The race is on !

You know the one; the one where the last few weeks seem to be an eternity and yet three weeks doesn't seem to be near enough time to get everything done. It seems like just yesterday when those little 6 year old, mostly non reading, scared, dependent students walked in our classroom. Now, the room is filled with BIG, independent, readers and writers. First grade is awesome, in that we get to witness such great transformations!

I have been doing DRA's this week and I just can't believe what great readers some of these kids are. It is fun to see them confidently take on these tests. When you administer a level 18, one of the first things the kids are asked to do is read the first three paragraphs and tell you what might happen next. I love to hear each and every one of them start his/her answer with "I predict that..." We have been practicing using exact language in our discussions (I infer, I wonder, I predict, etc...) It was fun to see them transfer this knowledge to the DRA.

I have tested 9 kids so far and they are all above grade level. YEAH! I will probably have a few more above and then a handful at grade level. Of course, I will also, most likely have 4 below grade level. I have really been thinking of these 4 lately. What could I have done differently? What do I need to change in my room to reach these kids? These 4 plus 2 more in my class have all received Reading Recovery this year. I think Reading Recovery is such a strong intervention for these kids, but yet 4 of them are still not "where they should be".

Then I begin to wonder: "where should they be?" Are they following the path at their own rate? The rate that is just right for them? Will they still make it to the finish line or will they always be behind? Will they begin to believe that this "reading race" isn't worth all the work? Will it be easier for them to drop out? What does "grade level" mean? Don't kids mature and grow at different rates? And yet I know that kids that are below "grade level" in third grade have a hard time being successful in school. Is that because they really can't make it to the finish line or because we have convinced them that if you can't be at the front of the race the race is not worth running?

I look at J and the things he is learning, how much he has grown, all of the hard work he has put into both Reading Recovery and Reading Workshop, and I wonder how I can label him "below grade level". This is a kid that always wants to talk to me about text. He is the kid that told me, "It's harder to read pages that you don't have much schema for", This is the kid that earnestly reads for 30 minutes at a time in two different blocks during our day and is almost always on task.

And again, I am back to the questions, "What can I do differently?", "What can I change in my room?", "What other resources are out there for kids like J?"

"Would J have had a better chance if he hadn't spent 1/4 of the year in a class of 28 students?" I fear that we will be in the same situation next year. Too large of classes and we will not have our paraprofessionals next year. That means there will be no one there to take that small group back and work on phonemic awareness, or letter sounds, or just give them one more set of ears to listen to them read.

Well, I vow to celebrate all the successes in my classroom, not just the ones that were made by kids "at or above grade level". I also vow to keep plugging away, just like J. I will be reflecting on what to change for next year, while mourning, just a little bit, the lost opportunity to bring all of my kids up to "grade level".