While going through the Sunday Trib's magazine, I came across an interesting I found incredibly interesting/ inspiring:
At the Michael Faraday School on the city's West Side, volunteers from the Sit Stay Read! program come to listen to the 2nd grade children read. Participants of the program are blind, and they bring their seeing eye dogs along on their visits. Since the volunteers are blind, they cannot correct the young readers; they simply listen and enjoy the stories. The article states that on average, a child growing up in a middle-class family will experience as many as 1,700 hours of one-on-one reading, before he or she enters school; compared to a child from a lower-class family who enters school with 25 hours. The goal of this program is to help students become more comfortable in their reading and to gain confidence. How cool!!
Sound interesting? Check out the article:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/magazine/chi-080330kogan-col,1,4602652.column
Personally, I think this article is awesome! I would love to have something like this in my classroom someday! What a great confidence builder! I think this is a great way for students who might not have the opportunity to read aloud to work on their reading skills and improve fluency. It makes sense to me that children would be more comfortable reading aloud to someone who is unable to catch their mistakes. Also, I think it would make students look forward to reading! Plus, I think that it is a great way to help students learn to accept people who are different from them at an early age, and I'm sure that the volunteers feel great about being able to help these kids as well. As far as I can tell it's a win win for everyone involved!
6 comments:
This is such a great idea and has so many benefits!
Children that are first learning to read are so intimidated to read out loud in front of their peers. By replacing the other students with dogs takes so much of the pressure off. There isn't anyone to make fun of the reader or correct their every mistake. It sounds like a great way to practice fluency and self-correcting too. Plus, its a great opportunity for the kids who don't get that valuable one-on-one reading time at home.
This definitely sounds like something I would like to implement in my future classroom!
I think this concept is a wonderful idea.
I myself have no recollection of my parents reading to me before I entered school. I struggled throughout grade school learning how to read, and I still struggle with reading out loud!! I believe that if my parents took the time to read to me, or took the time to sit me down so I can read to them, it would have made a large impact on my reading skills. In grade school, I remember being laughed at by my fellow classmates because I did not know how to pronounce a word or for stuttering. And believe it or not, I still have flashbacks of that memory! I believe teaching children and having them become comfortable with basic education concepts, such as reading out loud, early will benefit them in the future.
I love this idea.
As we've talked about in class sometimes teachers in an urban setting may not have all the resources available to him or her as a teacher in a more affluent area; however, this is a creative and unique way to involve the community to help the kids. What a positive experience for everyone!
Building confidence and a love for reading in a non-threatening setting is the first couple steps in success with reading. As well as what a couple other people commented, with self-correcting and fluency.
I am interested to learn more about this program! Thanks for sharing!
This program sounds like such a good idea. I can remember when I was learning to read I used to get so frustrated when I would say words wrong and be corrected almost immediately. My teachers never gave me a chance to go back and correct my mistakes myself. With taking C & I 209 now I am learning so much about teaching students how to read. One of the things my teacher talks about is that we should not immediately jump down our students throats because they mix up this with that because most of the time they will realize on their own that there was an error made. The student I have been working with is not a very strong reader and I recently made him a book. When we were walking back to the classroom with him I asked if he would take this book home and read it will to someone one and he said yes but was hesitant. I told that he should maybe read to his dogs or his little brother (age 2) because they won’t know if he makes a mistake. I think that children should be given the chance to read without constantly being corrected. I know I don’t like it when people are telling me I am doing something incorrect all of the time what makes us think that young children would feel any different.
This is an awesome idea, and I would definitely do something like this in my classroom! Anything to help my students feel comfortable reading works for me!
Although my parents were pretty big on reading, it was my shyness that held me back. I remember being afraid and embarassed to read aloud in school... if I messed up a word or read too slowly, I felt like my classmates would laugh at me or judge me. I feel like if I would have had the chance to do something like what was discussed in the article I would have felt much more comfortable to read aloud in class. Although I think this would work in any classroom, an urban classroom would really benefit from it because, like Amanda said, many of these schools don't have a lot of resources... this is a creative way to help the students with reading AND involve the community.
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