POST 2 - chapter 3

EDU572
Diagnostic Teaching of Reading by Barbara J. Walker
Chapter 3 - Roles of Diagnostic Teachers

I have always done reflecting, but I never thought about it like this before I read this chapter. I have always written down my reflections after a lesson about what worked and what didn’t, and what I would do differently next time. Until I read it, I never realized that I also reflect when I am preparing a lesson with all my prior knowledge of what worked and what didn’t. I have reflected during a lesson and changed things in the middle of it if it wasn’t going well and the students weren’t “getting it”. It was in math, and the students were clueless, so I had to think on my feet and change my approach. So I am definitely a reflective teacher from beginning to end, I just never thought of it like that.
The students need to come together and discuss the readings and share their thoughts. The teacher should be connecting these students’ comments to each others thinking. In this way the students get more connections in their readings. (There it is again, that important word, “connections” in another chapter of our book!)
We will not get students to share their thoughts if they aren’t reading though. So we have to make sure that every student has reading success. The author states a good motivating factor is reading successfully. I think this is why it is important for all students to have their own personal reading book in the class that is at or just below their reading level. Reading these on their own is going to provide these successes in reading that they need. When the student is in guided reading with a teacher, it is very important for the student to have time to figure things out so that it makes sense to them. In guided reading the level of the text is one that the student needs guiding in, so there are going to be words the student will stop at because it is unknown, or there will be word recognition errors. Teachers need to be patient, and if in a small group, make sure the other students are also patient and are not shouting out the unknown word to the reader. All students need time to work through their strategies and figure out the word on their own, which is another success, figuring it out on their own. I know I have been guilty of this before, giving the word to the student. Lately I have been, and will continue to use more wait time, and correct the "helping members" of the group to give the reading student more time. This type of success is going to help the readers to build their independence and they will see themselves as a reader which is important.
The author talks about using check sheets where the student marks off when they have talked about main characters, settings, etc in a written retell. I have used check sheets for other things, but this seems like a really good idea to try. Maybe it could be a chart on the wall in an area where they go to proof read. I will have to give this more thought, but it is a really good idea that the author calls self assessment.