As I read Allington's chapter three and the Jones Family's article on blackboard there was one big idea that kept floating through my head. All I could think about was how both articles stressed what kind of literary experiences a child has before they begin school. Children come from thousands of different backgrounds and cultures and in these they all have different, valuable literary experiences.
These literary experiences are given to the child by their parents, grandparents, siblings, caregivers, neighbors, aunts, uncles, etc. All of these people have a crucial role as a reading role model. They are modeling for the young children daily. Some realize it and do obvious things to show children how to read, like Kiki Reynolds in the Jones Family article. Some, though, do not realize how much they are modeling for the children in their lives. Regardless of this, it kept sticking in my head that these role models make all the difference in a child's learning to read. Even us as theteachers have to model for the children in terms of reading and writing. We cannot expect the children to all enter our class on a level playing field so our modeling job takes some practice to be effective. I think that more people should pay more attention to how they are reading and writing around young children because they do not realize how much they are impacting them.
As a teacher, what can we do to help those who have had few or no positive reading role models?
I'm sure some of you have seen this video of the baby thinking the magazine is an iPad. Is technology hurting how we teach our children to read? Is there some way we as educators can harness this tech-savvy world to our advantage when it comes to teaching kids to read? Is the technology a role model also?
