The new school year is upon us and I have really set my sights on figuring out this secondary reading thing. I mean..let's face it...high school teachers never expected to have deal with whether or not students know the short and long "o" vowel sound or whether or not they were caught on the second syllable of a multisyllabic word...but...it is, what it is. Many of our students cannot pass the high stakes tests and I am convinced...based on our data...it's because they are stuck in the weeds with the actual skill of reading. While I do not propose that we "send them back to elementary until they get it right:" I have elementary aged daughters. I propose we bring elementary to them. That we meet them where they are and get them to reading before time for FCAT.
The million dollar question is how. Well, I must proclaim...I am not the expert, but I am an extreme researcher and all over the research about reading. What I gather is this...get ready because this is huge...they will not get better until we address their deficits. WOW...rocket science, right? NOT!!! Just time consuming. I feel a bit in awe that I, of all people, did not know the resources available on the state's reading site. I mean, I've been to training, but what they show the administrators has to be different because I swear I did not know this stuff existed. I don't think my former reading coach did either, otherwise she would have saved herself a lot of time pulling random passages (mental note...send her an email.) Nonetheless, it has a wealth of information. THEN I found this AWESOME resource at our county. While her job is RtI, she has a background in reading...GO FIGURE. Well, just by asking questions she led me to really cool stuff and we now have a "program" that will not cost thousands of dollars. OUR PLAN..pretty simple, Use a simple screening assessment......instruct using age appropriate materials(we selcted some resources from ABE)....and use the scaffolded materials from the state's site for progress monitoring...that's it. Now, you may be thinking...are you crazy..that's way to simple but who has time to do it in high school. by the way...did I mention...monitoring the data using google docs....now, that's it.
Bottom line...we have to meet them where they are and teach them to where we need them to be...can we do it? YES WE CAN!!! Stay tuned!
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