Making Room for Adolescent Literacy

I was watching the video from AdLit.org on making room for adolescent literacy.  A couple of points really stuck out at me. 

The first statement that hit me was when students who can't read were compared to being ill.  It was mentioned that if they don't receive "treatment" or interventions, they will not make it.  The comment of "they will not make it" really hit me.  Students who lack the reading skills will not be able to get a great job, support a family, or be a productive citizen.  What a disservice we as teachers are doing to students if we do not give them the "medicine" they need.  This also hit me because today I received some training on the DIBELS Next program and thought about how many students are at risk and need interventions. 

The second statement that stuck out at me was that teachers should not shortchange students of the literacy strategies and rush through them because of time factors.  I am guilty of rushing through a concept because it needs to be taught before the next benchmark or TCAP test.  This made me realize that it is better to equip students with 1 or 2 thoroughly taught strategies than to "spray and pray" they get a little bit of all of the strategies and not be sure how to use them. 

Although this clip was short, it had some great points!

Making Room for Adolescent Literacy

For my first blog entry, I wanted to comment on the video assigned to us for review.  The video, entitled "Making Room: The Adolescent Literacy Crisis", was something that made me feel my job as a 4th grade teacher is even more important than I thought.  While I don't teach the basics of reading, I am at the beginning of the stage where students read to learn.  I liked the point made that teachers never see the end product of teaching students to read, but that it comes many years later after students graduate by the jobs and life they have after school.  While I am working with my 4th graders, I sometimes think about how what I do will help them in 5th grade, but never as a cumulative process and how it will help them in middle or high school.  It's not only K-2 teachers that teach how to read or high school teachers' jobs to teach how to understand the content, but EVERYONE who encounters that student that can have a great affect on their reading career.