We are still very much in the training process. It's supposed to take around 3 weeks to train; however, we are going on the sixth week of school, and we still have quite a ways to go. According to my MT, once the students are trained, the program yields great results. However, the training process is rough. From what I have witnessed, I find the program to be incredibly tedious, and the students do not seem to taking it too seriously. I feel a bit ridiculous reading the script to them everyday.
So, my question is, for those of you that also do PALS, what are your opinions on it? What are the results? For those of you that do not use PALS, how do you feel about a scripted curriculum? How do you feel about the idea that students are being trained in a rigorous manner? How do you feel about the idea of reading being a collaborative effort?
We have discussed PALS many many times, and therefore you already know a lot about what I think of the program. I think that down on paper, PALS sounds like a great program. I do agree that it is important to train students to be coaches and help each other out. I like this part of the program very well. I also like reading as a collaborative effort. Everyone needs help sometimes, and therefore I think that a student reading in pairs gives them a lot of support and helps them to become better readers. That being said, I think that the training part of the program is miserable. I agree with you that it is extremely tedious and you can tell right away that the students dislike doing it. It is hard to act enthusiastic about the program when the students know that their other teacher (my MT) doesn’t like the program, and that they dislike it greatly as well. These negative attitudes towards the program, and the scripted and tedious training, make it so that the coaching aspect of the program isn’t as effective. When students do not want to do PALS, it is hard to get them really involved in helping each other and learning from the experience. It seems that their main concern is how many points they receive rather than the amount of correct sentences they are able to read and the meaning they gained from the text. This is why I was surprised to hear how much good results came from the program, but I have also only seen the training aspect of it so far.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, this shows that I have a love/hate relationship with the program. I do think that reading collaboratively is a great idea and I like the coaching aspect of the program. I also think that students would need training to do this, as well as how to apply comprehension strategies while reading with their partner. I do not like that everything is scripted and that there is no choice in the program. If PALS included more choice for the students and the teacher, and less tedious work, I think that it would be more likeable and effective with the students.