Summary Post C4T- Teacher #2

I was assigned to the blog Concrete Classroom taught to elementary students by Michael Kaechele for C4T #2. I enjoyed his blog, I liked the way he had his blog set up and the way he experimented with new techniques in his classroom on a regular basis. My first comment to him was regarding his early morning readings, which his students do every morning for one hour. This year he had taken a new approach. He refers to it as GRAB- Grad a book and read (He has a box of thirty books covering a variety of topics). The difference this year however is that he has now introduced his students to online reading, giving them more options. In his blog he mentioned he had set bookmarks up for his students, was using diigo and a few other sources. What he was looking for was some feedback. His question was, "Do you think this is an effective way to increase reading fluency?"

My response was yes! I think by letting the children onto the virtual side of reading they can access so much more. They can find just about any topic they are interested in through the internet and have it on the screen in a few short seconds. More often than not students lose interest in reading, if their only options of what to read is coming from a box of pre-picked books that may quicken this process for some students. The only stipulation I felt, which he also mentioned, was that while he was looking around some students were reading on web-sites such as ESPN. He made a statement, which I agreed with that at least they are reading! I suggested that he could allocate the students a certain amount of time to cruise the internet for reading on web-sites such as ESPN and then they could possibly switch over to the teachers choice of places to read from. The students could also suggest places they want to read from and the teacher could check them out and approve them.

I did get a response from Mr. Kaechele who thanked me for my comment and commented on my post about podcasting. He also asked if I was student teaching yet. When I responded back he had mentioned that he had done some podcasting in his classroom it ended up being a lot of wok on his end trying to get everything set up, put together and sounding right. I imagine so, but I think podcasting may take some getting used to, or at least from my experience.