I was not shocked to find that a large proportion of eighth grade students could not read on grade level from the video. After teaching ninth grade last year, I noticed that assignments with extensive reading often did not get completed by a good portion of the class. This is simply because the students had not been taught how to read properly with a phonics approach. Many different methods have been used in the past to teach reading such as sight words or whole word approaches, but only the phonics method activates the proper parts of the brain needed to become a strong reader. In my future classrooms I will add a mini-phonics lesson to my lessons for the day as a reading warm-up. For most subjects in the secondary classroom, a student is expected to be able to acquire knowledge from reading and if a student is not a strong reader then they cannot do this. This can lead to frustration, distracting behavior, attention difficulties, and oppositional behaviors. By incorporating these lessons into my day I hope to alleviate these behaviors and build more confident readers who can succeed in academics and professional life.
