Interesting Day

As we started reading Of Mice and Men, I began by having my students write about their best friend.  Two of my students wrote about me.  Now I'm not naive enough to think I am their best friend, but they both wrote about how much they enjoyed reading, something I truly believe.  Both of these students literally ask if we can read longer than 25 minutes.

I also have a student who constantly complains about literally everything we do.  Today when we were reading, I gave him a copy of Durango Street, which I had seen him reading earlier.  He started to complain, but when he saw it was a book he liked, he said, "Oh well, I like this book."  For him, this is incredible progress.

I am monitoring my ESL students to see if they make the transition from Spanish books to English.  To me, this would indicate a significant increase in English fluency.

I am bringing in some Stephen King novels.  I'm interested to see the reaction.

The Challenge Continues

I received my students' test scores this week.  Most are 2-3 grade levels below where they should be, and only one or two at or above grade level. It's so good to have this baseline data.

I have several students beginning to engage in reading, and some have told me they have read a book for the first time in their lives.  I still have students who aren't engaging. It's amazing they can sit there for 25 minutes and just stare into space-though they are pretending to "read" their book.  Even though I have so many books in my classroom, I believe sending them to the library to choose another book might bring more success. I've sent several to the library, and they happily return to read their newly chosen book.

My ELL students are continuing to check out book written in Spanish.  I believe this is important so they continue to develop cognitively.  In class, we continue to read our class novel Holes so they are also reading in English. Their comprehension scores on the SRI were literally zero, so I look forward to seeing improvement.