TAI - Understanding why children don't want to take risks

READING AND RISK TAKING:THE TEACHER'S ROLE by Arleen Michael

I read this article by Arleen Michael about her research about reading and risk taking and what the teachers role is. She is from the DEPARTMENT OF SPECIAL EDUCATION at the University of Nebraska in Omaha.

She highlighter that "Most likely, repeated confrontations with expectations related to the reading task have met with- failure. Parents, teachers and peers value reading, and people who read well are valued in the classroom. The child's self message may reflect the certainty that there is something wrong that causes failure at this very important task. The response is to avoid the situation which causes the exposure of this inadequacy, and the child says he/she does not want to learn to read."

I have often heard the following in my class: "this is dumb," or ''I'm not going to do this stuff." As well as children leaving the classroom in order to avoid reading.

This confirms my thoughts that reading puts my group of children with learning needs in an uncomfortable spot and possible creating anxiety. I suppose I can even describe it as the fight or flight response to fear.

Marleen summarised the characteristics of structure, the Hierarchy of Risk Taking and the Design Considerations.

What stood out for me was that the recipe to helping this group of children is to start with activities that proves to be of NO RISK to the children. The teacher takes all the responsibility for success in the reading lesson.
* Beginning with tasks that don't look like reading (the same as in reading recovery's roaming around the known) e.g. games, conversations, exploratory walks, etc.
* Create situations where the child is "caught" reading (recognising signs, labels, etc.) and demonstrating surprise and pleasure that the child can "read"
* Reading to, the child
* Rewarding the child for engaging in the activity
* Planning the activity in such a manner that the child's responses are acceptable
* Teacher taking responsibility for all materials

After this risk can gradually be introduced.

"For those children who can tolerate little or no risking, the teacher takes the major responsibility for the success of the sessions and little or no attention is given to correctness or quality of response. At this level, an individual session with the child is probably necessary. "

So what? 
I am going to focus on my lowest group with learning needs. Start with activities where there is no risk. In order to do this, I thought I would use one of Jill Eggleton's ideas from Lightening the literacy fire. I want to start my reading sessions with a shared reading activity where the children share some news. I choose one child's news (using ice-cream sticks with names on) and write about three sentences of their news. The child's whose news I used, can draw the picture. We do this every day, and re-read the previous day's news.

I am hoping to use this no risk activity to get them to start to like reading, and instil in them a feeling of achievement without putting them on the spot.

Arleen Michael and Mary Clay suggests that I should work with each child individually (reading recovery style) in order to start the process from no risk to gradually increasing the risk. But what do I do if the children leave the class and refuse to come back? How can I strengthen our relationship and encourage them to stay in class in order to participate? What games can I introduce that will engage them and create opportunities to read, without them knowing it? How will I cater for this group and still teach my other groups?

Teaching as Inquiry

My Hunch: 

Most of my students are now ready to learn. 

I base my hunch on the following:
It has taken my class a while to settle in and get use to two teachers and room 1 routines.  What I have noticed, is that many of my children are scared of failure, and therefore prefer not to try activities or have huge behaviour reactions the moment they feel forced to do something that they feel is too hard. Some of them, hover at the outskirts of the class, not participating, until they have gained the courage to try things out. Or even worse, they disappear from the class. Some of them don't return for the rest of the day. My thoughts are that this is learned behaviour out of fear of failure. So how do I eliminate this fear?  How can I accelerate this specific group of children with learning needs? How do I get them to take risks?

My inquiry is: How can I cater for these pre-literate academic group while accelerating their learning. 

Where to start: 
* Lightning the Literacy Fire by Jill Eggleton
* Literacy Lessons for individuals by Mary Clay
* Effective Literacy Practice
* Helping children take good risks by Nancy Eppler-Wolff and Susan Davis, clinical psychologists
* READING AND RISK TAKING:THE TEACHER'S ROLE by Arleen Michael