I am way behind in this conversation and I am visiting my parents so I don't know how much I can catch up during this week. I will try my best.
I think the issue of having books that children can read easily is sooo important. I differentiate between just right books where kids still have to work at reading and easy books that are like vacation books. I used to think that too many easy books was not a good idea. Now, I'm thinking that easy books may be just what some kids need to jump start into just right books. Now, these easy books need to have some kind of a story line, though. A mom brought me some of the books her husband has been bringing home for her son to read and they are nonscence (sp?) to say the least. He can probably read the words but they mean nothing. I have to admit though that I have a hard time finding appropriate books for this little guy that would be interesting to him and that he can read. I am not in a position to purchase books in a series so I go to the library to search out books on my own. If others have titles they could recommend that would be wonderful. Elisa Elisa Waingort Grade 2 Spanish Bilingual Dalhousie Elementary Calgary, Canada I have struggled with this for years. Maybe, we need to consider what the purpose is for our lesson(s). If we are working on fluency, decoding skills we need easy books. But couldn't we be modeling the struggle through read alouds when teaching comprehension??? Then...there are books which are very simply written which require inferential thinking---a struggle---to comprehend. An example might be "the Giving Tree" or "Grandfather Twilight." Many poems would also seem to work for this purpose...decodable words but deeper meanings when read and reread... Perhaps it is all about balance...giving kids LOTS of easy reading to develop proficiency AND opportunities to stretch their minds. Jennifer In a message dated 3/16/2008 2:56:00 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: just heard Dick Allington at Michigan Reading Association on Saturday, March 15. It was very interesting. He spoke of the misunderstanding that kids have to struggle with text to understand, but adults won't. The example he gave was this. If we have a typical adult text with 300 words per page. Thinking it is an independent level of 99 percent, the reader would not know 3 words a page. Most adults would not read the book. Adults expect to know 99.99999999999999999 percent of the words. So why do we as teachers think it is ok to give kids books at an instructional level of 97 percent let alone 99 percent? We need to be very careful with our teaching decisions. He had a ton more for us to think about **************It's Tax Time! Get tips, forms, and advice on AOL Money & Finance. (http://money.aol.com/tax?NCID=aolprf00030000000001) _______________________________________________ Understand mailing list [email protected] http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/listinfo/understand_literacyworkshop.org
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