Podcast Response

Jared Weisberg
October 6th, 2014
Podcast Review

The Reading Recovery Podcast was extremely informative and taught me countless strategies to use in small groups.  In this podcast we have three key note speakers whose names were Pat Johnson, Diane DeFord, and Mary Cappellini.  Each of these speakers covered different aspects of literacy and informed us how to use these strategies in a small group setting.  It was very intriguing to observe what each speaker emphasized because I was noticing a lot was already discussed in our EDUC-BE 339 course and in the texts we have been reading.  As a result, it seemed to me that this podcast was almost review and a helpful reminder of the important literacy skills in small group work.

The podcast began with the first speaker whose name was Pat Johnson.  Pat was emphasizing the importance of teaching children how to read and what goes through the thought process of a reader.  The first thing she stated that really grabbed my attention was, 'teach the readers, not the book'.  This meant to me that we concentrate to much on selecting a book and not valuing what the readers would get out of the book.  It's vital that we take note of this strong message because we observe to often teachers teaching the book rather than the students.  To go along with, Pat stressed the importance of how students have a wide variety of strategies they could use with literacy.  However, they don't know they exist until we guide them to incorporate these strategies into their reading.  Strategies that consist of questioning, meaning, syntactic, and visual.  Lastly, Pat informed us that we need to give students enough practice time to actually allow them to improve.  This means encouraging re-readings, giving opportunities to talk, and assigning work that will keep them more than busy.  As one can see, it will take time to develop students but teachers need to be patient because the outcome is much greater.

The second speaker was Diane DeFord and she discussed four main points of instructional decisions.  Her first main point that I thought was the most important was knowing the strengths of your readers.  In other words, understanding your reader on a more personal note.  I feel as if this was the most important point Diane made because students want to read and write about topics that spark their personal interest.  Assigning them topics that don't spark their interest will result in poor work and not getting the best out of each and every student.  As a result, focus on what your students already know rather than what they don't know.  Lastly, the last main point Diane made that is vital for every reader to understand is that each story conveys a specific message.  Meaning, authors of texts purposely convey a message for the reader to better understand but want you to find the meaning by implementing a literacy strategy.

The third and final speaker of the podcast was Mary Cappellini who discussed her personal research with English Language Learners.  This means she was working with students whose first language was not English.  As a result, the teaching methods of working one on one with a student who is an ELL is very different than a student who is not.  She emphasized that ELL students should concentrate more on the visual aspect of literacy.  Meaning, use the pictures that are given to better help them understand the meaning of the text.  Lastly, she also stated that it's very vital we have inclusion of ELL in every classroom.  Despite difference they may hold, its important we don't segregate these students because people would be shocked how quicker they catch on to the native language when they're surrounded by individuals who are experts in it.

Overall, this podcast was more than informative and I'm thankful to get the advice from these terrific three speakers.  Thanks to Pat, Diane and Mary I now have a better understanding of how to incorporate reading activities into small group work.