Tara's Chapter 6 Reflection

this chapter was on retelling. i used to do this last semester with my kids at kapalama. that was my duty every wednesday and thursday. i didnt mind at all because i was interested to see if the kids could retell what they read to me. i had kids of every reading level in my class last semester and it was really neat to actually see the different reading levels. i didnt quite understand the different reading levels my mentor had but all i know was that there was not a single child who was on the same reading level. my mentor teachers reading levels go from 1 to i think it was 20 and not from a to z like how i always read about. i forgot to ask her about her reading levels. i was curious about them and she did sort of brief me on what she did and what i should do when i get my own classroom.

all the things im learning now in class i basically already know since my teacher does running records, guided readings, shared readings, and retellings. i have had the opportunity to experience all of them and i am happy that i did. well, when i come in on wednesdays and thursdays, my mentor tells me in the morning what kids i will be doing shared readings with and she tells me to do running records and retellings. she tells me to document them on the child's reading folder. my mentor was very organized with this kind of stuff. i didnt do the checks if the kids got the word right, but i did do the stuff if the kids got the answer wrong, or if i had to help them, or if they self-corrected themselves. i think that way is faster because you dont have to keep checking off stuff. but when it came time to retelling, i would close the book and leave it in front of the student and then ask them if they can tell me what happened in the story so i can see if they understand what they have read. i would leave the book in front of the student just to see if they would grab it and open it to look in it. only my ESL child would have to look in the book because he didnt understand the word and when he came across it in his retellings, he would have to look up the word and show it to me because he couldnt say it. other then that, all of my kids could retell. and they were really good too! i was kind of uncertain as to how to assess them because all of them could retell the story to me. i kinda figured that if they could go in to good details about the story, then i would conisder it an excellent retelling. most of them could too. they would tell me the summary of the story, going over the main points, and then i would think of questions pertaining to the book just to see if they could answer it. thats what i was told to do. i was told to get the summary from the kids and then ask them main point questions from the book to see if they could answer me. if they could do that then they had a good retelling. and most times the kids could! i was proud of every one of them. im glad that i was able to learn about retellings and running records last semester because in class i understand what is going on and im not confused.