Assessment

For this week, I chose to read Lose's article: A child’s response to intervention requires a responsive teacher of reading.  This article stresses the importance of EIS (early intervening services) and RIT (Response to Intervention) to aid in the promotion of literacy in children who struggle with learning disabilities.  It provides many principles that support the RTI approach, and ways to provide intervention early.  For teachers, it is important for them to consider certain principles to ensure that struggling learners achieve success.  The following as especially important for the RTI approach:

• Children come "by different paths to outcomes" in literacy

• A child who has been provided with the intervention he or she needs will respond successfully, making progress daily and learning how to lift his or her own literacy performance with skilled support from a knowledgeable teacher

• To be successful, the most struggling child requires the most expert teacher

• Teacher expertise requires high-quality, sustained professional development

Overall, it is important to remember that emphasis should be placed on early literacy interventions to help the children who struggle with literacy learning.

• Why do you think it is important to focus on these principles to strengthen literacy in struggling readers?
• What other ways can teachers help students struggling with literacy?

Guided Reading

The article on Guided Reading I chose to read this week was "Guided Reading Procedure" by Anthony Manzo.  In essence, Guiding Reading is a method that allows the teacher to guide the student through text by using a series of activities.  In this article, Manzo discuesses various ways that the GRP (Guided Reading Procedure) is useful in the classroom.  The GRP is especially important because it "contributes to higher order comprehension skills and to goals of humanistic education" (287).  The GRP allows students to recall more information, especially through constant teacher-student interaction.  The article mentions that there are four subskills of the GRP: unaided recall, recognizing implicit questions, self-correction, and organization.  In my opinion, unaided recall is one of the most important skills need for overall reading comprehension.  Unaided recall is the ability to remember what you read without having questions to help you remember.  This shows that the has student comprehended what they read.  This article does a great job at detailing the GRP, and how to create a lesson by it.

• What do you think is the most important factor to Guided Reading?

• Do you think Guided Reading is a useful method to use in the classroom? Why or why not.

Real-life Reading Inquiry

This past week, I completed my Real-life Reading Inquiry.  For this assignment, I chose to observe a reading lesson with my younger brother, who is a 5th grade student.  The assignment he completed focused on fluency.  As we learned, fluency has many meanings, but most importantly it means being able to read quickly yet accurately while comprehending the text.  The activity chosen for him was a Webquest activity, which is a web-based activity in which the learner gathers most of their information from the web.  The particular Webquest he did was entitled "Fairy Tales and Tall Tales-Reading for Meaning and Fluency".  The format of Webquests includes a: introduction, task, process, evaluation, and conclusion.

Since this was a self-guided lesson, I limited the activity to an hour.  The task B (name has been changed) had to complete involved him first choosing a fairy tale.  A link on the "process" tab of the Webquest directed B to a list of Fairy Tales that he could chose from.  For this activity, he decided to chose the story of the "Three Little Pigs".  I instructed B to first listen to me as I read a paragraph, then he would read the next one.  Since B struggles reading aloud as an "expressive reader" I changed the format.  On the third paragraph, I read first, then I instructed him to repeat the paragraph as I did.  This reminded me of Chapter 4 of Classrooms that Work.  In this chapter, Cunningham states that "one of the major ways we become fluent readers is to read something over several times.  One way to do this is by practicing Echo Reading, which is what I demonstrated with B.  After I should him the proper way to read the text, he continued to read the story, but with more expression.  After B completed the story, he was instructed to complete a series of questions to check for comprehension.  To make sure B remembered the important parts of the story, he answered things like: "Who is the main character(s)?, Describe the setting, and What is the problem of the story?." In chapter 7 of Classrooms that Work, it mentions that a good way to check for comprehension is to ask questions throughout the lesson.  Asking questions helps the child remember important parts of the story.

To close the lesson, I told B to draw a picture of his favorite part of the story.  In his picture, he drew the three pigs in the brick house, with the wolf trying to blow the house down.  This seemed to be his favorite part of the lesson.  Overall, this was a very enjoyable assignment for both of us.  I was able to apply techniques from articles that I had previously read, and he was able to practice his fluency skills!

Vocabulary

For this week, I focused on the article Vocabulary Lessons (Blanchowitz & Fisher).  After reading about vocabulary, I started to realize how important it truly is.  Usually, people associate a strong vocabulary with being smart and educated.  Knowing this to be true, it is important to start early when building a child's vocabulary.  This article does a great job of giving suggestions for teachers to use to expand student's vocabularies and their overall reading comprehension.  The four methods listed in the article were: "Develop word awareness and love of words through word play", "Develop explicit, rich instruction to develop important vocabulary", "Build strategies for independence", and "Engage students actively with a wide range of books".  In class, we have already learned several ways to deploy these methods in the classroom.  The article mentioned that a great way to "Develop word awareness and love of words through word play" is to make a word wall.  Displaying and exposing students to a list of words that they encounter on a daily basis can help them better apply these words in real-life situations.  By reinforcing the learning of new words by winning points or a reward, this makes students motivated to learn new words

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The article also mentioned that a great way to "Engage students actively with a wide range of books" is through the use of book clubs and literature circles.  This reminded me of the literature circles we did in class, and the job of the "Word Finder".  By assigning this role to students, they are able to explore and find words that they may have not previously known, and adding them to their own vocabulary.

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• What fun ways could you teach vocabulary instruction in your future classroom?

• Do you think literature circles are useful in enhancing children's vocabulary? Why or why not.  Will you incorporate these into your future classroom?

Comprehension

For this week, I chose to focus on the readings from Gregory (Kindergartners can do it too!) and Pardo (What every teacher needs to know about comprehension).  After reading these articles, I began to realize how complicated the process of comprehension is.  Luckily, Gregory's article provides ways to help teach comprehension skills to young children and Pardo's article takes a closer look at comprehension to help teachers better understand it to be able to teach it.  Overall, both articles proved to be useful in providing methods of teaching reading comprehension.  The key is to understanding comprehension is looking at the various components of it, such as the reader, the text, and the teacher's role in teaching the text.  As seen in Gregory's article, in Mrs Hope classroom, we see a successful attempt of teaching reading comprehension to young readers.  By focusing on comprehension strategies like: schema (what we know), visualization, making connections, asking questions, and infer when interacting with texts, comprehension can be taught to young children, just like older children.


Here is an example of a reading comprehension activity that can be used in a classroom:

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• What interactive/fun ways do you think you can teach reading comprehension in your future classroom?

•  Pardo's article mentioned Book Clubs as a way to promote comprehension in the classroom.  Do you think this is a good method? What are some other activities you could use in your future classroom?

Fostering Fluency

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Cunningham defines fluency as "the ability to read most words in context quickly and accurately and with appropriate expression." (49).  When thinking about the definition of fluency, one can infer than it means reading words quickly, yet making sense of the words.  Fluency isn't necessarily dependent on the reading level of the reader, but more on the complexity of the text.  One of the important things to remember when teaching fluency, is to introduce the child to material that they are interested in.  Generally, most things we read are at a lower reading level and easy  for us to read.  By giving a child easy material that they like to read, ensures that they will by able to recognize most of the words, which in turn helps build fluency through comprehension.

According to the reading, "one of the major ways we become fluent readers is to read something over several times." (Cunningham 57).  Fun ways that can incorporate rereading text are:
1.Easy Reading
2. Echo Reading
3. Choral Reading



After reading Chapter 4, I realized that my teachers practiced many of these fluency activities with me.  One activity that stick out to me most is reading Dr. Seuss books using Echo Reading.  Each day for about 2 weeks, we would all read "Green Eggs and Ham" along with the teacher.  She would read the book first by herself, then we would all read the book a second time together.  I felt that this was a very fun way to read the book, yet I didn't realize that this activity was helping improve my fluency!

Here is an example of Echo reading:

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• Do you remember doing any fluency activities when you were in grade school? Which ones? Do you think you could incorporate these into your future classroom?

• What are some way you practice fluency? (Reading magazines, reading the same books with children, etc)

Making Words!

     This week's reading focused on the "Making Words" lesson. Before children begin to properly spell words correctly, they often invent their own way of spelling words.  This made me think of classrooms that I have observed in.  Last year, I was in a kindergarten classroom where the teacher always pushed for the correct spelling of words.  According to Clark's research in the article, children who invented their own spelling for words "were superior to the others on measures of word decoding...".  I was surprised by reading this at first, but when I thought about it, when children attempt to spell words, it shows that they have a clear understanding for recognizing what that word is, although they may lack the skills to spell it correctly.  Personally, I feel that invented spelling is a good way to encourage early readers/writers to express themselves.  The key is to use guided activities such as using Elkonin boxes with Reading Recovery.

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Making Words seems like a great activity to use in the classroom.  This activity can be used in a variety of way by incorporating many different spelling patterns.  It not only teaches the child how to recognize patterns, but strengthens the child's ability to spell words.  As the teacher guides the child through the lesson, they may be able to spell words correctly that they previously did not know how.  In the article, an example used was asking the child to spell the three letter word "pie".  Many of the students immendiately put "pi" but realized that there was a silent "e".  By telling the students that it was a three letter word, many were able to chose from the remaining letters, and put the "e" at the end.

In the video below, a teacher guides her classroom through a Making Words lesson

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• Do you feel that the Making Words lesson would be a good tool to use in your future classroom? Why or why not?

Teaching Phonics and Spelling Patterns

After reading this week's reading, I started to think about the activities listed, and how I could incorporate them into my future classrooms.  Cunningham and Allington lists a variety of reading activities that use what a student already knows and helps them learn ways to apply it to enhance their learning. The activity, "Guess the Covered Word" is a perfect example of teaching children word recognition.  It not only allows the child to think of words they already know, but also makes them think about how words make sense in a sentence.   By making this a guessing game, the child is learning important skills and having fun at the same time!  The activities listed in the readings are great resources, because they take into account the different learning levels of children and make it compatible for both struggling and advanced students.  We see this evident in Clark's article on coaching and how successful this can be for a variety of learners.

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• What other variations of "Guess the Covered Word" could you use? (Ex- different skill levels, sight words, etc)

• What activity do you feel provides the best practice of teaching phonics to children?

Week 4: Ways to teach reading skills

The three articles for this week list many strategies and methods used to prepare children for reading.  The article by the IRA and NAEYC emphasize that teaching children in a classroom, especially reading skills is a process.  Of these activities listed, it seems that reading aloud to children is the very important.  This is important because it exposes children to a variety of concepts, and allows the child to interpret the readings in a way that makes sense to them.   For kindergarteners, the major point is to expose a child to a variety of print, so that the child can develop concepts about them.  This only further strengthens their literacy skills.  When a child’s literacy skills improve, systematic code instruction along with meaningful connected reading further strengthens it.  Overall, the key is to continue to reintroduce concepts and words to a child, which enhances comprehension and fluency.  Reading is a process that starts from infancy, and continues through grade school.

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The "Letting Go of 'Letter of the Week" article emphasizes the results from using several different methods in a classroom.  By examining these educators literacy history, they were able to improve how they taught in the classroom.  I especially like how both Donna’s used real world examples to show their kindergarten classes that they already knew how to read, even if they thought they didn’t.  This method was constantly used in the classrooms, which helped children continue to compare these sounds to other words, which enhanced their reading and writing skills.  This article assesses that teaching many teaching strategies out of the “norm” are actually helpful in a classroom, especially if they are constantly reinforced.

The last article on phonemic awareness emphasizes how important this skill is when learning to read.  This involves the breakdown of words into smaller parts.  While teaching phonemic awareness, there are several things to keep in mind, such as keeping it playful and interactive, yet purposeful.  Overall, this article assesses the methodology of phonemic awareness and lists useful ways to teach this to children.

• Do you feel your literacy history will impact your future teaching style?

• What activities could you use in your classroom to show children that they can read, even if they cannot?

Building the Literacy Foundation

     This week's reading discusses the importance of teaching children the basics of reading.  Most of us have learned to read the same way: we all start by learning to talk, then we learn the alphabets, and from there we learn how to put words together.  All these concepts help build the foundation for children to strengthen their literacy.  The reading for this week contained many activities that can used to build children's literacy skills.  Of all the activities listed, I think modeling is one of the most important. Children often want to mimic what they see adults doing.  By modeling reading and writing skills, it will encourage children to want to do the same, which is a great idea to improve literacy.  I found it interesting that one of the suggestions included "accepting the writing they do".  This involves letting a child express themselves through writing, even if it's only scribbles.  I thought this was interesting because I have only observed teachers pushing for the "correct" form of writing;  Overall, there are many interactive ways to help teach a child literacy skills!

• What activities have you observed a teacher using to encourage literacy skills?

• What methods do you think you could use in your future classroom?

Here's a video of a child reading through using phonemic awareness

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Classrooms that WORK! Blog 1

        After doing the readings for the week in Chapter's 1-2 of Classrooms that work, I learned several useful methods that can make a successful classroom.  One of the most important aspects stressed in all the methods seemed to be the need for balance.  This balance involves not focusing on one component more than the next, rather incorporating many skills cohesively.  Throughout each of the methods, it seems that to have a strong classroom, children have to be actively engaged in both reading and writing.  The most important thing to expose the child to is a wide range of skills.  Modeling and demonstrating good literacy skills can be very beneficial in teaching in classrooms.  Of course, this makes sense when thinking back to how I learned in school.  Thinking back to learning the basics like the alphabets, my teacher constantly reinforced our learning by singing and reciting them with us, and using them daily. 

        
        Learning basic skills lead to improving children’s literacy skills.  Also incorporating various reading choices can increase a child’s reading skills.  The more a child reads the better they become at it.  Usually, books that children enjoy when they’re younger, they enjoy the same genre when they get older.  I know personally, when I was younger, I enjoyed reading adventure and fantasy fiction books, much like I do today.  Overall, the key is to expose a child to a variety of book choices to motivate them to read more!

What methods from the reading do you think you could use to motivate students to read more?