Article Reflections June 28th

The content of the three articles is similar in that each article discusses reading and literacy. Each article offers a great deal of information that is not only helpful to teachers and future teachers but it is also insightful to what schools are like and how they should be or ways in which we, as future teachers, can help to make it better. One of the ideas that I found most interesting from the reading was from Burton and Rog's article, Marching texts and readers: Leveling early reading materials for assessment and instruction.  Before reading this article, I wasn't t really sure how to determine what reading level a child should be on or how exactly to determine what reading level certain books should be labeled. This article as a whole gave much insight to the specific aspects that each level book should include along with what skills the students should have before moving up in reading level. The article, Looking inside classrooms: Reflecting on the "how as well as the "what" in effective reading instruction, was appealing because it talked about strategies that seemed to most effective ways to teach reading in various classrooms across every grade level. The authors talk about their findings in the classroom some of which include the observation of grouping practices, the teacher's style of interaction, the students' type of involvement, and the balance between word work and comprehension work. They then go into greater detail about the techniques and strategies that seemed to be the most effective in each grade level. This article seems like it would be helpful when deciding which types of techniques to use in a classroom depending on the grade level being taught. The last article by Allington, The school we have. The schools we need. is an in depth text on what our school used to be like, what they are like now, and what we should be striving to make them in the future. I agree with many of the concepts he addresses such as the idea that many people consider a lack experience as a lack of ability in children. This is frustrating to me because I have seen this done. Just because I child cannot read when they start kindergarten does not mean that they don't have the capacity to do so. They may come from a family that doesn't have books or has very few books; they just don't have experience with texts. There are several other concepts that Allington mentions throughout his article that I agree with. Each of these article provides a ton of information that will hopefully be helpful as a future teacher. 

Overall, the information provided in the texts was interesting and insightful. The authors not only give their views and opinions but they provide the research and evidence for their beliefs. In a way, I found it helpful that each author discussed how schools are or used to be along with their beliefs on how schools and classrooms should be. There are some aspects of each article that I agree with, however there are also some areas that I found puzzling and disagreed with. Whether I agree or disagree with what the authors opinions are, I still think that the articles provided a great deal of information that will be useful in my future classroom.