Allington Chapters 2&3 Reflection

Chapter 2 What Really Matters: Kids Need to Read A lot was quite overwhelming to me. First the author starts off with discussing the importance of why kids need to read more at school. Not just ten more minutes, or even twenty but at least ninety minutes. The overwhelming amounts of research took me by surprise. The author says at one point, " But Krashen (1993) notes that in 93 percent of the reading comprehension test comparisons students who were assigned more reading or allocated more reading time in school performed as well or better than students who did not have the added reading assigned or that added time allocated." 93 percent? That alone is such a high percentage that it seems that it should be taken in consideration in every single classroom. 

The most interesting thing I found in this chapter was that reading assignment, like workbook pages, had no studies providing sufficient evidence that those actually helped students making any improvement. So this means that workbook pages and practicing reading things really does not help improve reading levels. I am sure that like me, many other educators have no clue that research shows this. Obviously, I am not surprised that reading more makes children better readers but I am surprised that it seems to pretty much be the only real thing to help children read better. 

Next, the author discusses that during the school day teachers waste several minutes doing things like giving directions for assignments. The author then takes time to discuss essentially classroom management and how having good classroom management can make more time for reading and writing too. Before I came to IU, I went to Ball State University where I took a classroom management class so this part of the chapter did not surprise me. The whole class was on how we could essentially save time and make our classroom learning experience for our students better by being organized and having good management skills. This section of the chapter discusses that a little bit which I think is true. Educators need to have good classroom management skills or they will spend all day wasting minutes on things they really should take half the amount of time. 

The part in the chapter that I disagree with is the part of cutting specials and making them after school. I can see where they may have art or computer time less often but more time when they do, but I do not like the idea of cutting it out and adding it to after school activities as I think too much emphasize on learning can actually handicap our students. They deserve to have an art experience, a computer time, or gym time during the school day. I do not think that cutting it out is the right answer.

Chapter 3: Kids Need Books They Can Read made so many good points about students reading books that are not more difficult to read. The chapter starts off with talking about how we are always trying to get students to read things more difficult than the their own reading level. This has been true for all of my years as a student. On page 46, the author notes that being able to recognize words is more important than the quantity of exposure to words until there is a high ability to recognize words and then it becomes critical to expose more words. This, to me, is a crucial point for educators to understand. In my opinion, students can not be expected to become better readers by constantly reading texts that they do not understand.

Another point the author talks about is study done where only one in eighteen books in social studies and science were of the correct grade levels readability. Not shocking to me. I feel like social studies and science books, in elementary school, were always so hard to comprehend. Students can not be expected to learn when they cannot even comprehend what the text is saying. I like the point that the author makes when he says, "the key point here is that the research has well demonstrated the need for students to have instructional texts that they can read accurately, fluently and with good comprehension if we hope to foster academic achievement" (page 47). 

As far as the different studies on readability, I found that it is important for teachers to know. The part where the author talks about even an estimate is better than nothing. I wholeheartedly agree with. I found the part about the "the three finger rule" to be useful. This is where if students hold up three fingers in the first two pages of words they do not know, the book is too difficult. I think that is a great way for students to determine if a book is too hard to read. I did not like the example of finding out if it is too difficult by "Recording Accuracy of the Word Recognition" because I personally felt like this is a time consuming task for a teacher to do for every single one of her students. 

Another thing in this chapter, I think is crucial to making better readers is to get access to books. The author goes in great detail discussing the differences between different social classes and the books in their libraries. It's so unfair that certain schools do not have the same resources as other public schools. We should not want the lower class to remain there. We should want them to move up and have better lives. Reading brings power, knowledge, and intellect. We should strive for a country full of these people. In addition, I like that the author talks about series books. Many people love series books. I personally like them too (if there isn't 100 but more like 3-4). I think it can really help students get connected to the character and help them with literacy by being able to identify things that will happen, etc. 

Lastly, I enjoyed the authors discussion about a classroom library. I like the point he makes about changing the displays too. I feel that a classroom library essentially creates this idea that you value reading. If you're an educator and you just have one small bookshelf with books thrown all over, it does not display that reading matters to your students. By creating a classroom, changing displays often, it shows that you value your library because you value the books in it. I love the idea of the 5-10 books on display! I think that's an awesome idea!