Sunday, June 30, 2013

Module 4: Activity 1


What a fantastic video to watch as a teacher!  I was amazed as I was watching Robin learn to read.  His teacher used a lot of different strategies with him.  One of the first shown was establishing Robin’s phonemic awareness.  He spent time sounding out each individual letter, and then he began to chunk letters into easily recognizable sounds, like –ack.  Robin’s teacher was very patient, and kind of let him struggle sometimes.  I know that when I am working with students learning to read, it’s hard to watch them struggle, so I thought that his teacher did an excellent job giving him time to self-correct and use multiple strategies to figure words out.  

I noticed that Robin drew a lot of connections as he read.  I’m wondering if this was through advice from his teacher, or if that’s something that comes more naturally being an adult learning to read.  He also was aware of syntactic and semantic cues, which was why he reread one line several times until he knew it was something that would actually make sense.  I also really liked that he was learning to write as a way to enhance his learning to read.  

One of my favorite parts of this video, beyond watching Robin’s journey to literacy, was listening to Robin’s reasoning.  When working with young children that are four, five, and six years old, it’s hard for them to completely verbalize their thoughts.  Robin, a 50 year old man, made what he was thinking as he was reading very clear.  The strategies he was using as he read were explained well.  This video was not only a great resource as a teacher, but it was also wonderful to see Robin’s path to literacy!

No comments:

Post a Comment