Matching Text and Readers

macmillanmh.com

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.

teacher-resources-john-jay.wikispaces.com

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?