Deciduous, Deciduous, Deciduous

Last week I was teaching a guided reading lesson. I was doing some vocabulary building in a book about ecosystems. Usually Victor isn't in my room during guided reading, but he was on that day because of schedule changes. Because of that, he was included in my group.

As I was introducing the vocabulary words, the group was doing great. Then we came to the word deciduous. None of the kids knew how to say it. We broke the word apart and talked about what combinations we knew. We finally got it! Then Victor began chanting it, "Deciduous! Deciduous! Deciduous! Deciduous! Deciduous!" It was quite funny. He wouldn't stop chanting it. I asked him to stop many times before he actually did. In the mean time...

William began reading. He normally struggles with fluency even with more simple words/content. He came to a sentence that talked about a tree being deciduous. He didn't hesitate or stumble. I paused to congratulate him on how he read over the word without any struggle. He smiled and was proud of himself as well. I asked, "William, how did you know how to say that word without pausing to break it apart?" He replied, "Well, Victor said it enough times that I just remembered it."