Catching Readers Before They Fall (Chapters 1-3)

Already judging from the title of the book, Catching Readers Before They Fall, I knew that this text was going to be beneficial. Just from the title, I had concluded it was about getting to readers before they fell too far behind grade level.

"Each child is a potential new puzzle, and we must remain active learners in order to solve these puzzles" (page 2). The first chapter of Catching Readers Before They Fall is focused on discussing where exactly the text is going to take you. That particular quite stuck out to me because I found that concept as an extremely important thing to take. We have to keep learning. Although I think the this particular part in the text is referring more towards teachers who need to keep learning and changing what they know for their students where as I am a college student still learning. It stuck out to me though as a reminder that in two years when I am (fingers crossed) in my first classroom that I remember there is always more room for learning. As chapter one continues, it talks about what we are going to get out of the book and what the authors believe. One thing I found really interesting in this chapter was the postcards at the end. The postcards were written like to different groups of people about what they will acquire from this text. I thought it was just a neat and fun way to do it to direct at different people.

Chapter 2, How Reading Works, discusses many good points that I had not necessarily thought of. First, the chapter starts out by going on about elementary schools and the different programs they have adopted there. At the end of each one it says that "many students are learning to read just fine, but some are struggling and falling behind." For me, I took out of this that all approached to learning to read have drawbacks. No system is 100% guaranteed for every child. Which lead me to think about how schools do adopt certain programs and do not allow teachers to use something different. This made me wonder what these schools were doing for students who did not take well to the certain approach they had. Are students at these schools who do not take well to this approach get a different one? I don't know for sure, but I think they probably are not getting taught a different one. As the chapter goes on, it discusses the importance of the reading process. Which again got me to wonder, if the students are not learning through the approach, the basal for example, does teaching them a process automatically make the basal an okay approach for the student? The chapter also talks about how some teachers stop feeling responsible for the student and have a "It wasn't our fault" kind of attitude about the student who is/has fallen behind or has not been able to get back to classroom level. The importance with this is, we cannot be satisfied with such an attitude or way of thinking. We should think of each child who steps into our classroom as our own and take them under our wing - doing everything possible to help them succeed.

Chapter 2 begins to also talk about reading processes and the important roles they play in proficient readers' lives. The reading process is crucial for students to learn and understand reading. The reading process is something that we have discussed in our E340 class too. Catching Readers Before They Fall cited on several different instances the book Strategies that Work which is something that we've been reading in E340. The reading processes include how a reader understands reading so I think this is really important to teach kids. I personally don't remember being taught this but I think it can make a world of difference for someone who is struggling with reading. I love to visualize a book that I am reading like it is a movie. I have always done that but I didn't even know people didn't know how to do that until I was explaining to my grandma about what we were doing in my classes. "Oh well what are some comprehension strategies?" She asked. So I told her. "Oh wow, visualizing. I had never thought of that before." Really? It didn't occur to me that visualizing was a reading process because I had never thought about how I had done it. I had just done it.

Chapter 3, Vygotsky Takes a Seat in Our Classrooms, focuses on Vygotsky and his idea on zone of proximal development. In previous psychology classes, we had reviewed Vygotsky but I like the way the authors talk and discuss his theory even more in depth than I had ever before. I think this is extremely important because we have to be able to teach kids where they are not bored, like they would be if they only ever did zone of actual development, or so far lost they cannot pay attention or understand where it's "out of reach." Like when we tried to read that abstract in class last Monday. It was so hard. I kept trying to understand but it was like there was no way. I didn't have the background knowledge to understand what was going on, at all. This is important for us as teachers to be aware of so we do not have students doing activities where they feel like that. One thing that I would really like to take into my classroom and field experience is the idea of thinking about a child and answering certain questions about him/her. This can really help the teacher better understand what the child knows and does not know.

Chapter 3 also explores the idea of how we should model for students. I think this is something that teachers really should already know how to do but I like that the chapters addresses the idea of demonstrating, working with students, and then letting them do it alone. I think it's important for teachers not to miss those steps.

So far I have really enjoyed reading Catching Readers Before They Fall. The text is addressed towards teachers. I really enjoy how in both chapter one and two, the authors use real examples with kids to show what they are talking about. That helps give a better understanding for what we as teachers should do.

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!