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In summary, incorporating literacy into all aspects
of our students' education is very important,
and I think that through doing this,
we might discover that children actually enjoy reading books,
which is a wonderful thing to foster.
Students may then choose reading as a free-time activity.
They also... some other positive outcomes are
that they have an awareness that symbols represent meaning,
that they understand that stories come from print
and have an awareness of the structure of a story;
it has a beginning and a middle and an end.
Students may also learn to differentiate
between book language versus conversational language,
which, you know, we use so much when we communicate,
but then, when you read a book,
it's a much different type of language--
and learning that they can gain meaning from both of those.
It also helps develop vocabulary and book-handling skills,
as we've mentioned.
So there's many positive outcomes.
You also want to think about assessing
not only reading books,
but you want to assess what your students are learning.
So by using meaningful activities I think is...
is very important to assess what your students are learning
from their book-reading time.
I always think that finding ways
to increase students' independence,
whether it's using assitive technology
or just by the design of the activity,
are very important.
And you also want to think about your teaching time
versus your assessment time.
So there are times
where you may just want to sit and read a book,
and that's fine.
But then there are times where you might want to assess
what the student has learned or comprehended
during that reading time.
So you need to think about differentiating those two times
and not, you know, overlapping.
And then sometimes
you may want to just purposely change things and observe--
so inverting letters or inverting text or, you know,
moving pictures around or different things,
especially when you're making your own books,
and seeing, you know, what your students are comprehending.
It's a great way to, you know, assess their learning.
And finally, this is my favorite quote--
is "Every child is a potential reader."
I think we need to compare this to our original definition,
which looked at a student being... having the ability
to read or write.
And I think, if we look at our students
and all of the things we can do with them,
that really every child has the potential to read and write.