Becoming Better Readers (and Mathematicians)

Today Mr. T., a science teacher from the high school, came down to visit 2A for "Feed and Read". He shared a story about one of his favorite story characters, Whinnie the Pooh. That's why he's sitting on a tree stump rather than the chair. It's Whinnie the Pooh's "thinking spot". We aim for each of our girls to become life long readers. "Feed and Read" is an opportunity for the girls to model from adults who are passionate about their favorite stories. Would you like to be our next guest reader? Please let us know!

“Being a role model is the most powerful form of educating..."
― John Wooden



Today in small group, we practiced reading orally with expression. In small groups, we sometimes read books slightly above level so we can practice using the word decoding strategies we've learned to read tricky words.

During class read alouds this week, the students have been working on making text-to-text connections with their reading partners.

This is an example of a text-to-text connection from today's story:

When I read the words "a girl can't play baseball",  it reminded me of Grace when she wanted to be Peter Pan but the boys said she can't because she's a girl. --2A student

Each day, the girls take a minute or two to fill out a "mini report card" to keep track of their progress as a reader. Before independent reading practice time, we remember our 'next step' from the previous day to focus on. Our goal is to make a small improvement each day-- in the end all those small improvements add up! By keeping track of their progress, the girls can see their growth which adds to their motivation to get even better. 

"What gets measured, gets managed." -Peter Drucker

Kaizen 改善 =  the practice of continuous improvement (one of Toyota's core values). 

As a pre-assessment before starting our Mathmatics unit on data handling, 2A students put their "mini reports" in order by date and were prompted to make a graph to illustrate their progress as a reader. Before every math unit, we assess what students already know and plan instruction to build upon their background knowledge and previously acquired skills.




This graph is still in progress. She has added some labels to her graph without being prompted. She has also chosen to use a ruler to make her lines straight.



This student has also begun to add labels. It's interesting that her graph reads right to left like a Japanese book. A next step for her is to add a title to describe what her graph shows. You can see that she has made progress as a reader with three days of all fives. Awesome.