Culture of Reading

In my classroom I hope to create a safe environment for my students in which they feel comfortable reading. In order to accomplish this I plan on putting up quotes on the wall of different poetry and music so that way the students feel connected to reading and also so that they realize the impact of words and language on their everyday lives. In addition to this, I hope to create a library of different books for the students that will be dived into section by author and genre so that way the students, if they find a type of book that they enjoy, can pick another book to read that maybe they would not have thought to read. I believe that it is important to establish a sense of community and comfort for the students so that they will feel good about reading. I think that perhaps by having a couch or pillows or some kind of reading corner will help to create this type of comfort and community that I want.

I have also found in my internship that it is necessary now to explain to students why they have to do things and why things are important in their lives. To do this I plan on explaining to students why reading is so important and incorporating other media and forms of reading into my classroom so that they will realize why knowing how to read and enjoying reading is so vital to their everyday lives.

Chapter Two

Chapter Two focused on what makes a struggled reader; I could not agree with what Kylene Beers wrote more. I think that it is important to allow students to realize that mistakes are not failure and they are not something to throw in the towel for. In order to succeed, one must make mistakes so that he/she may learn from them and learn the correct way to accomplish a task. It is important to instill this in students, especially since the main reason why their confidence usually gets shattered is because they make the association that mistakes are failure. Lack of confidence in a dependent reader not only causes the reader to not enjoy reading, but causes him/her to have issues when it comes to “comprehension, vocabulary, word recognition or fluency and automaticity.” (17) These issues can carry over later on in life and may create concerns in other aspects of the student’s life; hence why creating independent readers who can use tools and strategies to cope with struggles is key.

When Beers discussed how she, herself, was a struggled reader when reading Beloved and her VCR programming manual, I thought about how important it is to show your students that you struggle too. I know that in my internship, students constantly complain to me that they think that teachers hold themselves on pedestals, so I think it is definitely a necessity to acknowledge to your students that you have struggles in reading as well. I once covered a class with students whose reading levels were at sixth grade, instead of being able to read like the sophomores they were. I had them read aloud, and allowed them to sound out the words; which seemed to work. I myself began the reading, and stumbled on some of the words (as most do when reading aloud). I really believe that this helped create a safe environment for the students and that once seeing my struggle; they realized mistakes are natural and that sometimes reading slow and right is better than reading fast and incorrect.