Messy Hands

I thought this was a very interesting article. It really reminded me of the mad fans that you do for fun since you fill in the words. I think something like this would be great as an assessment for children. It would teach you a lot about how children think and what they put together. I think that this would be something neat to do at the beginning of a unit to see what people already know.

Leveled Reading

I was intriguided to read about  the level reading article.  I have always felt that level reading is something that a teacher would never do if the school did not insist that it was needed.  I understand that this is a way of doing assessment on children in the classroom.  My teacher spends time with different children every day talking about the books that they are reading and having them read to her.  She is always talking about the testing that they will start doing next year in first grade.  I think that level reading puts so much pressure on the children.  When a child is a strong reader, you risk the chance that they may become bored with what is being done during this time.  The biggest thing, is that the children know what the levels mean.  My kindergarteners know which colors mean easier books and which do not.  I think that this is something that makes some of the children embarrassed.  This is something that other peers can see as public knowledge on which book their peers are now reading.  I wish that there was something that the state could do that would allow for the assessment that I know is needed, with out having the children feel vulnerable and embarrassed.

Sounding Out

This weeks article was something that really got me thinking.  I can remember being told to sound things out in school.  I can remember my parents telling me to sound out words that I could not pronounce.  Even now, when I am in the school I am always telling children to sound words out.  This article made me wonder if I am hurting them in the long run. I often wonder if it makes things more difficult for children to understand if they are esentially too young to sound something out.  Maybe they do not have the phonemic awareness to make out all of the letter sounds.  I think that some children have a hard time listening to all of the sounds that a letter can make.  Some letters have a short and a long sound to the words.  It can be really hard for a child to know which one they should be using at this time in the word. I do not think that it is bad to tell a child to sound out a word but I think that we, as teachers, need to know what the child is capable of doing at such a young age and making sure to not ask them to do something that they may not be able to handle.