Matching Text and Readers

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I chose to read the article by Rog and Burton about leveled readers. One of my favorite statements from the article was at the very beginning when it said "if students are to learn and apply reading strategies, they need texts that provide a balance between support and challenge." How true is this? As future teachers, we are constantly learning about all of these reading strategies we are supposed to teach our students to apply in class, but how will they even be effective if the text is far too difficult for them? Students should be reading 'just right texts' which are where the students can read 9/10 words. Difficulty of a book is determined by many factors and the article states, but some included are

• length of the book
• appearance and placement of print on the page
• degree of support offered by illustrations
• complexity of concepts and familiarity of subject matter
• degree of predictability of text
• proportion of unique or repeated words to familiar words

The authors describe the levels 1-10 they created. Level 1 starts with one-two words on a page with illustrations to accompany them. Level 10 have pages full of text, but the print is still considered enlarged. There are more sophisticated concepts included in the level 10 books. Levels 2-9 obviously go from easier to more difficult.

I don't have a very firm opinion on leveled readers. While I think they could be very effective in the classroom, I just don't like the idea that students could more easily know which level they are at. If there is a way I could easily distract from that, I would love them. What do yall think? Have you seen these to be effective, or not really?

Guided Reading

I read an article called Guided Reading in Inclusive Middle Years Classrooms. It was an interesting read and I have seen a lot of the things discussed actually successfully played out in a classroom. It first discussed how all children should learn together and be provided with instruction that accommodates different styles and rates of learning. The article then goes in to discuss how guided reading is not some distinct, explicit program; however, it is part of a literacy program that contains different balanced components in order to be successful. Typically, those balanced components are modeled reading, shared reading, guided reading, and independent reading. For effective guided reading strategies the article discusses teaching before, during, and after reading strategies. Before reading strategies activate prior knowledge, during creates connections to personal experiences, and after allows the students to question and analyze what they have just read. Guided reading is important because, well, reading is the most important thing we do. It isn't just for reading, but it is cross-curricular, so we are constantly reading at all ages in all subject areas. Guided reading also accommodates a range of readng levels. To help make guided reading successful in classrooms, persons responsible for teaching this should be identified, start and finish dates for the readings should also be identified, resources needed and data collection procedures should also be identified. The article identifies important features of guided reading: small group instruction, use of leveled readers, prompting, and independent activities. Small group instruction is what I think is most important because it allows the students to get the other students perspectives and it allows the teacher to get to know the students better. The teacher can see what level they are on, teach at that level, provide feedback to them, more individualized instruction, and sometimes even effective behavior management.

This article was pretty beneficial in explaining guided reading and how to successfully implement it in the classroom. Also, as mentioned above, it helps when I have actually seen much of this, especially leveled readers and small group readings implemented in the classroom. Have you seen any of this in place in a classroom? Some people disagree with leveled readers, do you have an opinion?

Vocabulary Connections.

I like that the Blanchowitz and Fisher article had a picture of a crossword puzzle at the top.

The article talked about developing word awareness and love of words through word play. To do this, it says you should use activities, materials, and resources that allows students to play with words using crossword activities and such.




Another activity that the article discusses is a word wall, which we are all familiar with since we have one in class. All of my classes at the intermediate school where I'm placed for my practicum have word walls. Not even for just reading, but every subject. I think thats awesome. They put all of their vocab words on the word wall and discuss the words over and over in different ways so that the students really know what these words mean and the students understand them. The article also discusses that when students think words are fun, they see them as objects they can use and examine. How true is that? I commented something about this on Holly's blog I believe. If a student sees a word that looks fun, no matter the definition, the child is going to think that word is cool. The definition will just stick because the student will like that word. Playing word games with students is crucial to building vocabulary! I'm all about games as you can figure out in my other blogs, but really, they're so effective. 

In Education 100 for my service learning project I created a game for my students. The game was kind of like bingo mixed with suffixes and root words. The kids learned to use the correct ending of words attached to root words and it was reinforced through playing a game, and they loved it! Games are powerful, as long as they are educational when played in the classroom. Do you agree or disagree? Will they be something you incorporate in your own classroom? Anyone had classes where they played games that were not educational in the classroom and just a waste of time? I have.

Real Life Reading Inquiry

For my read life reading inquiry activity I decided to interview a third grade teacher at Watauga Elementary School in Ridgetop, Tennessee. This teacher earned her bachelors of science in Education, certified k-8. She also has her Master's in Education and is a certified reading specialist. This is currently her 8th year of teaching. The county says that she is responsible for spending 90 minutes a day on reading. She spends a total of two hours. 45 minutes are spent just on reading and then she spends the rest implementing grammar and writing in with reading. Reading is also implemented in vocabulary and science. A piece of advice from her was that you've got to be in the marketing and entertainment business. She said if you are enthusiastic and excited about what you are teaching, your students will be that much more excited, you've got to sell it! She said that she uses different books and activities that she knows interest her students so they do enjoy reading in her class. They just finished reading a Magic Treehouse book called Emperor Penguins. The student's got to research the penguins and do activities involving penguins while reading about them. 

The teacher also had a word wall. The word "CAFE" was in big letters on the wall. C stands for comprehension, A for awareness, F for fluency, E for expanding vocabulary. This allows the students to be aware of what they need to work on when reading. Some days the students get to read to a partner, some days they read with the teacher,  etc. She says the best way to become a reader is to give the students opportunities to read." How true! She also said she likes AR because it gets kids into books. However, she did stress the importance of making sure that it is an appropriate reading level for the student. She has her students set goals and if the goals are met by the end of the year the students get a field trip to Incredible Daves, what an incentive. I found it interesting to see that she does book clubs in her class since we do book clubs in our class. She provides several options to let the students pick from. She stressed how important it was to teach with intention and read with meaning. When asked about level readers, she said her class rarely uses level readers because there is better quality in real books that students will be interested in. Authentic books are the way to go.

I found this interview beneficial because it took so many things that we learn about in class and put them into real life use. 

You can't see someones thinking...

understandmore.com

I really liked the article about Comprehension. It is so important to make sure that students comprehend what they are reading or it is pointless for them to even read it. Something that allows students to better comprehend something is a student’s background knowledge on the topic. When prior knowledge is being activated then connections are being made and students better understand the material.

A good way to activate prior knowledge is doing like what was talked about in the article, a KWL chart. This allows the students to think about what they already know for sure, what they think they already know, what they want to know, and what they learned once the lesson has been taught. I really like KWL charts. I actually gave one to my class a few weeks ago when teaching a lesson on Prohibition. It kind of stressed the students out at first, but once they realized they did already know a little bit of background knowledge they were much more comfortable with it.

Have you ever had experience with giving students a KWL chart? If so, how did they feel about it?

What are other ways that you have activated prior knowledge?

Not fast, but fluent.

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Rasinski says there are three dimensions in reading fluency that lead to comprehending:

1) accuracy in word decoding where readers have to be able to sound out words

2) automatic processing as little mental effort as possible while reading so they can make meaning of the words

3) prosodic reading where they are understanding the grammar basically. Rasinski says that if they are not reading the text appropriately, such as pausing at commas, reading monotoned, ignoring punctuation, etc, then they are most likely not comprehending the text. 

He also talked about a rubric for rating reading fluency that looks at expression and volume, phrasing, smoothness, and pace. I think this is a great tool because it helps teachers know what they need to look at rather than just trying to hurry a student up. I agree that some teachers just hurry some students up and work on fast rather than fluent. I sometimes even catch myself now reading fast and getting ahead of myself and having to go back to look at what I actually read and then I have to understand it. Why not just slow down and get it right the first time? Do you ever catch yourself doing the same thing, too?

I like the ideas of pairing the students up, either homogenously or heterogenously, and letting them read to each other. Then they are only reading with one person instead of a whole class so they don't have to feel embarrassed if they don't think they are good at it. I also like the theatrical ideas. This seems fun! I think kids could really enjoy that and it would be really beneficial for prosodic reading. What were your favorite ideas to help fluency in reading?

“The fluent reader sounds good, is easy to listen to, and reads with enough expression to help the listener understand and enjoy the material.” -Charles Clark

Spel it Rite

personal.georgiasouthern.edu

When our spelling is perfect, it's invisible. 

But when it's flawed, it prompts strong negative associations.
-Marilyn vos Savant 

This article discusses the strong connection between spelling and ability to identify words in reading. Students engaging in invented spelling during writing helps them become better at decoding in reading. Children's invented spelling can potentially help a teacher understand what the students know and do not know and how the students are understanding (or not) the phonetic structure of words. At risk students could lack phonemic awareness so invented spelling would in no way be beneficial for these students. The beginning making words lesson seems like a beneficial activity to be included in the classroom. The students are given one vowel and several consonants and the students are required to use the vowel in every word. If the students are given a p,n,t,k,l, & r with their vowel, i, they could create several words: pin, tin, kit, lip, tip, lit, pit, nip, pink, link, rink, rip, and I'm sure there are more that I'm leaving out. This would be a great activity for a whole group instruction. I think it would be fun to do this activity on a reading carpet and if you had a smart board, or overhead, or just a white board, the students could take turns coming up to their board and writing out a word they think they can make from these letters. This will engage the students and get them active while learning something valuable. As the article states, this is an excellent time to inform the students how different letters sound together. i.e. how i sounds different in tin than it does in link. It is said that children that lack phonemic awareness can develop it through participation and practice. This activity aligns with reading and spelling, and writing, what more could a teacher want than practicing all three in one lesson?

Do you think that invented spelling may encourage a child to be more creative while writing since they could focus less on the correct spelling and more on writing what they want, or do you think that it actually hinders a child's writing?

Decoding Meaning

teacherspayteachers.com

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I found it interesting that knowing 37 spelling patterns will allow children to read and spell over 500 words that children commonly use. I knew there were a lot, but I guess I didn't realize how many there actually were. Another fact that I found interesting while reading Classrooms that Work was that it is estimated for every English word you know, its possible to decode, spell, and find meanings for six or seven other words just from that one original word. An activity that I liked from chapter 5 was The Wheel game, similar to Wheel of Fortune. This probably really stuck out because my mom was actually on the game show back in 2002 and she absolutely dominates at the game. This activity allows the students to use context clues from sentences to figure out what the word is. I think this activity would also become competitive among the students and competition=motivation. Context clues are important. I don't think students understand how much meaning context clues actually give to words. My high school students figured out how much context clues mean this past week with a vocabulary lesson. They couldn't understand why in their stories they needed to include context clues with their vocabulary words, so my mentor teacher gave them a quiz using simple sentences without context clues. The students were so mad that they couldn't figure out the meaning of the words. Lesson learned. 

To learn it, do it!

"Anyone who makes a distinction 

between games and learning doesn't 

know the first thing about either." 

- Marshall McLuhan

There is a huge variation in the classroom among the students compared to the past. The article states that the some children do preschool so they have been exposed to the ‘school setting’ and some haven’t, some students speak different languages, some students have disabilities, and while all of these are not bad things, it makes teaching more of a challenge and teachers now have to face more obstacles when it comes to teaching students to read and write. A good way to expose children to the alphabetic principle and the understanding of the relationship between letters and sounds is by comparing letters and nursery rhymes. Different strategies should be implemented in the classroom to ensure that students are learning to read and write to the best of their ability. I think a fun way for little kids to practice letters is with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Who doesn’t love this book?

Something I really liked about the second article was one of the activities to relate letters and words in books to letters and words the students already knew. The activity talked about was taking the students pictures and attaching it with the first letter of their name and then another word.  We’ve heard in every class and most of have experienced first hand that relating learning to real life situations will make it more enjoyable and is usually successful. Something else this article discussed that I REALLY enjoyed was about handwriting. I have terrible writing so the activity discussed is something I will probably implement in my classroom so that my students aren’t afraid of writing due to “not knowing how.” What Donna B. and Donna J. did with making children comfortable taking risks is incredible. I hope that’s something I am able to do in my future classroom.

Article 3 discussed involving the students in games in order to support phonemic awareness development. Everyone loves games, so I think that’s a great way to get students actively participating and engaged in academics. They have a lot of fun and learn at the same time. Will you be a teacher that includes games in your teaching?

Reading is Succeeding

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Students come from all parts of the community and each child will have their own background and as teachers, we will be responsible for teaching the student how to read and write and the important connection between the two. If we are able to relate the material to our students, they will become more interested in learning, and hopefully understand it. Interested is key. The more literature that students are exposed to, the more they will know and learn. I remember a fun activity in Kindergarten that helped me learn to read—my teacher would have little books with pictures stapled together for us and we would get to color the pictures and then we would take them home and read to our parents. This obviously wouldn’t be beneficial for parents who weren’t involved, but my parents made sure to read those with me and I think coloring the pictures made me pay attention to what I was actually reading. What are some ways that you can include literacy in a childs day?

Effective Classrooms and Enthusiastic Readers

Chapters 1 and 2 and the article all touched on the same topics, effective teachers and classrooms and how to create enthusiastic readers. I feel like I read how important it was for teachers to create opportunities for their students to read over and over.  Time management in a classroom is crucial because there must be time to read and time for the students to discuss what they are reading. Results from one of the studies reported that teachers in the highest achieving classrooms used every single minute of every single day. The text talked about how a good way to spend the last 15 minutes of the day is to converse with the students about what they are reading and how they like it. Another point that was largely discussed was how important it is for many different books and materials to be made available for the students to CHOOSE to read. A sentence that really stood out to me in the reading was, “ It is important to give children books they can read and choices regarding which books they will read.”  

Also, it is important for teachers to implement reading all throughout the day and cross-curricular so that reading and writing are implemented in math and science. Teachers should also encourage their students constantly as they read. Effective early reading instruction must involve helping students identify words and knowing their meaning. I think it is important to make the students feel welcome to ask questions about their books and vocabulary if they don’t understand. An important way to ensure this happens is to encourage your students. I think that encouragement is critical, students' motivation increases when they are encouraged. “Readers are not just children who can read—they are children who do read”