Being the best teacher that you can be!

I love Gay Pinnell's article because she discusses what I believe to be one of the most important and reoccuring issues in the education world. Pinnell discusses how too often, teachers run into problems of being effective teachers because of restraints like changes in administration, overruling ideas and approaches, students and teachers coming and going, etc. She suggests that even though there are some things that cannot be avoided, there ARE still daily decisions that teachers can make that will greatly benefit their students.

The 8 main principles that Pinnell offers are:

1. Learn about learning
2. Put your theory into action
3. Establish inquiry as an integral part of your teaching
4. Use research-based practices to put extra energy into making them work
5. Put your theory to work in the classroom
6. Take every opportunity to create community
7. Enjoy reading and writing with your students
8. Imagine a future and work toward

I love this idea that even though there are, and always will be, struggles that teachers will face and not be able to get around, there are still so many ways that they can still be effective for their students. All it takes is small daily decisions to have an impact on every student and make literacy a part of their lives. This will be important for me to remember as a teacher so that I do not give in to the restrictions of my school and give up on trying to be the best teacher that I can be. 

Matching texts & Readers

One of the most important things when teaching a child to read is to make sure that the text is on the appropriate reading level of difficulty that both supports AND challenges them. Rog and Burton suggest that a text that is "just-right" is one where the child can read about 9 out of 10 words and easily comprehend them. I remember learning in Information Sciences that most leveling strategies are not reliable because they all measure different things. Some things that are left out of these measurements are:

• the  length  of the book,
• the appearance  and  placement  of  print on the  page,
• the  degree  of support  offered  by the  illustrations,
• the complexity of concepts and familiarity of subject matter,
• the degree of predictability of the text, and
• the proportion of unique or repeated words to familiar words. 

Rog and Burton's main argument is that "appropriate  reading  materials for emergent  readers  contain  meaningful  and natural  language  patterns  and  many  high frequency words. These  texts should be interesting and  engaging  for children,  contain  high-quality  illustrations,  and  have literary  merit." In their district, they used a 10-step leveling system that focused on vocabulary, size and layout of print, predictability, illustration support, and complexity of concepts.