Jaime's Ch.2 Reflection

In the beginning of Chapter 2 Sharon Taberski says it is important to have clear goals to become an effective teacher. I think this is true in general and doesn’t apply only to teaching children to read. My New Years Resolution was to stop being a procrastinator, but it’s so hard to break old habits. After reading Chapter 2, I realized that I need to set mini goals for myself so that I don’t get overwhelmed with our many assignments. So from now on, I plan to set up daily goals. For instance, today’s goal is to do my Art Response for Chapter 1 and Art reflections.

Chapter 2 gave good strategies that children can use to figure out words and understand text. I made a copy of this page for myself and I think this is a good thing to display in our future classroom. I enjoyed reading about the different levels of readers. I know for sure that when I was in the first or second grade I was not a fluent reader like ‘Theo.’ Judging by the way I read now, I was probably a ‘Victor.’

I think Sharon uses great strategies to teach her children reading. I like the fact that she never gives up on her readers. Even though some of her students are transitional and fluent readers she still guides them so they can become lifelong readers who read different kinds of genres. At the end of the year, she doesn’t expect her children to be at the same level but her goal is for them to have learned new strategies to figure out words and texts and to make them comfortable with reading so they're doing it for pleasure and not because its required. I think that is one goal that all teachers should try and strive towards.