My favorite article was the one by Gay Su Pinnell:  "Every Child is a Reader: What One Teacher can Do."  There are so many things that resonated with me in this article, and I honestly want to strive to become a teacher like Carol.
I love that she focuses her efforts on learning from the children and using their cues to differentiate her instruction to meet the needs of the class.  Additionally, Carol believes that comprehension involves all operations of the brain, and that reading is both a cognitive and emotional experience.  This concept seems so obvious, but I think so many educators forget the emotional aspects to reading and comprehension.  Students' interest in what they're reading plays a major role in their interest and comprehension.  Carol  understands and advocates these concepts, and realizes that results will be different for every student.
Carol's thoughts on diversified learning are closely aligned with my views on the same topic.  I absolutely love the fact that she offers all of her students multiple means of information delivery and assessment.  A couple sentences I thought were particularly important are as follows: She makes texts available in audio recordings so that students can think, talk, and write about them. She finds extra time to read aloud to students, helps them discuss texts, and provides brief minilessons for the whole class and small groups."
I strongly believe that many accommodations made available to students with special needs would be tremendously beneficial to general education students as well.  Students all have unique learning needs, regardless of intelligence level and many times, and many different forms of instruction and assessment should be made available to students, as to fit their learning needs.  Some of these modes of instruction are not viewed as traditional, but in my opinion, Carol's methods of teaching should be incorporated as standard within the educational community.  I definitely aspire to teach like Carol, especially because I am  in the field of Special Education.
One random quote from the article I wanted to include: “High-stakes testing can push teachers to deliver improved results, but it does not necessarily cause them to produce better learning.”  For some reason, I just really like it.
Any other thoughts on Carol's way of teaching?  Does anyone see any disadvantages to her methods?

Real Life Inquiry

For my real life inquiry, I chose to observe my youngest son Alec.  As I watched him, I was very aware that for me, I really was observing "real life" as it pertains to me and Alec.  For starters, I want to make sure everyone knows I am officially giving consent to have my son's name and information used in this post.  I now want to share a few pieces of background information about Alec.

Alec is 4 years (+3 months) old, and he is definitely of above average intelligence compared to children his age.  He is very verbal and can carry on fairly in depth conversations.  He also has the ability to reason exceptionally well, which takes me by surprise sometimes.  Because of the strengths Alec possesses, it comes as no surprise that he definitely falls into the category of an early emergent reader.

I observed Alec as he participated in two separate, yet small, activities that demonstrated his skill level as an early emergent reader.  In his room, we have a bookshelf full of books, ranging from board books to early chapter books (he has a 7 year old brother).  One afternoon last week, he sat down by the bookshelf to look at the books, and I asked him if he wanted to read a book to me.  He always gets excited when he gets to act like an older child, so he happily obliged.  He pick one of our favorite books, "The Berenstain Bears: Go to the Doctor."  I probably read this book to Alec and his brother at least once a week, so Alec knows the book very well.

Before even opening the book, Alec did what I always do and read the title of the book out loud.  He has obviously memorized the title.  As he went from page to page, he "reads" the story based on what the pictures show on a particular page.  He uses his knowledge of the book, along with context clues from the pictures, to tell me the story as closely as possible to the way I read it to him.  He didn't get the sentences exactly right, but he obviously pays attention when I read the book because he correctly "read" each page and didn't mix up any information.  In some instances, he was actually able to repeat a whole sentence when that sentence was one of the main points of the story.  These instances occurred mostly in the section of the book where sister bear had to get a shot, and I assume this part of the book stood out to him more than other parts, which led to his memory being more advanced for the content on those pages.  For those of you that remember the video Monica showed in class of her nephew reading, Alec is almost at the same level, but not quite.  Alec definitely "reads" with enthusiasm, but he also spends a lot of time sitting and studying various pages.  Overall, Alec seems to be on the verge of moving to the next level of his journey to reading.

I also had to briefly add another interesting activity I shared with Alec.  In class, we talked about the stages children go though when learning to write words, and Alec was definitely showing off his skills as a beginning writer as well.  I compared his writing to the samples given in class, and I was having a hard time deciding in which category he fit, but I think he might be between flexibility and recurring.  What stage of writing do you think fits Alec's?  Suggestions appreciated.  Thanks!