Reading and teaching

Carrie Kirschner/The Independent

Ashland November 22, 2006 11:03 pm

— While students are learning to read a teacher is learning to teach at Charles Russell Elementary.
Morehead State University senior Rachel Steele is learning to teach in Nichole Moore’s classroom. Moore teaches reading to fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders and is guiding Steele during her eight-week placement in the classroom.
As a part of her training, Steele has taken over Moore’s six reading classes for several weeks. Using a teaching method called a Literature Circle, Steele is not only instructing students on their technical reading skills and teamwork, but trying to foster a deeper appreciation for literature and reading.
Fourth-grade students are reading “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” and the fifth- and sixth-graders are tackling “A Wrinkle In Time.” Each class is broken into small groups, and within the groups each takes on a specific job for the day, according to Steele.
There is a group leader, an encourager, a summarizer and a word wizard, who is responsible for looking up vocabulary words the students write down each day. Students have also designed their own final projects on the book.
“I want them to get used to learning literature and wanting to read literature, to be able to talk about books and their opinion of books, which I guess in turn would help them with social skills,” Steele said.
Moore said she asked Steele to use the method because of the way it engages students in reading.
“I feel like the students get to explore the book. Each day they have one area of concentration. I think the students get to do some things in the area of their strength,” she said.
“I like that for the kids because some of them that aren’t necessarily strong in just reading, and writing sort of gets to show off their strengths.”
She said it is important to pique the students’ interest in reading because they are at a critical time in their reading education. “We feel like this is our last effort to make them good readers.”
Moore said she thinks Steele is getting valuable experience. “My student teaching experience is totally what prepared me. Until you do it you really don’t have a clue.”
“She’s having to learn to adjust,” she said, explaining that this is often one of the first lessons teachers learn.
“It’s so much different,” Steele said of learning to apply her classroom education by actually teaching. “They just tell you how to do things. But when you’re out in the classroom some of those things don’t work.”
Steele gave this example: “I’m learning what works for each grade level. There is a difference between fourth and sixth ... just me reading to the fourth-graders, they like that. But in sixth grade they want to get involved.
“It’s just different every day when you see something work or something doesn’t and you have to start rearranging. Things work differently for different classes.”
Steele is part of the first class of Morehead students completing student teaching in two eight-week blocks instead of one 16-week session with the same grade. Steele spent a previous eight weeks teaching third grade before being placed with Moore.