This post has been swirling around in my head ever since I started teaching in the older grades four years ago. By older grades, I mean Grades Three and Four. I have been surprised at how many words students do not understand. Words that I thought were common often stumped my students. My students now do online reading assessments throughout the year. I have seen students panic over the vocabulary while completing the assessments. I have been reflecting on how I can shine a light on vocabulary this year and help my students acquire richer vocabulary.
In my own family, vocabulary and reading have been important focuses. My husband and I wanted our children to love reading and have rich vocabularies. We vowed to make this a priority. Our children were exposed to sophisticated vocabulary in family conversations. Books were also a priority and we spent valuable hours reading good books and talking about them.
As my children reached Grade Four they lost interest in reading. We let them buy lots of comics and magazines, anything to get them interested in reading on their own. It worked! My children started reading for pleasure on their own. We visited libraries and bookstores and let them choose whatever books they wanted. The bookshelves at our house are overflowing and my children have rich vocabularies. I have the same expectations for vocabulary and reading for my own students.
Last year was my first year teaching Grade Four and I noticed how some students lost interest in reading. I signed my class up for the Ottawa Senators reading program in conjunction with a school-wide reading challenge. I wanted to get my students interested in reading again. We won a pizza party from the Ottawa Senators for reaching our reading goals for one month. Many of my students were voracious readers and continued to read all year. Sadly, a few of my students did not start reading regularly.
This year I have made a concerted effort to make reading a priority in my class. I have my students entered the same Read to Succeed Program with the Ottawa Senators. We are also taking part in a school-wide reading challenge. I hope that all my students will learn to love reading this year. I have even donated our family collection of Archie comics to the school library so children can read something quick during morning care or their recess time. Our amazing school librarian Brigitte and I have talked at length about ways to get the students to fall in love with reading and read good books with rich vocabulary. I am going to start taking lots of different books to the class to encourage the children to pick up during the quiet reading time. We are going to try our best to get them away from graphic novels and encourage wonderful chapter books instead. My original plan was going to involve collaboration from the administration but I have not approached anyone yet.
We started the year off with a bang as we set a goal for reading 5000 pages in September. Most children thought it was an unattainable goal at first but we broke it down to about 225 pages a student. Everyone agreed to do their part for the class community. The looks on my students’ faces when they realized they had surpassed their goal by 12,000 pages were priceless.
Our November goal was to read 20,000 pages and the students have read over 54,000 pages.
All of my students are trying their best to read each night and contribute to our reading goals. Some students are reading hundreds of pages and some are reading 15-30 pages. I am happy that they are all reading. I hope the two reading challenges will help all my students become avid readers this year.
I am also reading novels aloud to my classes and using richer vocabulary in class daily. I am hopeful that vocabularies will expand and students will be talking about all the different books they are reading. I will keep repeating The more you read the more you learn and hope for the best. I will keep up my high expectations for reading and hope my students strive to meet those high expectations.