I love being able to conference with my kindergarten
students. They love to talk and share about anything and everything they know.
This is a great opportunity for me to actually pinpoint a topic and try to stay
on that topic for a given amount of time. Being new readers, conferencing
really instructs and truly benefits us as teachers for instruction and guidance
to advance these students.
Conferencing is usually done during IR time so that the room
is quiet and I am able to talk one on one with students. Discussing what they
are reading or have read and taking turns answering questions both from myself
as the teacher and the student I am conferencing with. The students are able to
read aloud but only with me listening building up their confidence. When I read
a book aloud in whole group settings we always discuss the book in detail from
the author, illustrator, and narrator to questions about the book we read. This
seems to make some students nonverbal and even if given the opportunity to
answer a question in the discussion they sometimes will not. So IR is the best
time for me to build that confidence and maybe one day they will join in our
whole group discussions.
The downside to conferencing is having the time to get to
all the students. I tend to spend more time with the lower struggling readers than
the higher readers. I felt they needed more guidance and instruction, which
takes much longer than my fluent readers. But I have realized that even though
my more fluent readers can read the words they actually have no idea what they
are reading. My lower readers tend to struggle with the words but somehow seem
to get the meaning better than my higher more fluent readers. Why is this? I
love listening to the more advanced readers but I can actually carry on a
better conversation and discussion with my lower readers.
I am looking forward to being able to maximize my time,
effort, and instruction in order to master conferencing as a great resource for
me as a teacher and also, to help my students become better meaningful readers.
Conferencing is actually my favorite part of reading instruction and I truly believe that students of all ages like it too. When else do they get one on one attention to express their thoughts and interests with their teacher? I recently read the book, On Solid Ground, by Sharon Taberski. Her conferencing is the center of reading instruction and everything she does revolves around it. You may enjoy reading it as well--let me know if you want to borrow a copy.
ReplyDeleteYou ask a great question near the end--why do some readers who struggle with decoding have a better concept of meaning, and some readers who get decoding struggle with meaning? My own theory (not really scientifically proven, ha!) from working with my own kindergarteners is that sometimes we "decode the meaning out of the kids." If we--or families, or kids themselves--decide that reading is more about decoding, they focus more on word-calling then comprehension. But then we have kids who don't quite get this word-calling thing, but they still understand that pictures tell a story, so they get the meaning. Kids are fascinating, aren't they??
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