Literacy in the Classroom

The fifth grade teachers had their work cut out for them at the beginning of the year. The benchmark test results were not readily available for the teachers to look at and the fourth grade teachers from the year before had no records of any testing done. The reading and writing levels of all the students were unknown, and they had to test most of the students to figure out where exactly they were. The first week of school the teachers spent most of their time testing in reading, writing, and math. The results were some what surprising. There were some students that were way beyond their grade level in reading and writing, however, there was a group of students that were writing either on grade level or above grade level, while reading way below grade level. These reading levels will be used throughout the year in a program called “Reading Intervention.” The fifth graders are all broken up to different reading groups, those on grade level and then those that are above and those that are below. Each teacher takes a group of readers and they work to improve their reading scores and abilities. They had great success with it last year and I am interested in seeing how it works this year with this group of students.

The class has finished testing in math and writing, however, the testing in reading is still going on. The students read out loud to a teacher and the teacher makes notes about how the student is reading and their vocabulary throughout the passage. While students are being evaluated one by one, the other students are reading silently. They read for about 45 minutes to themselves. The only other literacy that I see is during the writing time and the time during what will eventually be reading intervention time. The class is currently going over what fables, tall tales, legends, and fairy tales are. The teacher usually reads them a book that falls into one of the categories and they go over what makes that book that genre. During writing, the class is focused on narrative writing and they are currently working on writing their own narrative stories. They are writing one as a class and then individually.

I am hoping that once the testing is finished that I will see more then just silent reading. There are some students that are genuinely interesting in the books that they are reading during silent reading. However, the majority of the students do not focus on their books. The students are allowed to sit anywhere in the room that they want and there are carpet squares that they are allowed to use as cushions. Some students sit with their friends and talk for the entire 45 minutes and since both the teacher and I are preoccupied with testing the students, they generally get away with it. Some of the other students (those that are not reading and talking) walk around the bookshelves to “find the perfect book.” Or so they say. For the most part, they are simply trying to put off actually reading. There are maybe 7 or 8 students our of 27 students that are reading during silent reading which means that about 20 students are not getting any literacy time in school – all because of testing. Hopefully over the next few weeks, I will see more literacy going on in the classroom.