Highs and Lows of Reading

My wonderful co-teacher and I were working on progress reports today. As a clear sign of my exhaustion or lack of brain power or etc. I had to ask her a couple of times if she had a kid in a reading group or if I did. Typically she did but there was at least one time I had the child. As soon as she said it I realized and could handle my role in the conversation.

We got to one (of my favorite) kid(s) and I was sure she must have him in a reading group because there is no way I would forget meeting with him. She said no. I looked skeptically at her. She repeated her refusal. I looked questioningly. She pulled out the list of our reading groups.

He was in one of my groups. I have never once met with this student.

I have a student who has never met in a reading group, not once in the month we've been meeting with the kiddos. He has not mentioned to us that he has never been called for a meeting. We have never realized he wasn't getting that instruction time. #majorfail

On the silver lining side of this saga, he is reading above where we expect him to be. I have to admit I would feel a lot worse if he were struggling more as a reader. But still...

Then tonight my daughters gave me a new story to tell (thank goodness). I lost all patience with them - that's not the good part - and told them we would not be reading any Harry Potter tonight. That worked out well when the 3rd grader realized she had some serious word study homework to do. The four-year-old kept bugging her until I sent her off to find a book to look at.

She brought over Dora's Sleepover. It has pictures within some sentences to help an early reader. But I would not describe her as an early reader yet. She started reading it and pointed at words for me to tell her. I gave her the first couple and then there was a picture. Then she kept going on her own for a couple of words. She was getting her mouth ready beautifully at each word and if she thought of a word that made sense that started that way she would say it. This got her pretty darn far. She needed help with about every third or fourth word, on average. But she was reading quite a bit on her own and feeling really, really good about it.

I'm grateful to end the day on a high note.