I've been thinking about reading instruction lately. Well I've been thinking about many things, and reading instruction is one of them, alas I digress. One of the ideas I have been thinking about is how to get kids to read to their peers using heterogeneous groups. We use fairly homogenous groupings now, and the students partner read to someone in the same group. This is helpful if the students follow along, giving the reader a bit of a safety net if they stumble.
Well one 3rd grade class in Michigan has their 3rd graders reading to pre-schoolers. How cool is that? The only downside is that it is an after-school club, but the upside is that 15 of 21 participated. Two things are missed in the article though. 1) I am not sure the principal is right when she states that child readers read better when they read aloud, and 2) this also provides literacy time to students who need experience with it prior to school. Kids need literacy experiences prior to school, and otherwise come in missing some of the prior literacy knowledge of their peers. This not only gives preschoolers role models, which the article points to, but it gets kids reading for purpose too!
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