Sixth Grade Parent Meeting November 21, 2005

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Sixth Grade Parent MeetingNovember 21, 2005

• Reading in school and at home.

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The importance of reading

• A venue to introduce new ideas and different
  perspectives to kids
• Improves and expands imagination
• Increases ability to focus
• Helps promote a love of learning

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Research indicates thatstudents who spend more
time reading for pleasure

• Are more proficient readers
• Write with greater ease in a more fluent and
  interesting way
• Expand their vocabulary and word recognition,
  particularly rare words
• Improve their listening comprehension skills
• Improve their oral language skills
• Increase success rate in learning another
  language
• Are more successful across the curriculum
• And of course, improve their standardized test
  scores

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Jim Trelease

• A highly respected educatinal researcher, Jim
  Trelease has a wealth of knowledge concerning
  reading.
• What factors were common to the best student
  readers around the world?
• Two of the factors that produced higher
  achievements
• The frequency of teachers reading aloud to
  students.
• The frequency of SSR (sustained silent
  reading/pleasure reading in school). Children who
  had daily SSR were more proficient than those who
  had it only once a week.

http//www.trelease-on-reading.com/
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What are we doing to promote good readers?

• Reading aloud in Humanities
• Providing SSR opportunities
• Encouraging and monitoring each students reading
  goal
• Offering exposure to new and different types of
  books
• Literacy Strategies

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SRA What is the Purpose?

• A range of reading levels that enable all
  students to learn independently and at their own
  pace
• Self-directed readings that serve an entire
  classroom of readers at different levels
• Students are allowed to see and feel their
  progress to experience the satisfaction of
  forward movement
• Immediate and long-range feedback of each childs
  results, through self-corrected materials, allows
  for a higher level of performance

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Reading Levels

• Students were administered a test in September to
  determine their starting reading level.
• Our SRA kit ranges in reading level from 3.5
  (blue) to 11 (Green).
• Students are not aware of the grade equivalent of
  their color level.
• Most students fall within the 5th 7th grade
  level.

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How Well Did You Read

• Amount and difficulty of questions increase with
  each level.
• Questions provide practice in the following skill
  areas
• Grasping Main Idea
• Cause Effect Relationships
• Similarities Differences
• Sequence Organization
• Inference Conclusion

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Learn About Words

• As with the previous section, the difficulty
  gradually increases as the reading level rises
• These questions strengthen each childs
  understanding of word structure while building
  vocabulary
• Questions focus on concepts such as prefixes,
  roots, suffixes, analogies, and complex word
  relationships

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Classroom Logistics of SRA

• Students self grade every other Power Builder
• Students change levels based on performance on
  Power Builders
• Results count as 30 of Literacy Strategies Grade
• Students keep an accurate results chart in their
  Humanities Binder

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Rate Builders

• Rate builders are short selections designed to
  encourage rapid, intensive, yet efficient
  reading.
• Each exercise is three minutes in length
• Length difficulty of material increases as a
  student progresses.

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A quick note about the planner

• _____ Names of all classes written
• _____ Dates written
• _____ Homework for every class is written,
  including none
• _____ Accurate information written
• _____ Hand writing is legible
• _____ Reading section included
• _____ Numbers are written to prioritize
  assignments

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Instilling reading as a habit.

• Know what your kids are reading be interested
  in their progress
• Encourage age appropriate books sixth graders
  at Baylor should be reading Young Adult books
  or higher, not Intermediate books. The
  benefits of reading come as much from content and
  style as from time spent
• Use http//www.Amazon.com and http//www.Barnesand
  nobel.com as resources to choose books
• Use Tammy Burns, Amy Cohen and Kathy Rupe as
  resources
• Kids should LOVE what they are reading dont
  waste time on books that are not interesting.
• Encourage them to read EVERY night and follow
  through
• Help them read in the proper environment
• Model reading as a habit
• Read some of the same books and discuss them