Tompkins Chapter 3

The reading for this week got me thinking more about how reading instruction is applied to the learning of the kindergarten students that I observe. Tompkins talks a lot about reading strategies for younger level students. Some of the strategies that I feel are very important are predicting and asking questions. I feel predicting really helps engage the students into what they are reading. I use this practice a lot, even when the students are doing their individual "quiet reading". I've found that by going around and asking kids about what they think will happen in a story before they read it, they are more likely to attempt to read that story, rather then just staring at the cover or just leaving the book on the ground. During reading, it is important to stop the student and not only re-cap what happened so far in the story, but also recall the predictions that were made and perhaps edit those predictions. I really liked how Tompkins talked about different ways to teach aspects such as writing letters and working on phonetics (sounds). These are aspects that also apply to my field work.