Time Flies...

Well, I was hoping that my classes last semester would provide blogging inspiration but instead it left me buried in paperwork and exams. Has it really been six months since I’ve written a blog?!?! This semester is not panning out to be much different, however I will say that my classes are much more meaningful now that I can actually relate them to my career.
In my brief but glorious 3 week break from classes I read Debbie Miller’s book, Reading with Meaning. The books takes the reader through the school year with a class of first graders during their reader’s workshop. Man, was I impressed with what these first grader’s were capable of by the end of the school year! Several student artifacts were presented in the book and, from a developmental perspective, these students seem to be thinking at a much higher cognitive level than is typical of a 7 year old.
Her technique had a strong focus on metacognition and comprehension. She modeled, explicitly, the thinking process of readers and spent a significant amount of time characterizing qualities of readers. These first graders were making insightful inferences and comparisons. They were having thoughtful discussions and (in an unexpectedly abstract manner) making metaphors to describe reading. Below are a couple of quotes provided by her students, one about inferring and one about synthesizing:

“When we infer together, it’s like a wire that connects from my head to someone else’s head, on and on and on, all around the circle.” – Riley (Reading with Meaning, Miller, 2002)

“Synthesizing is like putting a puzzle together. You have to sort out your thinking and put it in the right place.”- Cory (Reading with Meaning, Miller, 2002)

Maybe its lack of experience spending enough time with first graders, but that seems highly philosophical for that age in my mind. It’s amazing to me that her method instilled such a deep understanding not just of the texts but of the process, the strategies which they will probably be using throughout their academic career. I guess I have become accustomed to expecting reading instruction to first focus on how to read, then to move into comprehension. I think Miller’s approach is brilliant. What resulted was that students became highly motivated to build reading skills.
I recommend this book, although some of the comments on Amazon stated that the book is probably more suited for new teachers. I learned a lot from her technique that I intend to use and will likely be re-reading this book a few times to re-absorb it.