Michael Carway

The Importance
of Reading and
Verbal
Communication
EDUC 360
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Abstract
This exploratory essay describes my journey observing at Tech International Charter School in

Riverdale, NY. Throughout the time I spent at the school, I worked with Mekhi, a 6 th grade

student, in math class to help build his academic and literacy skills. In order to do so, I created a

plan that illustrated good academic behavior and incorporated verbal description and objectives.

The research I did helped provide a foundation for my plan, which was very effective for a

student like Mekhi. Though I feel that my plan is very basic and certainly not the best, I assure

that it can be the little push a student needs to succeed.

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Middle school was by far the worst chapter of my life. The last thing I wanted to do every

morning was leave my comfortable home to go to school where teasing and jokes got the better

of me. It was a dark time in my eyes, but that does not mean it should stay that way forever. I

want my future students to enjoy coming to school every day and provide them with a safe and

friendly classroom that is welcoming to all types of students. The young teenage years are

perhaps the most stressful years for children since they are going through puberty, changing

both physically and mentally, and fear that their peers are judging them and their changing

bodies and personalities. I want to become a teacher to relieve as much anxiety and discomfort

from my future students as I possibly can. I want to give my students a shoulder to lean on in

times of need. I want to positively impact their lives, and I have a strong passion to do so in

middle school.
During this school semester, I have been observing and interacting with students in Mr.

Hernandezs 6th grade math class at Tech International Charter School in Riverdale, NY. Out of

the many students I worked with, Mekhi is the student that I feel I have left the biggest impact

on. When I first met Mekhi, he was a mediocre student. He did the minimal amount of

schoolwork he needed to do to slide by with average grades. Through the many sessions I have

had with him, I have recognized that Mekhi copies the answers to worksheet problems in class

from his friends instead of practicing and improving his computational skills on his own. He

tends to ignore directions that are given to solve different problems, which ultimately leads him

to copy the answers. However, I have recognized that he has much greater potential than that.

From the very short amount of time I have spent getting to know him, he is the type of student

that greatly underestimates himself.

After I did some research, I discovered that Mekhis behavior can change if he is given

clear objectives of what he is supposed to accomplish in math class. If he knows what skills he

needs to acquire in the duration of the school year, he may realize that copying his friends

answers will not help him in the long run. Other sources say that oral representation can also be
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affective, which also puts pressure on Mekhi to know the material and have the capability of

describing it with words.

Professors Strom and Strom (2007) list effective ways to prevent students from cheating

or copying answers from their peers. The first involves providing every assignment with a clear

explanation of what the students will get out of completing the task along with its evaluative

criteria on how they will be graded. When students are given objectives and grading rubrics,

they know exactly what is expected of them to accomplish in class and on their schoolwork. The

objectives and rubrics the teacher creates set apparent goals that he or she wants the students

to achieve. Without them, students have little direction of how they are supposed to solve the

problem or whether they are doing well or poorly academic wise.

The professors also stress the importance of relating the material to the students

everyday lives (Strom & Strom, 2007). If the curriculum is connected to something they are

familiar with, they will have a much easier time understanding it. For example, a word problem

that involves finding out which movie theater sells Kong: Skull Island cheaper tickets will catch

their attention since it is a PG-13 movie about the exploration of Kind Kongs island in the

Pacific. After they solve which movie theater is cheaper, the students can now apply it to real-life

the next time they want to see a movie and want to save money.
An additional key point the Stroms discuss is the use of oral critique and description.

When a student verbally describes their view of solving the problem, the teacher as well as

other students can clarify what he said wrong or if he was missing a step (Strom & Strom,

2007). Moreover, the student will not feel insecure or stupid because the criticism is constructive

and helpful.
These guidelines are important to follow for a student like Mekhi because they will help

prevent him from copying from his friends. When Mekhi properly reads the directions and the

grading rubric, he will understand what he needs to do to solve the problem at hand. And if the

problem is relatable to him or involves something he likes, he will be intrinsically motivated to

solve it.
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In another article, Professor Allington (1980) lists a few teaching strategies that can

improve students reading skills. Two of them include making students read independently and

silently or reading along as someone else reads aloud. If students read the prompts of the

questions independently, their reading comprehension skills will slowly build up to the point that

they will understand what they need to do to solve them and reach their solutions. Resulting

from that fact, they will also not have the urge to cheat off other students and may even

completely understand their task and not need any assistance at all from either their friends or

teacher. Otherwise, if a teacher reads the directions of the problems aloud, the students can

follow along as he reads. The teacher can also offer his own explanation of what the problem is

asking the students to do to the whole class after he reads the directions.
Another strategy involves the teacher and an individual student reading together

(Allington, 1977). The teacher should read the directions clearly and slow enough so that the

student can keep the pace while talking. This also helps develop the students reading skills

because his reading and speech is reinforced from the teacher talking, which will gradually

improve the students literacy skills.

Based on the research, I devised a plan to have Mekhi read the directions aloud for each

problem and properly read the grading rubric that Mr. Hernandez put on the back of every

worksheet. Although the research claims that it would be effective to read with him (Allington,

1977), I personally believed it was better to have him read the directions aloud by himself so he

is the one doing the work. He needed to realize that other people will not be holding his hand to

help him with something all the time. He needed to learn discipline, and I felt that if I read the

directions as well, he would have assumed that I would do the problem with him together, so I

decided to put a twist on the research for this unique situation. To incorporate the Stroms

strategies, I asked him to verbally describe how he was planning on solving the problem (Strom

& Strom, 2007). This way, I could verbally critique his plan, and either commend him if it would

work or reassure him towards a more appropriate way of solving it if needed. Furthermore,

having him look over the grading rubric provided on the back of each worksheet before we
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started working on the problems gave him a clear understanding of what Mr. Hernandez was

expecting of him to do.

Once we got through a few problems, I could easily tell that these strategies were

working. Reading each problem aloud helped Mekhi critically think about how to solve each

problem. Once he read the problem and gave me an explanation on how he would solve it, his

thought processes were mentally reinforced in his head. It really helped him think about the

problem instead of aimlessly copying the answers off his friends worksheets, and once he had

shown his work to solve the problem, he doublechecked that he fulfilled all the criteria on the

grading rubric as well.

Just after the first day of using these strategies, Mekhi was suddenly just as capable of

answering the questions as his friends. He finally started answering the questions correctly on

his own and finally began putting effort into his schoolwork. He even began to finish his work on

time. Previously, Mekhi had a tendency to procrastinate in class due to his lack of direction and

motivation to finish his work, which is on reason that led him to copy the answers from his

friends. Fortunately, these strategies have helped his math and literacy skills improve quite

significantly.
Although my strategies worked for Mekhi, I feel that they are very situational. First and

foremost, this approach would not work for special education or ELL students. Mekhi is in good

health, suffers from no disabilities, and is perfectly fluent in English, so my approach was very

basic. Reading directions aloud and properly reading a rubric are very easy tasks to do, but they

are effective strategies for students like him that need a little push in the right direction.
I also believe that Mekhi may return to his old habits of ignoring the directions and

cheating soon enough. I only worked with him a total of seven times in math class over the

duration of about two months. He has at least six other classes every day, and those seven

sessions I had with him at Tech International Charter School in Mr. Hernandezs class are just a

mere fraction of the total amount of time he has spent in the 6 th grade halls without having my

assistance. I do not even know if Mekhi ignored directions and cheated off his friends in his

other classes while I was observing at the school. Since I was only part of his 6 th grade journey
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for such a short amount of time, I feel that I did not have a lasting impact on him and his

academics. He may have gone back to his routine the day after my last day with him for all I

know. Nonetheless, if I had more time with him, I would continue using the same strategies I

used. I think I just needed more time with Mekhi to leave an impression on him that he has to

earn good grades himself; others cannot do it for him. How he does in math class and in life in

general is within his own pair of hands and no other. Many middle schoolers do not know that

and expect things to be given to them on a silver platter, so teaching them life lessons at an

early age can do wonders for their futures.

Though I have my doubts about whether Mekhi will continue using the new strategies I

introduced to him, I have learned one thing: any student can change. Mekhi transformed into a

completely different student from when I first met him to our seventh and last class together.

Going from one of the average at best students to one of the best in the class, Mekhi has shown

me that I have the power to steer any student into the right direction. With just a simple turn to

the left or right, students literacy and subject-based skills can improve tenfold. As an educator, it

is my job to steer their wheels down the path of success, and they will be forever thankful for it.
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Bibliography
Allington, R. (1977). If They Don't Read Much, How They Ever Gonna Get Good? Journal of
Reading, 21(1), 57-61. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40009862
Allington, R. (1980). Poor Readers Don't Get to Read Much in Reading Groups. Language
Arts, 57(8), 872-876. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41405048
Strom, P. S., & Strom, R. D. (2007). Cheating in middle school and high school. The
Educational Forum, 71(2), 104-116. Retrieved from

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