Consider Your Students

Think about a child you know who had difficulty learning to read. Who comes to mind? What were some of this child’s experiences with learning to read? 

Use colored markers and a piece of paper to draw the child you’re thinking of. It doesn’t have to be a work of art to hand into a museum; the critical thing here is that you create an image of the student who will represent why you want to learn how to effectively help children improve their reading. 

Write about or describe to a partner an event you can recall that illustrates the difficulty this student had with learning to read. 

We will ask you to return to this student’s image throughout this course series and ask you to reflect on your teaching. Your study of this content and information will help you answer these questions:

• What do you understand more deeply now about this student?
• What would you do differently now to help this student be a more capable reader?