Assessment

"The more different ways I teach, the more children I reach."

Teaching reading is as simple as discussed in chapter eleven of Classrooms that Work by Cunningham and Allington. To accommodate for the multiple different types of learners in a classroom, it is important to consider how different teaching methods can help improve each students learning experience of reading.

One way to do this is by using a variety of collaborative groupings. You can divide the class up into partners and have students take turns talking, reading, or writing.

You can also divide the class into literature circles, selecting in advance four to six books that are related in some way and assigning one to each group. Within each group, just as we did in our reading education book clubs, each student can be assigned a weekly role of a discussion direction, passage master, vocabulary enricher, connector, and illustrator. As the teacher, you can even personalize these too the books, giving them more appealing names and duties to your students.

Another way to practice a different approach to reading is through coaching groups. This is a great method if, as the teacher, you realize that your students are having a hard time pronouncing unfamiliar words. Through this approach, you can teach students word identification strategies.

Other ideas to consider as you plan a reading activity are partnering older struggling readers to tutor younger struggling readers, find and train a tutor for your most needly child, use the latest technology, and finally, use other resources such a reading specialist and programs.

To the right is an exercise that involves making connections from a book onto sticky notes. This is a great way to discover what intrigues your students, and where they are confused! 

Questions to consider:
1. What is a method that you feel strongly about? One that you will practice in your own classroom?
2. Is there one method this exercise would fit best with? Or, could it be used in multiple methods?