"No, I don't use the reading strategies like predictions. I just think about what might happen next."

I interviewed one of my focal students, Juan. He is a bit of an enigma as a student. He's actually a very fluent reader, and from what I can tell is on grade level. He is reading at a fountas and Pinnell level X, and he seems to understand what he reads.  He has a very hard time producing much during class. His last school considered retaining him for 5th grade, but in the end sent him on.  He really likes to read and in his intvw said his challenge with reading is that he can, "get carried away". He said he won't hear someone calling him, etc.  His strengths in reading he said was, "being a fast reader".  This does seem to be a common thing with kids. They equate fast with good and slow with bad, when we in the real world know that speed has little relationship to strong reading, and is often the other way around.  He spoke very little about getting good pictures in his mind, knowing when understands something. In fact, what he said was sometimes he's thinking while he reads and sometimes his mind is just blank.  I found that fascinating. So I said, what types of things do you think about when you read? Do you use the reading strategies like connections or questions. He said no. So I said, well, what do you think about? He said, like what might happen next. So this is amazing. He's predicting, but doesn't know it's called that? Or, he can't tell when he's doing it?

The other thing I realized when I did the reading packet with him, was that I was supplying a lot of the info, because I was assuming he didn't understand.  So when he drew pictures, he drew exactly what I drew.


So, this leads me to think:

• I need more information about what students think they're doing while they're reading and then what they're actually doing.
• I need to make sure that I allow students to fully show their thinking, in that interview, I was quick to do too much for him
• 
  

I looked at another piece of data today, an exit ticket from our group text, bone from a dry sea.  I had them write a summary of what happened and give the reason why the author included that thing.  The interesting part is that its easy to tell who isn't getting the main idea because they'll write down things that aren't the important part of the text and also don't have reasons for why the author wrote that.  I wonder what would help them to understand more?There's a lot of hard words and they're not necessarily able to parse it all out. I now have them in groups, but I don't think I've done enough direct teaching of how to have a conversation. Maybe the next step is watching some videos of book clubs talking about their thinking. I 'd certainly like to have the next book, Seedfolks