Back in the day, St. Paddy's Day was a major holiday for me. The kind I anticipated and planned for during the long winter months. Bigger than Christmas, hands down. I had my employers convinced that it as a religious holiday and was therefore a paid holiday - it was written into the contract. However, since moving back to the west coast it's been a more than a tad blah. Few people get into the holiday and it's usually celebrated the weekend prior to make sure that work week is uninterupted. I still think that half the fun is the fact that one can be jigging in the streets at 9am when one should be diligently working.
My current teaching position seems to determined to beat out what little Irish there is in me. First was starting school prior to Labor Day, ruling out the planned trip to an Irish wedding (and not suprisingly, next year's schedule starts after Labor Day!). Yesterday was the LID day for the district. MOTG, especially since it was all about reading intervention. If I want to make sure I'm not teaching reading classes next year, my ass has to be in a chair for every meeting that even smells like books. The meeting/inservice/whatever-you-want-to-call-it-today bascially gave me 7 clock hours for about an hour's worth of information. The rest of it was devoted to how to teach the profoundly developmentally delayed student... at least I hope so. Teaching vowel sounds to 14 year olds seems a bit off the radar.
Some good things we did learn - did you know that they don't teach "long vowel-short vowel" any more? It's now termed "vowel sound" and "vowel name." This will be good information in couple of years when the new phonics learners start coming through the high school in teaching vocabulary.
Right now, we're still seeing kids who were taught whole language reading. Not surprisingly, they have great difficulty in reading complicated text. Why? The next interesting thing we learned. We were paired up - one teacher was reading text, the other timing and marking mis-read words. I'm the reader and this is not an easy text to read. Half of it doesn't make sense, so to read it correctly I'm reading really slow. The first sentence is about a girl being a "bachelor's daughter," which I don't understand... but it's written by Joyce, so it's plausible. You know those Irish expressions. While I'm reading, I'm watching the other teacher mark mis-read words... and I can't believe that I'm reading it wrong. Is it because the text is so strange? Am I substituting words without even realizing it? I slow the reading down even more to make sure I'm reading all the words - but he's still marking them wrong! When I finish, he's asking me comprehension questions, most of which I'm getting wrong. I ask, "how can I get the question about his job wrong? Who could forget in the space of 30 seconds that he was 'shirt-man'? It's an odd sounding job!"Eventually time is up, and that's when we realize that our texts are different! My text is one of a student who substitutes words they know for ones they don't. "Bachelor's Daughter" is really "Butcher's Daughter". The "shirt-man" was a "sheriff's man." Obviously what this type of reader does is going to lead to serious problems in reading for information in all classes. It was an eye-opening exercise.
Lastly, I think that the way the department teaches vocabulary will be changed a bit. Helping the students understand the word parts so they can break words down for meaning, pronounciation and spelling is going to be added. It's really surprising how many can not sound it out when they come across an unfamiliar word or how use the word sounds to figure out how to spell.
Afterwards, we booked out there as fast as possible for the nearest Irish-type pub. Pints and music all around - finally a bit of Irish to celebrate the day! Hope your's was good one!
My current teaching position seems to determined to beat out what little Irish there is in me. First was starting school prior to Labor Day, ruling out the planned trip to an Irish wedding (and not suprisingly, next year's schedule starts after Labor Day!). Yesterday was the LID day for the district. MOTG, especially since it was all about reading intervention. If I want to make sure I'm not teaching reading classes next year, my ass has to be in a chair for every meeting that even smells like books. The meeting/inservice/whatever-you-want-to-call-it-today bascially gave me 7 clock hours for about an hour's worth of information. The rest of it was devoted to how to teach the profoundly developmentally delayed student... at least I hope so. Teaching vowel sounds to 14 year olds seems a bit off the radar.
Some good things we did learn - did you know that they don't teach "long vowel-short vowel" any more? It's now termed "vowel sound" and "vowel name." This will be good information in couple of years when the new phonics learners start coming through the high school in teaching vocabulary.
Right now, we're still seeing kids who were taught whole language reading. Not surprisingly, they have great difficulty in reading complicated text. Why? The next interesting thing we learned. We were paired up - one teacher was reading text, the other timing and marking mis-read words. I'm the reader and this is not an easy text to read. Half of it doesn't make sense, so to read it correctly I'm reading really slow. The first sentence is about a girl being a "bachelor's daughter," which I don't understand... but it's written by Joyce, so it's plausible. You know those Irish expressions. While I'm reading, I'm watching the other teacher mark mis-read words... and I can't believe that I'm reading it wrong. Is it because the text is so strange? Am I substituting words without even realizing it? I slow the reading down even more to make sure I'm reading all the words - but he's still marking them wrong! When I finish, he's asking me comprehension questions, most of which I'm getting wrong. I ask, "how can I get the question about his job wrong? Who could forget in the space of 30 seconds that he was 'shirt-man'? It's an odd sounding job!"Eventually time is up, and that's when we realize that our texts are different! My text is one of a student who substitutes words they know for ones they don't. "Bachelor's Daughter" is really "Butcher's Daughter". The "shirt-man" was a "sheriff's man." Obviously what this type of reader does is going to lead to serious problems in reading for information in all classes. It was an eye-opening exercise.
Lastly, I think that the way the department teaches vocabulary will be changed a bit. Helping the students understand the word parts so they can break words down for meaning, pronounciation and spelling is going to be added. It's really surprising how many can not sound it out when they come across an unfamiliar word or how use the word sounds to figure out how to spell.
Afterwards, we booked out there as fast as possible for the nearest Irish-type pub. Pints and music all around - finally a bit of Irish to celebrate the day! Hope your's was good one!
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