Tuesday, March 9, 2010

those pesky decoding skills...

Today in one of my guided reading books I did a book introduction for a story where a family goes on a picnic and their dog chases a squirrel and gets lost (Pickles Gets Lost for those of you who may also follow the Pickles/Gaby/Rosie and Bella dog series).
For the first time all year one of my young readers seemed engaged and excited about the book. She began reading with expression and kept stopping to comment on the happenings of the story.
Wow, I couldn't help but think, she's really becoming quite a reader.

I was listening to another child in the group when I heard her gasp with horror. I looked up to see her staring at me, with hurt, accusing eyes.
"He died?" she sputtered. "Pickles... died?"

I immediately grabbed her book. I've read the book with many, many groups before and I knew for a fact that Pickles the dog did not die. He didn't. He just didn't. But this little ones eyes were so hurt and confused that who knew what was happening in her small copy. Maybe...

I scanned the page looking for the offensive line. Seeing nothing that indicated the dog passing away I asked her to read the page.
"Pickles" called Mom and Dad" she read, 'But Pickles died never come back"

Ah yes- and there is my teaching point- readers have to read through the word- and read the whole word- or they might change the meaning of the story.
The actual text read "But Pickles did not come back".

After a prompt to read the whole word she finished the book, and we immediately played games with our high frequency words to make sure we got the words did and not in our long term memory...

3 comments:

Blink said...

I think it's pretty cool she knows "i" can make two sounds and that "never" and "not" have meanings that are close. I would have loved to see the relief on her face after the second read.

Emily said...

We were reading aloud once. One little dude read, "Pip the Penguin pooped out of the water." I laughed so hard I snorted! It was...popped. It was funny because it could make sense in context.

Anonymous said...

I had a child reading a book to me once about various animals coming one by one into a little house. The child read the page, "The cow went in to the little house." Then her wit took over and she looked at me and said, "Moooooooooove over, Miss Z. The cows are coming in!" Aaaaahhh, Kindergarten! They say the cutest things! :)