R-E-A-L Life Reading Inquiry

I have spent the past nine weeks or so in two school in Knox County. I spent the first five at Central High School in a 9th grade special education resource room and the past four weeks at Dogwood Elementary school in a Kindergarten resource and general education room as well as a 3rd grade resource room. These experiences have given me an interesting perspective when it comes to teaching children to read. I was immediately interested in the potential of this assignment because, in my opinion, you can not really know where your going, or where to go, unless you know where you came from. Applying this thinking to this assignment, I was excited to work with students are struggling with reading in high school and then go to elementary to get an idea of what teachers are doing in order for this trend to end. Literacy is one of the most precious gifts that teachers can help students attain, and because of this, it is worthwhile and important to research how we are doing it. The readings have given me numerous resources and information on the process of learning to read what that looks like on a day to do basis in the classroom. 

The past nine weeks I have confirmed, in the two settings that I have worked, the predominant thinking and reports relating to student achievement. We are struggling. From kindergarten to high school there are issues and red flags all around. The kindergarteners that I worked with are still in the early stages of reading and learning the foundational steps of reading. I found that the third graders are really struggling with things such as comprehension and fluency. During an activity that required them to write down a problem on the board and answer the question, most of the students could barely copy the question. In the high school, the students are still struggling with comprehension and becoming fluent in their reading. In one activity, the students were taking turns reading text and most of them struggled greatly. Taking all these experiences into account, I know that I will be facing these challenges every day that I go into the schools no matter what subject area I am teaching. Reading is a fundamental tool that is used with every subject. For me, this means that I have to make reading fun. Some how I have to make students want to read, whether that is showing them how important it is for rest of the lives or make it relevant or even let them chose something to read that really interests them. Helping students gain the gift of literacy and fluency in reading is my goal, and using these experiences and resources is going to be one of the best bets to get there.