Blog Post 1

For this assignment, I chose the book, "Catching Readers Before They Fall" by Pat Johnson and Katie Keier. The first chapter focuses on Expanding our Paradigm of Reading. "We believe by expanding one's knowledge of reading process in all its complexity, any teacher can increase his or her repertoire of teaching reading to children who struggle (Johnson and Keier 2010)." This chapter encourages teachers to keep trying to develop teaching stamina. It suggests how desperately our readers who are struggling need us and it is so important to get to them before they fall.

Chapter two focuses on why all students are not successful. "The children who are not learning to read are often confused, frustrated, and slowly giving up hope on themselves as readers (Johnson and Keier 2010)." I also learned through this chapter that ongoing research believes that there are many things going on inside of children's brains when they are learning to read. These different things consist of keeping a constant check on themselves while reading, noticing when things are misread, and using a variety of strategies to fix their own errors while reading.

In chapter three, Vygotsky takes a seat in the classroom. Vygotsky has a few basics for the classroom that he believes. Through this chapter, I learned that he believes, the most effective learning takes place during the students zone of proximal development, the language that teachers use play a crucial role in students cognitive development, and the environment plays a huge role, the students should be in an environment that fosters lots of talking and interactions with each other.

So far, I would recommend this book for teachers to read. It is helping me to see how students think while reading as well as what will foster a successful learning environment that will encourage students to become better readers!

-Kristen Cochran