How prepared do I feel to teach reading? Well, I originally signed up to teach high school English because at that age I figured students already knew HOW to read! I found I was wrong when I substituted for 8th grade once and heard about 80% of the class refuse to read aloud because they "didn't know how to read". Of course, I knew THEY knew how to read, they were just uncomfortable with it for whatever reasons. I was fine with that, because I much preferred to read materials aloud to them myself, thus avoiding the horrible pauses and stutters that I remembered so well from the tortuous time when I was back in grade school, enduring read-alouds by people that didn't read as well as me!
Of course, I was robbing students of opportunities to become better readers, and although I still kind of hate listening to students read aloud, I understand the necessity of it. Luckily, I am enrolled in a "how to teach phonics" class this semester, and it has been a lot of fun tutoring some students in reading from my class, even though I had my doubts when I first began the process. I feel like one of my strengths is that I'm a good reader myself, and it is something I enjoy doing. That also might be my weakness, however, because since I know I am a good reader, I expect my students to be as good and I don't have a lot of patience with kids who claim they "hate" reading! Since reading has always come easy to me, I might expect it to be second nature to everyone, and I don't give students the time they might need to develop good reading habits.
I have been focusing so much on getting my math lessons in alignment with Common Core (and now of course PARCC) that I have been somewhat remiss in getting all of my reading lessons aligned. I know I have given my students a couple of reading assessments, as well as benchmark testing on reading as well as math, and I was pretty disappointed with how "behind" my students seem to be. Along with not being very good at simply reading aloud, they have no "alphabet sense" and can barely seem to find a word in the glossary of their reading book, let alone an actual dictionary! Guide words were a nightmare for them, even the "super smart" ones! So, I guess my determination for "how's it going" as far as aligning my reading program with Common Core goes: needs improvement. :P
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