Beginning

The first day with a new reading group is always ‘interesting’. You can sometimes cash in on your novelty value if you are not the regular classroom teacher, but there is only so much mileage you can get out of that. Joshua (not his real name) has lots to say about everything other than the job at hand. It takes a while for the undercurrents that he has brought from the playground to subside. I explain who I am and what we will be doing – trying out some new reading strategies. We talk about how thinking about the words while you are reading is often more important than just being a fast reader. They like that – it goes a bit quiet and I get good eye contact. I don’t think they have heard that message before. I show them how to use “I think that means …” with a couple of sentences from a story I have brought and then they have a go. There is a lot of parroting but I can hear some cogs whirring in those heads. I make sure I walk back to the classroom with Joshua. I guess there’s a Joshua in every group.

Like this:

Be the first to like this post.

About Hilton Ayrey and Brian Parker

Hilton AYREY - Hilton taught in primary schools for 18 years before taking up a position as tutor with the New Zealand Graduate School of Education. Over the last ten years he has developed his innovative literacy programmes for preservice and inservice teacher training. He has also written a large number of literacy resources to support guided reading programmes including collections of stories, non fiction text, and assessment procedures. He now works full-time as an author / reading advisor for Handy Resources. Brian PARKER – Has spent 10 years as an ESOL teacher / trainer, 7 years as a primary teacher and 2 years as a trainer at NZGSE. He now works full time for Handy Resources developing online teaching resources.

View all posts by Hilton Ayrey and Brian Parker →