Reading Response Blog 8

The article by Fry (2002) was very informative about leveling and readability. I did not know very much about either one, yet this article has furthered my knowledge and has better prepared me for the teaching world. As a future elementary teacher, I see the strengths of both leveling and readability, yet I feel leveling is an important and powerful tool for a teacher. Even though it is not as objective, a student's education often has to be personally tailored by the teacher. This correlates with the importance of reading teachers (Lose, 2007). Teachers have qualifications that allow them to make judgement calls that are in the best interest of the student. This may mean modifying a students reading material. It is also helpful to have readability as a check reference and for students who may not need individualized lesson plans. Readability should be used more in the upper levels because most students have conquered the basics of reading and are around the same level. Elementary is a time of development where each child is reading at different levels and needs books that are developmentally appropriate. The teacher may be the only one who can make that judgement call.

http://www.standards-schmandards.com/exhibits/rix/index.php

This website calculates readability!

In your classroom, do you plan to rely on leveling, readability, or both as a guide to providing appropriate reading materials to your students?

Real-Life Reading Inquiry

Phonemes, “the smallest unit of speech sounds that makes a difference in communication”, are an important part of phonemic awareness (Yopp & Yopp, p. 2, 2000). Because my cousin is entering kindergarten, I decided to test his ability to hear phonemes.

The Yopp and Yopp  (2000) article, Supporting phonemic awareness development in the classroom, did a nice job of defining phonemic awareness as “the awareness that spoken language consists of a sequence of phonemes”. Both this article and the Clark (2004) article, What can I say article but "sound it out?" Coaching word recognition in beginning readers, discussed the importance of incorporating differentiated instruction when cuing the children in one's classroom. Having children learn though a combination on oral, auditory, reflective, or kinesthetic cues enhances their learning and provides an universally designed lesson where each child is given the best environment for them to learn. Both articles gave examples of how to further phonemic awareness through cuing and coaching. Ultimately, coaching is using cues to enhance a child's knowledge.

Having read these articles, I felt prepared to assess my cousin’s phonemic awareness. To begin, I asked him to say his name. He replied with “Steven”. I then went on to explain that is name was made up of 6 letters. This perplexed him because he has only recently learned his ABC’s and how to write his name. He sees the alphabet as one whole entity and his name as a whole separate entity. There appeared to be no relation between the two. I made manipulatives of letters and placed the “s” in front of him. He knew it was an “s”, but did not grasp it was a letter without the rest of the alphabet beside it. I then said “s” makes a “sssss” sound like in the word snake. I then placed a “t” beside the “s” and told him that an “s” and a “t” beside one another make the “st” sound like in the word star. This was highly confusing. Because of this, I altered my approach to just single letters by themselves. I used the handout from class “Beginning Blends and Digraphs” to guide my approach. I made my own cards with a letter, a picture that started with that letter, and the picture spelled out. I took the “s” and asked him what sound his name started with. He stated it started with the letter “s”. I told him he was right, but that the letter “s” made a sound, and I wanted to know what sound that was. He looked at me blankly. I started to say his name, but I dwelled on the “s” to emphasis its sound. This seemed to make sense. I again pointed to the “s” card and asked what sound does a “s” make? He said “ssss”. Yes! Now we were finally getting somewhere. We then tackled the “t”, so I felt it was time to review the “s” sound. He couldn’t remember. I told him the “s” makes the same sound as the beginning of his name, but he went right back to saying his name started with the letter “s”.  I reminded him that we were focusing on sounds not letters and then said his name again putting emphasis on the “s”. That helped him remember that “s” makes a “ssss” sound.

After only two letters, he was exhausted and so was I. I let his mother watch us while we learned the “t” so that she could see how to help him learn letter sounds. I also left her the manipulative cards I had created. With practice, Steven will learn that words are made up of individual sounds and that each sound corresponds to a letter or a set of letters. Knowing that he is capable of comprehending phonemes and seeing him exposed to phonemes and phonemic awareness was encouraging.

This is similar to what I did on each of his cards. I placed one letter and one picture so that he could say the word and hear the beginning phoneme.

Reading Response Blog 7

I read the article by Blachowitz & Fisher andthe article by Lane & Allen. Both articles highlighted the importance of vocabulary in regards to reading and functioning in society. They also both discussed the difference in vocabulary exposure and retention according to socioeconomic status (SES). Children from higher SES tend to be exposed to more vocabulary on a daily bases than do children from lower SES. I found this disheartening, yet the readings went on to say that if a teacher incorporates effective vocabulary instruction in the classroom, this gap can be eliminated so that all children in the class have the same vocabulary exposure and knowledge.

 Blachowitz & Fisher (2004) discussed a teaching method for vocabulary called STAR: select, teach, activate, revisit. Lane & Allen (2010) really focused on the "select" stage of STAR. They said that vocabulary is broken into tiers and that the most useful vocabulary to teach are words that children will encounter in everyday life. Blachowitz & Fisher did a great job of explaining how to teach, activate, and revisit words. Teaching a word could consist of letting children hypothesize about the meaning, use context clues to discover meaning, or using a dictionary. Activating would include a writing assignment or some form of assignment where the children must use the words appropriately. The revisiting stage allows the students to once more reinforce the meaning of words in their memory. By encouraging them to use all the vocabulary words in a summary, it allows the children to express their knowledge and apply personal meaning to the word as well.

Another great way to teach vocabulary is to encourage children to use dictionaries. I saw this firsthand in a second grade classroom. One student did not know the meaning of a word, so several classmates offered to help him discover the meaning of a word. Instead of going to the teacher, the students went straight for the dictionaries. One child got the dictionary and opened to the word in question. The other three classmates circled around to read the definition and then discussed what they thought the word meant.

How might you teach vocabulary in your classroom?

 

Put vocabulary words on the wall and allow children to use a dictionary or personal experience to attach synonyms to the vocabulary words. This will expand your classrooms vocabulary!

Reading Response Blog 6

I read the articles by Gill and Gregory and Cahill. I thought these were interesting articles to read in one sitting. The Gill article inspired me as to the passion of young children. They love asking questions, using their hands to demonstrate meaning, and writing their ideas on a big paper. The Gill article described the prereading, during reading, and post reading. I thought it was extremely helpful in explaining the importance of each stage, and then providing examples of activities to complete in each stage. I was really impressed with the idea of using the prereading stage to activate prior knowledge. Activating prior knowledge is key to comprehension. The Gregory and Cahill article called the linking of prior knowledge to new knowledge the "Velcro Theory". This provided a great visual for me of literally attaching new and old knowledge.

What kind of activities would you use in your classroom to activate prior knowledge?

Fill bags with random items, have the students use them to come up with a story. How fun and using lots of imagination

Readers Theater

Readers Theater is a performance of a literary work by an individual or group, wherein the text is read expressively, but not fully staged and acted out.

Note:This practice allows teachers to assign reading parts based on level of fluency. 

Examples of a readers theater can be found by clicking here, http://www.teachingheart.net/readerstheater.htm.

A lesson plan that is pre-planned can be found by clicking here, http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/readers-theatre-172.html?tab=1#tabs

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Step 1: Introduce or review the nature, purpose, and procedures for reader’s theater with the class. Step 2: Assign students to individual parts by having them volunteer or audition. Parts can be assigned by students within groups and can rotate from one performance to another.	Have students practice their parts on their own, in their group, under your guidance, and at home.	Have students practice their parts on their own, in their group, under your guidance, and at home.	Have students practice their parts on their own, in their group, under your guidance, and at home.	Invite students to perform their scripts for an audience, usually their classmates, but others can be invited as well; schoolmates, parents, and the principal. Try to make the performance a special event. Many teachers turn Friday afternoons into a “classroom readers theater festival” at which many repertory groups perform their scripts.

Reading Response Blog 5

The article by Rasinski about creating fluent readers correlated with an experience I had in class. When I was reading the article in class, I read 150 words a minute. Does this make me a fluent reader? According to many educators, yes, I would be classified as a fluent reader. Does it matter that I comprehended minimal amounts of the article but read it quickly? 

According to the article by Rasinski and Deeney, a fluent reader needs to not only be able to process the text, but they must also comprehend it. With today’s emphasis for fast readers, it is important for future educators to know what qualifies as a true fluent reader. It takes time for a student to develop the skills necessary to decode text, read smoothly, process it with minimal effort, have the endurance to continue reading, and use correct expression.

It is also important for us to know how to create an environment conducive for testing reading fluency. In class last Thursday, we timed a partner in reading and were told to mark whenever they made a mistake. This is putting unneeded pressure on the student.  As a college student, I experienced so much pressure that I did not comprehend the text and only aimed at reading accurately and quickly. If that is how it affected me, I can only imagine how it would affect a young reader. We want to test a child’s reading fluency in a manner that does not add undue stress.

What would you do to ensure your students are getting tested for reading fluency in an environment that does not apply too much stress?

Reading Response Blog 4

I felt highly encouraged about teaching while reading both of these articles. Both articles explained the importance of reading words, early phonics teaching, and the ability to summarize. I was reading about the importance of children being exposed to words in books. The article said that children learn the meanings of words and expand their vocabulary through interaction with books because books have to be purposeful with their word choice. They cannot rely on facial expressions to help children grasp a meaning of a word so they use context clues to help them expand and understand vocabulary.

I was very impressed with the ten word activity. Children display difficulty when they must summarize, yet this activity forced them to pick out only ten of the most meaningful words to summarize the entire article. Then to further the activity, they said to encourage children to use the word in sentences, think of synonyms, and to think of different forms of the same word. I thought this would be extremely helpful in providing developmentally appropriate material. Children who are still struggling with writing, could be placed in the group that just thinks of synonyms whereas better writers could be placed in the sentence writing group. This activity reminded me of something Monica had said in class. She said that often her students had trouble with summaries so she would have them describe the article with one word and then elaborate on why they decided on it. This activity would be perfect for helping to develop vocabulary and summarization skills.

To help reinforce new vocabulary words, a teacher can put letter stickers on blocks and encourage the children to connect new words. This teaches them to spell the word, provides a visual, and allows them to manipulate the materials to create new words and expand vocabulary.

What other activities could teachers use to reinforce new vocabulary words and deepen understanding?

Reading Response Blog 3

The Yopp and Yopp article did a nice job of defining phonemic awareness. Both this article and the article written by Clark discussed the importance of incorporating differentiated instruction when cuing the children in one's classroom. Having children learn though a combination on oral, auditory, reflective, or kinesthetic cues enhances their learning and provides an universally designed lesson where each child is given the best environment for them to learn. Both articles gave examples of how to further phonemic awareness through cuing and coaching. Ultimately, coaching is using cues to enhance a child's knowledge. One example would be encouraging the children to clap while saying a word to hear the different units of sound. Another example would be to cover part of a word so that children are not overwhelmed by a large word. I really enjoyed reading the saying "take a running start." This was referring to children sounding out a word and then saying all of the letters out loud quickly so they could hear the word.

 

Have colored pieces of paper on the floor in your classroom and have children jump from one color to the next every time they hear a new sound (phoneme) in a word. For example, if the children are given the word mint, they would jump four times...one for each sound they hear /m/i/n/t/.

Reading Response Blog 2

I found the Bell and Jarvis (2002) article to be highly enlightening. Instilling confidence into children is vital to their success as learners. We may have varied definitions of reading and writing, but children can read and write in their own way. They can read the bag that says "McDonald's", and they can write in scribbles, pictures, strings of letters, or even actual words. 

I was personally a reluctant reader. I could not read when I was in kindergarten, and my teacher did nothing to instill confidence in me. Yes, I could read a McDonald's bag or a Pizza Hut box, but she never opened my eyes to the fact that seeing symbols and connecting with meaning was reading. If I had been given the confidence of knowing that I was already a reader, I would have been eager to attempt reading, and I would have known that my teacher already saw me as a reader. This is what I want for my students. I want them to feel confident so that we can grow as readers and writers throughout the school year.

The IRA/NAEYC joint position statement (1998) was eagerly as enlightening as the Bell and Jarvis article. As a teacher, it is always helpful to know the appropriate developmental checkpoints for children in your class. By using this article, I will be able to provide a lesson that is adapted for each child's developmental needs. 

Facebook door- have a laminated strip for every child and they get time to update status about something they learned, liked or happened during school that day!

Reading Response Blog 1

The readings for this week were enlightening and engaging for me as a future educator. By reading the plethora of uses of reading and writing in one family, it helped me see the endless ways of incorporating reading and writing into my cross-curricular classroom approach. The main idea that grabbed my attention were the six T's of time, text, teaching, talk, task, and testing. It was helpful to see how "effective teachers" used the six T's in their classroom. They had children engaging in writing for most of the day, used writing as a cross-curricular tool and as a way to prepare children for testing rather than preparing them the formal way, and graded on improvement rather than achievement. By grading each child according to their improvement, we are tailoring our teaching to the needs of each specific child and are encouraging the best work our children have to offer.

Discussion Questions:

1. How would you incorporate the six T's into your classroom?

2. What would you add in addition to the six T's to make you a more effective teacher?