Blog Post 5: Chapters 11 and 12

Chapter eleven, Sharing Information with Families, focuses how to better communicate with parents. I really enjoyed reading this chapter because it gave great advice to teachers on how they should professionally respond to family members concerns regarding their child. There were sixteen commonly asked questions that parents have regarding their child. In the past, I’ve heard horrible stories of teachers responding in the “wrong way” to the parents of some of their students. I’ve even witnessed incidents where parents have become angry with their child’s teacher for responding in an unprofessional way. This chapter really guides teachers on what they can say in scenarios. A question that was listed as a concern a parent may have was: “It seems like my child just memorizes the books he brings home. Last night he even told me he could read it with his eyes closed. Is this okay?”. The response that was given to this parent’s question/concern was both encouraging to the parent and the child. Since I'm a substitute teacher, I personally do not get one-on-one meetings with parents, but when I worked at a summer school program I was always communicating with parents and ensuring the parents that their child was making progress.

Chapter twelve, Teachers Make the Difference, focuses on encouraging teachers to continue expanding their knowledge to help support struggling readers to improve. According to the text, “The generally accepted theory of how reading works is that reading consists of a number of skills that can be taught in some sequential manner”. The greatest thing I learned from this chapter is that in order to make a difference in the as an educator, I must change my way of thinking. Reading is a process and in order for a student to grow as a reader, they need help in building their reading process. “Many more teachers are starting to view reading as a process in the head of the reader and to understand that struggling readers need help in building that process”. The text list several possibilities of how teachers can begin to use this new way of thinking to make a difference in schools, teachers, and students. I plan to use all of the points given (p. 225), but the one I was able to use the most is: “Keeping track of the time that your struggling students are involved in real reading and writing. Is it as much time as your more able readers are spending engaged in authentic tasks?”. During this time, I could try working one-on-one with students to see where we need to focus more on.