I had the very best of intentions to blog my progress teaching comprehension strategies last year but … we all know what can happen to best intentions.
Yes I did keep the group going – three terms worth, two sessions a week, with eight 10 year olds who find reading challenging. When we finally mastered the routine and got focussed, the amount of text we got through greatly increased. We stopped worrying about finishing the story and concentrated on getting as much as we could out of the bits we did read. I got lots of honest feedback about the quality of the stories I wrote for them and went away vowing to do better.
It reminded me once again about why I have continued as a teacher all these years. The kids open-faced honesty, their trust and willingness to please once they see that you really are interested in them, and the buzz you get when you know that you have made a difference. Yes we all got better at reading. By the end of the year everyone had managed to crank their instructional reading age up to their chronological reading age and some went significantly beyond it. They were sold on being CSI investigators and marched off boasting about how much reading they were going to do in the holidays. And I’m determined to become a better blogger - Hilton
