Moosestache

On March 10th, my cooperating teacher asked me to read with a girl and make sure it is a book that she has read before. My CT's goal for the girl is to build fluency. My CT's goal for me was to learn how to ask higher level questions that assess comprehension.

The girl read Moosestache by Margie Palatini. She seemed excited about the book which is at her independent reading level- a Fountas and Pinnell Guided Reading level L. After hearing the story, I think that the book was leveled incorrectly. The words in this book are very difficult. It uses difficult words like "soufflé," and "unwrapped." It is interesting to me because a week later I read the same book with a different child at the same independent level. They both thought it would be a funny book but they really struggled. The boy that read it stopped and said, "this book is too hard for me. My teacher would tell me to put it back and find another book to read for now." I think that since this book draws such great interest from the students, I should keep it in my notes as something to read aloud to students and have them work with it after I read it.

As I read Moosestache with the girl, I found it very difficult to think of higher level questions to ask her. I used "how do you think he is feeling? What in the book shows you how he is feeling?" That was the only question that I felt was any good. Most of my questions were low-level, in the-text-type questions which were direct recall. I did notice that even the explicit questions were difficult for her because she was so focused on decoding the words.