Structure and Organization

The article written by Gay Su Pinnell focuses on what teachers can do to make the best out of their teaching. Teachers have their theories of how they believe children learn. It is important to put this theory into action while you are in the classroom. There are many researched practices in the media that aid teachers in helping students succeed, but it some school invest financially in these products without getting to the main source of the problem. Improving teacher's skills rather than the technology and media is more beneficial to the school and the students. Pinnell states, "Sustainable improvement requires investment in building long-term capacity for improvement, such as the development of teacher's skills, which will stay with them forever, long after the project money has gone." This so true, because once these teachers learn and apply these skills, they will stick with them forever.

The article by Frey and Fisher given explicit strategies that aid teachers in organizing an effective environment to assure that learning takes place in the classroom. From various strategies like visual, verbal, physical, gestural, and environmental cues; to examples of questions to ask the students in helping them engage in metacognition. Once students become aware of how they are learning, they will be able to apply this in all other areas of their academics. The hard part is being able to help students become aware of their thinking and what works best for them.

This video highlights two teachers who are considered "great teachers" who excite the students and make learning exciting by empowering the students.

1. Do you believe that teachers must have a controlled classroom in order for effective learning to take place, or can chaos and learning take place simultaneously?

Real Life Inquiry

For my inquiry, I decided to do a spelling inventory on the boy that I babysit. I will refer to him as S in this paper. Since I have begun working with S, I have recognized his love of writing and reading. S is homeschooled, is in the second grade, and his mother is his teacher. She informed that S truly fell in love with writing and reading, when she began to let him choose whatever he wanted to write or read about. She truly believes this is how he has become such an advanced reader and writer. Before giving him the test, I predicted that he would not be challenged enough if I gave him the test around his grade level, so I choose the test for third through fifth grade.

When I began the test, S, gave me a look and said, “Really? Bed? This is too easy.” He seemed annoyed at first with all of the easy words, but as we went on, he began to see the challenge increase as the words become more complex. S correctly spelled seventeen out of twenty-five words. The majority of the words he missed were due to him doubling the wrong letter or using an “a” instead of an “i”. According to the rating scale, Samuel needs review in the “within word pattern,” because he missed the ight in bright. He spelled all of the words correctly in the “suffixes and affixes” stage, and then the next stage, “derivational relations”  is where he needs to be explicitly taught. Overall I was extremely impressed with his ability to spell as many words as he did correctly.

Guided Reading

The article I read this week is: Guided Reading: A Reasearch-Based Response to the Challenges of Early Reading Instruction By: Anita Iaquinta

Guided reading first starts with good teaching. I believe that this is so important in teaching students the appropriate skills necessary to become successful readers. This includes being able to properly group students together. Sometimes as teachers, we group students into their ability level groups, and these do not change throughout the year. In dynamic grouping, it is necessary to change these groups up, and for the students to expect them to change throughout the year. As students progress to a different level of reading, they need to change groups where they can be challenged in new areas. I never realized how important it was to divide up these reading groups, to observe, monitor, and then rearrange them according to each students needs.
The article points out that HOW you teach is just as important as WHAT you teach, knowing when to intervene, and when not to intervene. We want our students to succeed, so we find ourselves correcting them many times when it is not necessary. I realize sometimes I am too hard on the students when they are reading, because I want to them to get everything right. But that is when it is important to choose which strategies you want to focus on with each child, so they do not feel overwhelmed. Once they have accomplished that skills, you can move on to a new one.
1. What if a child is really struggling with a skill, do you move on to a new one and hope that it will come, or do you stay on that skill until it is mastered?
2. Is it too much to teach 2-3 skills at once while a child is reading a passage?

Vocabulary

Vocabulary is all around us. You always think of learning new vocabulary while reading books, but in the article Vocabulary Lesson Fisher and Blachowicz point out that you can learn new words through conversations, television, and daily experiences. I believe it is important to point this out to children when emphasizing how important and prevalent vocabulary is to academic success. When students encounter unfamiliar words, they often skip over then and no new knowledge is learned. This might be because students aren't trained or comfortable with using dictionaries. It is necessary to teach students how to look these words up, whether it be with a dictionary or by using the internet. One they read about the new word, ask them to write it down in their journals and even act out the new meanings. The more ways students interact with new vocabulary, the more familiar it will become to them. They can do this by using the many technology suggestions presented in the eVoc strategies article. Allow them to play with words, and discover their meaning further through Wordle, graphic organizers, TrackStar, PowerPoints, and podcasts. This gives them ownership of their learning, and inspires them to explore new vocabulary.

1. How do you keep students that aren't avid readers, interested and curious about learning new vocabulary?
2. How do you enhance those student's vocabulary who don't have much conversation at home, watch television, or have reading resources outside of school (mainly at risk communities)?

Below is a Wordle created using the US Constitution. You can use this Wordle to identify the important words within the Constitution, and talk about their meanings and importance in writing the Constitution:

Comprehension

My reaction to Ms. Hope's classroom scenario was quite impressive. I was in awe at the task she was challenging these kindergarteners to participate in, and then the fact that they carried it out so well was even that more impressive. I know it takes time and effort to get to this point in your classroom, because she had to teach the children was schema was, and then go beyond that and teach categories the different kinds of comprehension she was looking for. But once she was able to explain this to her students, they were able to participate in meaningful learning while learning how to make connections to what they were reading. Gill's article also brings up interesting points. She talks about how students have to make prior connections before they can begin to comprehend what they read. Once they make these connections, they can adjust their existing schema to help make sense of the new content presented. One thing, I believe I would have trouble with in the classroom, would be helping students activate this prior knowledge. It also made me feel better to read that you don't have to teach ALL of the strategies. Just start with one, and students will begin to improve their comprehension skills from one strategy alone.

Here is a website with comprehension strategies:
http://www.busyteacherscafe.com/literacy/comprehension_strategies.html
1. What are some interesting post activities that you can incorporate to test student's comprehension without doing boring worksheets?

words, words, words

The Yopp & Yopp article talked about promoting word consciousness in the classroom. I believe this concept is crucial when children are learning vocabulary. It is extremely important to help your students become aware of new vocabulary when they see it in content areas, everyday talk, and in books they are reading. When students become naturally intrigued with new words, they will begin to notice foreign words and ask about their meanings. They will also learn how to decode the word using context clues by learning about the affixes and roots. If an entire school system becomes aware of noticing new vocabulary words, everyone in the school could benefit. The students will become excited about learning new words and even begin to use them in everyday conversations. When students feel connected with vocabulary, they will not feel discouraged when they come across a word they do not know while reading. Their confidence will influence them to read more and more.

The ten important words strategy would be interesting to observe in a classroom. Just the fact that children would be talking about different ways of interpreting and creating new vocabulary would be inspiring to see. The making words strategy mentioned in Cunningham and Cunningham is another intriguing way to get students involved in understanding that you can make multiple words with just a few letters. Some children may not realize this until they have a concrete experience of experimenting with words.
1.) How would these strategies work with ELL students?

Phonemic Awareness

While some teachers find it "fun" for their class to sing songs and play games, sometime they are not aware of the educational purpose behind these interactive lessons. That's why playful songs, chants, and rhyming games in the classroom should be developmentally appropriate. I believe it is important to have these interactive ways for children to be playful with language and explore new words, but the teacher needs to have a deliberate purpose behind their intentions for the activities. Yopp & Yopp make a great point about this in their article. Often times, as teachers we want to tell the students what the word is, but it is important that we coach the child through difficult words to help them become confident and independent readers. It takes time and practice as teachers to develop the skills of coaching, and I believe this will come as I have raw experience in the classroom. I love the techniques given in the Cunningham book about using words you are already familiar with, to connect new words and meanings. It then went even further to add extra syllables to the words, to where the endings only rhymed. This may be more complex, but the children will learn a chunk of sound within these words, and it will help them when sounding out unfamiliar words in the future.
1. How do you know if a child is having a hard time with a certain concept, or if they have a reading disability? When do you know to look for further assistance?
Phonemic Awareness Activities

Fast Doesn't Always Mean Fluent

Before reading the articles and Chapter 4 in the book, I had never realized how important fluency testing was. I also didn't realize that the data could be misinterpreted by teachers. While testing fluency does measure accuracy and rate, it doesn't include comprehension and endurance. Those children who struggle with reading need environmental supports to help them build their fluency. I liked the idea of the FDL model presented in Chapter 4. The teacher models the reading, asks the class to choral read along with her, gives the students a chance to practice with a partner, and then allows them to volunteer read. This helps them become confident and familiar with the passage before they present it to the class. It also gives them confidence in their reading habits. Sometimes, children become discouraged about their ability to read fluently, but with this model, students practice and become proud of their ability to read without error.

Often times, teachers ask children to read a book that is not on their appropriate reading level for a fluency test. It is important to recognize that some children need practice in order to influence their motivation to become better readers. This can be done through decreasing their reading levels, so they aren't a intimidated by the text and are reading books they are familiar with. You can provide them with books that are interesting and easy, while also increasing the number of pages they read, so they feel as though they are accomplishing more. All of these supports make reading more enjoyable and less intimidating, while giving them the practice they need to increase fluency.

Letter of the Week

While reading the article written by the teachers who took a different spin on teaching the children in their Kindergarten classroom to read, it brought much excitement to me as a future teachers. The concept of empowering them on the first day by prompting them with environmental print, was a genius idea. Children need to feel as though they are competent and able to read before they can have to confidence to learn. It is important to give children familiar experiences to relate to the new experiences they are having. Their names are familiar words to them, and it was a brilliant idea for the teachers to use that as a springboard for their reading. The only thing about this is, some of the children, Pedro for example, was not able to identity the name of the letter when the teacher pointed to it. In the NAEYC article, it talks about how important "letter naming" is. I know that these teachers took a different approach than the norm, and it resulted in their children becoming powerful writers and beginning readers. That was in 2002 though, and now there is so much pressure on children with the standardized tests in Kindergarten. I wonder if this concept were put into action now and those children were tested, how would they perform? If this worked, and they scored better on the tests, then teachers would be more willing to implement this into their classrooms. How do you break the norm of the "Letter of the Week" concept, if all the other teachers aren't on board?

Jones Family's Culture

The two readings for this week bring much motivation to me wanting to teach children how important and interesting reading can be. In The Jones Family's Culture of Literacy article, Amy Johnson writes about the endless amount of exposure to literature this family has from childhood into adulthood. I had never thought of spirituality being included in literacy exposure, but it makes complete sense. Each and every opportunity this family had with literacy, they used to help the children become more comfortable with and enjoy reading. They didn't just narrow it down to books, they included finances, numbers, church, print in the environment, etc. Chapter 3 in the book also explains the importance of giving children this exposure at a young age, so they will have the foundation and motivation to read once they get into school. Once, they are in schools, having a print-rich classroom will keep them motivated to learn new words and incorporate new vocabulary in their everyday lives.
1. What do you do with children who have been immersed in literacy since they were young, and still have no motivation to read?