Toward the middle of the year, many of us like to conduct reading assessments to evaluate our students’ progress. But guess what! The way our students perform on midyear assessments can also shed light on our own success as reading teachers. Are you ready to take a look at yourself? Donny is having trouble decoding phonetic words. I’ve got to teach phonics more explicitly. Sarah is missing a lot of nonphonetic words. Maybe I should pay more attention to teaching sight words. Peter’s spelling is poor. I’ve got to teach my students to spell phonetically. Halfway through the school year is a...
Are you or your reading students suffering from the “midyear blues”? For many teachers, this midwinter halfway point in the school year is a challenging time. Some of our students have stopped putting much effort into learning to read. Perhaps they were practicing inefficient reading strategies that are no long working for them, or maybe the text level is just too frustrating, so they’ve given up. We adults may be having trouble focusing on day to day lessons, as well, with worries such as report cards, parent conferences, and high stakes tests. And, yes, we’re also fretting about those children...
It’s that time of year again! At the middle of the year, the honeymoon is over for reading teachers. We have to face the fact that, no matter how carefully we have chosen books and planned our lessons, there are going to be some students in our guided reading groups who aren’t progressing as they should. And, contrary to what you might think, these children aren’t always in our lowest reading groups. But don’t feel bad. (more…)
