Today, in class, we talked about the idea of gradually releasing responsibility to students as instruction continues over time. I found this graphic on the web and thought it did a much better job of illustrating the point than my scribbles on the board did. This will be an important concept we will revisit over and over again as we continue to talk about strategy instruction and methodologies for teaching reading and writing.
We also had the chance to explore reading levels. I found this chart that correlates with the chart handed out in class today but goes further in terms of grade level and includes other leveling systems:
Leveled books are integral to the guided reading approach - we will see why next week. As you looked through books today in class, you had the opportunity to see how the levels change in difficulty, word structure, plot complexity, topics, etc. Some resources on the web that help us place levels on texts:Leveled Book List :: This website does an excellent job of listing books that you may already have in your collection that can be leveled. It organizes the books based on their author, title, and even grade level. Definitely a bookmarkable site!
Teacher Book Wizard :: This is a new website for me, but looks like it could be an excellent resource for matching students to texts that will interest them based on the level they are currently at. Plug in some information, select your leveling system and the engine will search for matches. I'm unsure how successful it is in the long run, but the thought seems good. Try it out and let me know what you think.
12 comments:
I found it very interesting to see all the different levels of books. I found it important as a future teacher to learn that there is so many different ways to level books and what I should look for that will be the most beneficial for the students.
I really had no idea how the books were separated into different reading levels and the qualification which defined these categories. It was most interesting to see how each level changed as it progressed upward. This strategy will be crucial to use on our future classrooms and it is important to know what is we need to be looking for.
Have a great rest of your week and weekend!! See you all Monday...
- Ashley
I explored the Teacher Book Wizard website a little bit and it seems really cool. I like "Book Alike" tool because it helps you find books that are similar to books you already know. I think that it could be a great resource for teachers to find books for their students.
Today in one of my classes we talked about different book levels. We saw a class list of which students were on a certain level. It was interesting to see how a class reading level matched up. I was surprised that alot of students were under the appropriate reading level.
I found this to be very helpful. This would allow me to make sure that my students are reading the books that are most appropriate to them in terms of levels. This chart would take a lot of guess work out of my lessons and would eliminate wasted effort that might have been present if the students were not reading at their level.
I thought class was interesting on monday when we learned about the different levels of books. It was a really helpful activity to do because now I can see how book leveling works and the different companies you can use. I also explored the book wizard website and it looks like a wonderful resource for teachers. They had a really cool feature you could use as a teacher, you could share your books online with tons of teachers!
I had no idea that different companies classify books' reading levels differently. I absolutely love that you showed us a way to compare these different classifications! It was interesting how after you talked about the Fountas and Pinnell system, a guest speaker in one of my other classes (who is an award winning teacher) spoke about Fountas and Pinnell and how great of a classifying system it has. I think that this will be very useful as a teacher, because I am sure I will have students at varying levels. This way I can have books to suite every students ability, and will have a organized way to categorize the different books.
Lauren
When planning my classroom I think it will be important to include a class library using leveling to organize the books. This would be a great way to help the students find a book that suits their reading level. I liked the system of leveling books because I like seeing progress in students and with this method you will really be able to see improvement in the student's reading abilities. This is one of the most useful things that I have learned in college and I know that I will use it as a future teacher.
It was interesting when our guest speaker last week in k352 brought up the leveling system she used in her classroom. It was a neat immediate application and I enjoyed seeing how someone else is using it right now!
Investigating how the different levels of books were categorized was very interesting to me. I found it difficult to figure out a main pattern of the book levels. However, after further observations I realized that as the book levels increased the pictures were less involved with the words. This demonstrates how the students realized on the illustrations less and the book level increased.
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