Daily 5 Chapter 5

Read to Someone

Why should students be reading to someone?

Students gain confidence and independence when reading to someone. It also gives them an opportunity to have fun during a structured reading activity. Some children in pre-K really crave human contact and snuggling, so teaching them to read together in a constructive way could be really great for some of those children.  

How can your students EEKK?

I will allow my students to sit at a table together, sit crisscross on the floor, or even lay on their bellies with the books. The hardest part might be spreading them out enough so that partners are not disturbing other partners. We don't have a ton of space or much carpet or surfaces that absorb sound. Oh well! I definitely need to work on noise level and will have to make sure that my assistant is on the same page with that. I have recently noticed myself whispering or speaking quietly a lot just naturally in order to get the noise level or keep the noise level low, so it's good to remember that's a helpful strategy!

How can your students read to someone and how can you model these ways with your students?

My students cannot read the words, but they can read the pictures or retell stories to each other. I think they could take turns with "reading" page by page or even picture by picture. Perhaps with some simple repetitive books, they could even try "I read, you read" and repeat the same sentence in the book. I would model the ways to read together just as the sisters do in the book.

What is the one thing you have done with partner reading that ensures the success of your students?

I have never tried this partner reading idea. Sometimes when we have quiet reading time after lunch, students are reading together, but sometimes the noise begins to escalate or there are too many children reading one book, so I think teaching this system of Reading to Someone carefully will make the whole Quiet Reading time much more beneficial to the students. Right now it is more of a quiet, relaxing time after lunch, but I look forward to creating a reading time, where the children are learning! Actually, every part of the day should have a clear purpose and procedure and I hope to make it happen this year!

Listening to Reading

How will you instill the importance of Listening to Reading in your students?

Most of my children naturally love to listen to reading. When we use special equipment such as a CD player or computer, they are even more excited, even those who do not know English. Of course, we will also talk about how it can help us become better readers, etc. but my kids will be most excited about the technology! It's something special to them, even if they have a lot of it at home.

What devices or strategies are you going to use? 

I have recently discovered that we do have a set of six headphones in our school, which can be connected together. However, I have a complicated stereo system high up on a shelf in my classroom, so if I decide to use the headphone set, I would have to use it with the computer or bring something from home. I do have a CD walkman, which I haven't used in years, so I might bring that to school as an option. I also know there are some good read-aloud web sites, which would be great, especially for the English language learners, as there is often a bit of animation involved. I also read on a blog once about recording your own voice and using i-pods in the classroom. I would have to use my own i-pod, so I am still kind of mulling it over. My other thoughts now are that I will have a parallel 4-5 teacher this year (no other age in our tiny school has more than one class, and this is the first year it's happening!), so I would need to collaborate and make sure we provide similar opportunities to the kids in both classes. Definitely I will use the computer, though, and the CD player. Oh, and it just occurred to me that we might even use i-pads for this, as we have a set in the school, but it will take a lot of training to teach the kids not to switch away from the story and start playing games...

What expectations will you have for your students during Listen to Reading, and how will you keep them on task and independent?

I think the sisters' suggestions of using some tech-savvy students as helpers is a great way to keep the kids from constantly asking the teachers for help. I might also start out with just doing Listening to Reading with partners and pairing children together with tech-savvy children. I do a lot of partnering during the first weeks of school anyway, trying to keep kids helping each other and not constantly asking me for help. 

The expectations of course will be a quiet environment, and if we do lots and lots of modeling, I think we will have minimal problems.

Do you have enough Listening to Reading materials? If not, what ideas do you have for securing these materials? Where will you store them? How will your students retrieve these items? Where will they be used?

We only have a few books with CDs at school, but I did think about recording myself reading some books and making a CD or playlist using my own reading voice. I would also use some of the websites such as storynory.com. 

I would probably keep anything like the portable CD player or i-pod somewhere in the closet and just take them out for the designated period. The CDs are going to mostly be shared with the whole school, so I won't have them all the time, and will probably also only take them out when we use them. Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of space to keep things that the children can get independently. 

I might keep one table designated for the listening to reading near the computer, which would also be another listening station. 

How do you feel about listening response sheets? What will they look like?

I would definitely not use response sheets all the time, but it might be something I teach the children to do later in the year. I would probably allow it to be optional. I think at this age, it will be most important to have a discussion after reading time, allowing children to verbally reflect on their activities. I do, however, want to try it out this year, see how it goes, and I will post my experiences..

How can this station be differentiated to meet the various learning profiles, interests, and/or readiness of your students?

I will be flexible in the types of books they read, etc. I will try to match children to the type of listening center best suited to their needs. I will also give them options with reflection such as verbally discussing a story with me, drawing or attempting to write some response or summary.