RES 5535: Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research (summer 2010)

In reading chapters 3 and 4 of Reading Lives I was able to make many connections. Chapter 3 brought to mind the way that I began to feel about reading as a child. I have always loved books, but around 6th grade or so I began to really “form relationships” with books. I would read and reread favorites, and began spending every spare moment that I had reading. No one else in my house felt the way I did about books, and my brother thought it was strange that I would rather read than play video games. But, I found that in books I could go anywhere and be anything. It was exciting and freeing. I continue to feel this way about books today and in the summers I often read several books a month, because once I start a book it is all I can think about. I get wrapped up in each story and in the characters and I find myself transported to a different place and time. It is this love of books that I try to instill in my children at home and my students at school. I also think that it is one of the toughest challenges I face as a first grade teacher, how to get children interested in reading when it is not something that they like to do.

In chapter 4 I found myself identifying with Laurie’s story. Each year I have children that are much like Laurie, and I always find myself wanting to help them find the reader that is within them. Luckily where I work we do not have to solely use the reading series that we have adopted, because like the series mentioned in the chapter, it would lose many of my students if we were required to use it for reading groups. In my classroom I do ability group for reading and I keep the groups flexible so that if a child is making progress they can move up to a new reading group, or if a child is struggling they can move to a lower reading level group. I feel that in this way each child can work at their instructional level and can make more progress than they would if they felt overwhelmed by what they were being asked to read each day. It also allows me to tailor whatever instruction I am giving in reading groups to the needs of the group that I am working with. I may be discussing how to deal with unfamiliar words in a text with one group, while talking about author’s purpose or main idea with another.

Reading these chapters made me think about how I have my class structured and the kinds of activities that I plan for my children each day. It actually made me want to go back to work and start thinking about next year already! I think that as teachers we have to always do what is best for children, and we have to do that through our instruction. Although we may be inundated with new programs each year, as I said in an earlier post, we have to pick out what works for our students at that specific time and use that to their benefit. We cannot treat each child the same as the next and expect to have each child succeed. It seems to me that without the attention that Deborah Hicks was paying to Laurie she could have ended up being a child that slipped through the cracks. I would be very interested to know what happened to Laurie in subsequent years of school. Each of us need to think about who our “Lauries” are each year and do all that we can to ensure that they get the instruction they need, because we are the ones helping to build their foundations for future successes or failures.
-Elizabeth Norwood