading program.
ReplyDeleteInteresting thought that "reading is about getting the meaning correct, not a particular word..." Some people would suggest that you can't get the meaning "correct" if you can't get a particular word correct. Hopefully, Smith (as well as the running records and miscue information) shed some light on this for you in that people can construct meaning from print without recognizing and saying every single work correctly. We see words in chunks of three to four--not as individual letters or words. If teachers start with the smallest parts of language that can make comprehension more difficult for readers.