Carol’s Reflection on Taberski, Chapter 1

Boy was I stuck on sounding it out with my first-grade daughter. This chapter reminded me that kids expect text to make sense and can make this happen using knowledge of the subject or knowledge of the way language works. So when she got stuck on the word “thousands” last weekend and wanted to close the book, although I didn’t have the opportunity to model strategies I asked her to just try skipping the word and seeing if she could make sense of the story. She looked confused as if doing so would be cheating or breaking a rule. But when I said it was okay and that it might help her, she covered the word, continued reading on about “hundreds of books,” and then came back to quickly read the word. It worked and she didn’t want to close the book anymore! It makes so much sense to do it this way now that I know, but previously I would have just asked her to sound it out and then do it with her until I actually did it for her, with her losing interest in the end. Equipped with this new perspective, I’m excited about giving my kindergarteners demonstrations and listening to them read.

The metaphor of the bottling plant was eerily similar to the way my teacher friend described the situation in her school. It seems that teaching to test has indeed become just like trying to fill up empty, passive containers by telling, telling, telling, in time for the quarterly assessments but having kids that are still empty because they haven’t had time to take an active part in their learning. It’s a predicament that many teachers, including Taberski would like to change.