"Making Decisions for Individual Learners Within a Small-Group Setting"

In the webcast, Making Decisions for Individual Learners Within in a Small Group Setting, I was flooded with important reminders as well as new ideas about teaching reading. The webcast has three important women speak about a few different important key aspects to help reading. 

We've definitely heard many different things Pat has said before because of our book, Catching Readers Before They Fall. Much of what Pat had said in the webcast goes off what she says in the books. She talks more about the three ways to figure out a word when they are struggling.  I like when Pat talks about if a student is struggling, don't have them use the same strategy again. If a student is only using visual, have the student use meaning! Another thing that really stuck out to me in Pat's talk was when she quotes Frank Smith saying, "Reading depends on more than what is behind the eyes - on the non visual items than on the visual information in front of them." This is so important! If you would have asked me this before I started out into my school for teaching, I would of wondered how that possible could be true! But it is! We as teachers have to make sure students have these non visual items in their mind helping them process and understand the visual information presented. If the do not have non visual information, they will not do as well with the visual information presented to them.

Pat also discusses that we are teaching the readers, not the book. To me this struck as extremely important too. It took me surprise for a moment because I was like wait, we don't teach the book? But of course not, we are teaching the reader. The book is irrelevant if the students are not taught the correct reading processes. This is the most important part. It's easy to get caught up in teaching the book, but we have to beware. Our students learning process is much important. We have to plan our instruction according to that most.

Diane talks about some stuff that I think I knew was important but sometimes I overlook. She talks about how we have to know the strengths of our readers. This is crucial in understanding our students. We have to know what they can do to build off of this when teaching them. She also talks about how we should have one or two things that they need to work on. One or two. I think that's an important idea because we should not and cannot do too much or our students will feel lost and won't understand. Again Diane expands on the idea Pat discusses about teaching the readers, NOT the books. She too goes on about how we must pick books that teach our students what they need to understand. We must pick our books based on what strategies our readers need.

Finally, Mary talks about ELL and small groups. I think that Mary's discussion provided me with the most ah-ha moments because I've never really been sure how to help ELL without knowing their language. In fact, I use to think it was impossible to help them if they were not able to speak to me but I no longer have this view (Thank God!). I think one important point made was that we need to know our ELL! We need to know them on a deeper level to help them become proficient readers in English. There are so many ways Mary provides us with to help ELL to become proficient readers. In my class at University Elementary, there is a little girl who mostly speaks Korean. She does not speak much English. The last time we were there, the writing prompt was "I like fall because ___." Emily (the ELL) wasn't able to understand what exactly fall meant. One thing Mary talked about was how we need to know what knowledge they possess in reading strategies in their own language. I think this is important. This can help us build off of their knowledge of those strategies even if they are in another language. I grew up in a town with a ton of Hispanics so I've seen first hand how teachers let these ELL fall behind. The strategies that Mary provides are super beneficial for me to know to help my future ELL. I hope that I can continue learning about helping ELL become proficient readers in English because I think it's important not to let them fall behind or they may never catch back up!

Overall, I found such great tips from these three women. They provided us with great examples in each to help us better understand what we can do as teachers. This kind of learning is great for me because it's so much better to hear experienced teachers to understand ways that they actually know are capable of working.