Lisa Roberts 9/25

Today I worked with many students trying to catch up the running records for reading fluency. I was working with the teacher's assistant who was making sure I did it correctly. I mentioned this in one of my classes but every time they miss a word, even one that is a name that could be pronounced a million different ways, I was told to count it as a mistake. The same reading passage was being used for all of the students and nearly all of them mispronounced the name every time they came to it. After the reading the students were not told how many words they got correct because the top readers were engaged in a competition to see who read faster, not more fluently, just faster. I was instructed not to take the time to tell students the correct pronunciation of the words they missed. This seemed so illogical to me that I pushed the issue and was told that if I wanted to tell them what they missed and how it should be read I could, but that in "real life" I would find that I didn't have time. It took less than 30 seconds per child to explain and have them reread the words correctly. I hope that when I am a teacher I am never so busy that I don't have an extra 30 seconds to teach a child how to fix a mistake that might avoid a future one. If you don't correct them they would continue to miss the same words indefinitely.