A Spring Success Story

One of my students smashed his reading goal last week. At the beginning of the year, reading intervention with him was difficult. He would get dejected, act out, and cry. He knew he couldn't read as well as the other children in class and was the kind of kid who would do whatever he could to control his own situation--even if it meant being disruptive. Yet, when I read whole group, he sat on my shoes and hung on my every word. I realized that he loved books--the funnier the better.

A few months into the school year, I decided that during intervention, I would follow his lead. We echo-read his favorite read-alouds.  We reread these stories for hours. And guess what? It worked. His growth took off.

Last Friday, on testing day, he started reading and I knew he was going to nail it. His fluency, expression and word attack skills all seemed to gel. When the timer went off, he looked up at me and said, "I did it. I beat my goal."

My eyes filled with tears and I hugged him. "Yes, you did it."

Teaching is hard but these moments are what it is all about.

I am not one of those people who can tell you why it worked. I tried using all kinds of interventions that worked on other kids but didn't work on him. It may be that he wanted to spend that extra time with me. It may be that he liked reading books the other kids were reading (although he loves leveled readers. He calls them his warm-up books and reads thru them like I can't believe). It may be that something inside of him just clicked.

When I set out to do the picture book a day challenge, I thought it was going to be easy. It wasn't. Finding the time to read one book a day and balance all the testing and curriculum requirements is hard to do and I did miss a few days here and there. The time spent was worth it. I will continue with this practice for the rest of my career and hope that you will too.