You have undoubtedly heard about our recent inquiries into how we learn to read as we are choosing books for and reading with our Kindergarten buddies. Each Tuesday, right before our time with Mrs. Watson in the library, we join our Kindergarten buddies there to help them select and read books. During those reading sessions, we are trying out some different things that we have learned about making reading easier with our buddies. Before we visit the library for reading with our buddies we talk about some of the important aspects of learning to read especially as a young child and we reflect on the last time we read with them to see if we can determine any new possible ways to respond to the things we notice about our buddies' reading processes.
When we first started working with our buddies, we discussed ways that we know it helps us when teachers and parents responded to our reading as young children. We talked about how important it was to really love the stories that we read and to have time to talk about those stories. We shared how when a parent or teacher takes the time to explain a word or phrase or just discuss what was happening in the story with us, it helped our understanding so much. We talked about how to handle whether or not our buddies know words that they see or are even looking at the page when we read to them or they are reading to us.
One Tuesday recently, we discussed ways we knew what was happening in a story when the majority of the words or letters seemed unfamiliar. Dr. Johnson shared a story with me that was a set of illustrations that went together from a story. The words were English, but they were written in Greek letters. Our fifth graders worked hard to understand the story simply from the illustrations, but after a few minutes with the books, several people noticed a pattern in very similar fashion to the way that young children start to see patterns in words and phrases. The fifth graders all started getting very excited as we found the word "cock-a-doodle doo" on the page with the rooster on it. They began to see where words were repeated in order to better narrow down their meaning, and they connected the past events they saw with one another to establish patterns. We talked through these strategies as possible places to gear our buddies' attention as they read with us, knowing they were essentially trying to do the same kind of work.
Thank you for sharing such caring and responsible fifth graders with our school community. They blow me away every time I see them with their buddies.
