Bless, Address, and Press, Adeline's Entry #7

 Adeline wrote her Entry #7 about fluency. One thing she brought up in this post was that it is important to let students choose their own books that they are interested in. She pointed out that not only will it help with their reading stamina, but it will also keep them engaged more. This was a great point she made. I see this every day during my ELA block. When I give my students options or let them choose a book, they are more likely to participate and be engaged in the reading. In the past I have just randomly selected texts for the students and often times if they weren't interested, it would cause them to either shut down or have a behavior. I have learned more about them since the beginning of this school year and have adjusted my book selection choices in order to keep them engaged and mostly just hoping it will get them to want to come to my center and read with me. 

I also liked how she talked about how students often spend too much cognitive energy on decoding words and are unable to know the meaning of what they read. I see this a lot when students are given new texts about a topic they are unfamiliar with. I agree that background knowledge is important so that the students have an idea of what they are reading about. I see this when I have students reading a new level text for them at their frustrational level. Once they are done reading the text, they have trouble explaining the main idea and details that they read. I like how Adeline shared that she has struggled finding the meaning of what she read. Like Adeline, I have had a hard time comprehending some of the readings I have had to do for college classes. Sometimes I like to do a quick book walk with my students to give them an idea of what they might be reading about. We go through some of the pages, look at the pictures and have a quick conversation about what might be in the story. I find that this can help the students to understand the meaning.