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?