Tasks Week #5

Reading Rockets website:

http://www.readingrockets.org/shows/launching/readingrocks

Reading Rocks! An empowering, upbeat, and totally hip show for kids ages 7-12

This video entitled “Reading Rocks!” was developed by the Reading Rockets Website designed to help struggling readers ages 7-12.  No more should students have feelings of frustration that causes them to give up.  The videos help the struggling reader to move beyond their negative feelings that were developed from being teased or being misunderstood by teachers. Students should not tease each other and teachers should think twice about their students who may care, and may just need another way to accomplish their task.

This video introduces you to five struggling readers.  The first is about how struggling readers create a real movie of a classroom scene involving them, other classroom students and a teacher that created a negative learning environment.  This allowed the struggling student to have a visual and understand why they had negative feelings on reading and how the problem can be resolved.  The student needs to be focused on their reading, not on the students who tease them or the fear from a teacher’s punishment due to a misunderstanding. 

In this lesson, the use art and music to help the reading and spelling of a dyslexic student.  The student was encouraged to make connections with his abilities and use them to help his trouble areas.  He was inspired to create a Harry Potter game, then wrote a book about it, letting other students know that he went from a non reader to an author.

The third struggling reader is an English as a second language student.  She felt left out, because she could not pronounce some words.  This caused her to turn away from her reading leading to a negative impact on her academic achievement.  Her story is that she did not give up, even though she had feelings to quit.  She now speaks and reads two languages, English and Spanish,  because of her extra work in school and at home.

The fourth lesson was about realizing that we are all different, and we are all important.  There is no problem to big to stand in the way of learning to read.  Improvement by using ones strengths is something to make you proud.  Everyone has different talents and need to learn in a different ways.

The last lesson was about a struggling reader who benefited from partner reading which helped all students as they teach and learn from each other.  Reading was confusing to this student because he got stuck on words he did not know.  The partner would help out and encourage him to try harder.  It was not about being the best reader, but a reader who improves at their own level.

Questions to think about:

How can reading rockets help struggling readers?

How would you introduce this video and encourage students to watch?

How can reading rockets help elementary teachers?

How can reading rockets help family involvement in their child’s academic achievement?