Wilkins - Blog #5 What I've Learned About Effective Reading Instruction

What I've Learned about Effective Reading Instruction by Richard L. Allington.

In this article, Mr. Allington addressed the 6 T's (Time, Texts, Teaching, Talk,Tasks and Testing).  When he addressed "time", he stated that extensive reading is critical to the development of reading proficiency.  I believe this to be true.  I believed that students should be exposed to various genres of written materials.  Through guided reading and independent reading on a regular basis this could be attainable. He states that if children are to read a lot throughout the day, they need a rich supply of books that they can actually read.  This is an area that seems to be lacking as it is sometime difficult to find books related to the unit of study for kindergarten.  Building the classroom library with various genres that kindergarten students can read can also be expensive and slow in coming.  Once the students have started improving reading strategies, they books they are able to read are more available.  It is up to me as an educator to provide direction and assistance through modeling to help students become better readers. It is important to encourage purposeful talk.  Talk that is problem posing, problem solving that is related to the curriculum topic.  Teachers need to pose open end question that would require multiple responses.  In the task phase, students engage in a "managed choice" have been show to lead to greater students ownership and engagement in their work.  He also suggested that the use of a rubric based evaluation would be a very useful tool.