Just Realized...

I just realized I wrote about the right article, but on the wrong subject.  The article relates to organizing literacy in the same way.  Organizing a classroom and its activities to revolve around literacy are very important.  As stated in the earlier blog, reading and writing are important aspects in every subject and should be focused on more than "busy work" or time consuming activities.  Reading the earlier blog will explain the article and how it contributes to organizing literary as well as last week's topic of assessment. Sorry, got a little mixed up on the subjects.

Want or Need?

Assessing students is a very important aspect in the teaching career.  Assessment allows teachers to view which children are getting the information and which are not.  It also can tell the teacher if they effectively teaching the material in a way that the students understand.  Both sides can be viewed by evaluation of the students in different types of assessments such as formal or informal. Formal assessments are those in which are planned and take time to complete and grade.  Informal assessments are spontaneous and not planned.  These could be little games or questions to get out the door to quiz or help with learning.  Assessment and busy work, such as worksheets are important to help get information across, but Richard A. Allington article, The Schools we Have. The Schools we Need. describes the importance of reading and the time allotted.  The article touches on how even though students are reading and writing 10% more than 10 years ago, they are not getting enough time during the school day to read and write.  Reading and writing are incorporated to every subject and should be given a large amount of time in which to increase capability.  Devoting more time to reading an writing should help students to succeed in many areas of study.  Assessments are important to help the teacher and the students, as well as worksheets and fill in the blank material, but teachers need to make more time for reading and writing activities.

Reading in Levels

In schools today, there is a large array of skill levels within each grade.  The importance of reaching every child and their academic level for each subject is very hard and stressful, but is of very high importance to me.  The article "Matching texts and readers..." is a great source for teachers to see how detailed the criteria for leveling books and reading ability is in today’s teaching economy.  The article really illustrates the importance of every aspect included in a book, and how it can determine what level a particular book falls into. The article breaks each level down into sections and carefully describes them in depth.  This is very helpful with teachers, and students, in knowing who is on what level and which books are eligible for comprehension. A teacher should also make sure to not only have books as reading materials.  There are many others in which some students are more interested in and are more inclined to actually sit down with and read.  This article really put into perspective for me how important reading at different levels can be met with the same pursuit of reaching a higher level of reading in the end. 

Incorporating many topics in books is more exciting for a student in allowing them to choose what they are interested in and want to read about.  Splitting the books into sections on skill level is a great visual way of telling students which books are right for them (based on a color or sign of some kind, without giving away the different levels to the students).