Real Life Inquiry

For my real life inquiry project, I did the making words activity with ten children from my work. The age of the children was a mix of nine and ten year olds that were either going in to the fourth grade or the fifth grade. Overall, the activity went much smoother than I thought it would and the children really seemed to enjoy it. I was disappointed, however, because immediately after I handed the children their letters to cut out they began shouting out the ‘mystery word.’ Many of the children said they had done activities like this in their classes before, so it is a possibility that they had the same set of letters (or they were all just very smart and good with words). Even though the big event at the end had been spoiled, we continued to work through making words.

I noticed a couple children in particular struggling with the activity. I am guessing that these children need more practice with phonemic awareness because it seemed as if they were hearing different letter sounds and were trying to spell their word based on what they heard. One thing I noticed from all the children was when they were directed to spell the word ‘merit.’ Most of the children were confused when they heard this word and replied by saying they did not have an ‘a’ to spell ‘merit.’ This reminded me of what Cunningham & Cunningham say in their “Making Words” article about this activity: “…students listen intently for the sounds in words in order to make them.” I noticed the children listening eagerly for each word, and even collaborated with others near them in order to spell the word correctly.

After the activity, I discussed with the children whether or not they liked making words. The majority replied with a yes (which I was very happy to hear). I enjoyed doing this activity, but I feel like I need a lot more practice with instruction. I chose this activity because I, myself, enjoyed doing this in class and the Cunningham & Cunningham article really brought the strategies of making words to my attention. This activity makes learning fun without it seeming like work. 

Assessment

One of the two articles I read was the Lose article on early intervention and a responsive teacher. As I was reading this I felt as if the instructions on when to identify learning disabilities and how to help children through reading difficulties can be applied to any difficulty in learning and not just reading. The article also mentions that each child needs an individualized plan tailored precisely for their learning abilities. This is something that I feel teachers should already know, because all children learn at a different pace; however, I understand that those strategies for children with learning disabilities may be very different and more complex. As the sister of a younger brother who has many learning disabilities, I feel like it is important to catch the signs early on in order to develop the proper plan as well as provide the proper time it will need to take with that student.

Vocabulary is Key

The two articles I read were Vocabulary Lessons and The Vocabulary-Rich Classroom. I think these two articles went hand in hand and complemented each other very well. In Vocabulary Lessons, the authors give a list of four practices for a comprehensive approach to vocabulary development. The first practice is to develop word awareness and love of words through play. I think this aspect goes very well with the concepts the Lane & Allen article were conveying. The two teachers in the Lane & Allen article provided their students with an opportunity to hear, say, and learn a variety of new words and use those words in their daily language.

Comprehension

The first article I read was "What every teacher needs to know about comprehension." This article was extremely informative and explicit. Pardo provided a lot of different information on how teachers can support readers and how teachers can support the text. I found myself relating a lot of material from class and previous readings to the teachers supporting readers section. We talked a lot on Tuesday about how comprehension is important, and many teachers overlook this concept. There are too many students today not understanding what they are reading, but passing quick reading tests because the questions just ask the students to recall. As future teachers, it is important that we understand comprehension and how to help students comprehend their readings.

I found this picture on Pinterest. I like how the teacher created a board that can be used over and over with many different readings to help children with comprehension. 'What is this story mostly about?' & 'Can you retell the story?' are my two favorite questions because they really have to understand the text to answer!

Repeated Readings

What is it?

·         The practice of reading a particular passage over and over again until a certain number of rereadings has occurred, or a specified level of fluency has been reached.

·         A reading method that requires students to listen to a teacher read a selection and then read the selection after a teacher.

·         Individual or small groups

·         Fluent oral reading is the goal

·         Can be reading one sentence over and over again or a paragraph or book

·         The method of repeated reading was developed to help non-fluent readers improve fluency and, ultimately, reading comprehension.

An example lesson in repeated reading (reading one sentence)

• Use material that the student requests.
• Choose a sentence from the chosen reading material.
• The teacher reads the sentence out loud, pointing to words as she reads.
• Pointing to the words, while reading, demonstrates the relationship between speech and print.
• The teacher reads the sentence again, while the student points to the words (with teacher assistance if needed and/or wanted).
• The student and teacher read the sentence together, with the teacher pointing to the words.
• Teacher and student read sentence again, with the student pointing to the words this time.
• If the student feels comfortable, he is asked to read and point to the sentence on his own.
• If he stumbles, the teacher supplies the difficult word(s) and assists with the remainder of the sentence (if needed).
• Continue to read together and alone until the teacher and the student are satisfied that the student can read the sentence perfectly.
• Ask the student to practice the sentence on his own until he feels that he is ready to read to the teacher or another student. He wants to read the sentence smoothly, quickly and accurately.
• The student reads the sentence fluently to the teacher while pointing to words.
• When the student feels satisfied with his reading performance, go on to the next sentence in the paragraph, using the technique outlined above.

While learning new sentences, always remember to review the sentences already learned.

Remember that the goal of Repeated Reading is for the student to read the sentence, paragraph or story smoothly, quickly and fluently.

Start by working with students to develop a purpose for repeated reading. This can be done through a brainstorming session initiated with the question "What are some things we learn that are improved with practice?" Explain to your students that reading needs practice, too, and best of all, reading practice can be fun!

Next, model repeated reading using the following procedure:

1. Select a book you will enjoy reading to your students again and again.
2. Read the story aloud as if you were a child reading it for the first time.
3. Include behaviors that might characterize a first reading, such as stopping to focus on difficult words.
4. After reading, talk about some parts that were difficult for you, and reread sentences to improve your reading.
5. Read the story a second time. During this reading, improve fluency, reduce the number of miscues, and add greater intonation and expressiveness.
6. With successive readings, become more expressive, fluid, and animated to achieve greater fluency and to promote greater comprehension and enjoyment.

Ideas to incorporate repeated readings in a weekly schedule:

-          Monday: At the beginning of the week the teacher will introduce and read a big book to the class as a whole, and then provide the same book in smaller form and group them into small groups to reread the book to each other.

-          Tuesday: during independent reading time, have individual students that need to work on fluency come and work on certain phrases and short sentences that are in the book from Monday. (Rereading the phrases and short sentences over and over again until they are comfortable).

-          Wednesday: the teacher will pair together two readers to reread the book together and to help each other when they are stuck.

-          Thursday: the teacher will assign a homework assignment for the children to read the book at home to their parents and to write down any phrases or words that gave them trouble.

-          Friday: the students will be assigned a “Kindergarten Buddy” to reread their story from the week to their buddy.

Fluent Readers

http://www.readingresource.net/readingfluencyactivities.html

Developing fluency while reading is an extremely important task for teachers. I was interested to see that comprehension was included in the definition of fluency in the Deeney article. She explained fluency as having four components: accuracy, rate, prosody, and comprehension. I like this word added to the definition because comprehension is important to reading. If students are reading faster just to please their teachers and make the grade, they usually aren't understanding any of the text they are reading. We all wanted to be the fastest reader of the class! 

I disagree with a reference from this particular article. On page 442, Deeney references Torgesen (2000) who says that the only accurate measure we can get on fluency is when we measure rate or accuracy. Why can't prosody be measured along with this? Or comprehension too? If fluency encompasses all these components, then why don't assessments of fluency focus more on all the components?

Another thing I did not like was in the Creating Fluent Readers article. In the 'comments teachers have made while coaching' section, the first bullet sounds like a negative, discouraging comment. I think a teacher could turn this around into a more positive statement without putting the student down. Instead of telling a student they read "too fast" and telling them they were too hard to follow, I would focus on telling them what they could do to improve their reading. 

The link provided above has a variety of activities to use with children. The website says they are activities for children with dyslexia, but some look familiar and I believe they could be used with any type of reader. 

Words, Words, Words

The emphasis I saw presented in the articles was how important it is for students to be familiar with the same words. While we want children to build a large vocabulary, we also want to expose them to rich words repeatedly. In order to build your vocabulary, you must have practice with the word right? It makes sense! The Ten Important Words Plus activity seems like a great activity to use in the classroom. Children can pick out the most important words from the reading based on their own opinions and share their opinions as a class. I like this idea because the students can see and understand their peers' point of view of the same reading and it may even help them understand the reading better!

I really liked this Dr. Seuss quote I found on Pinterest. It sort of sums up the Yopp and Yopp article in a very simple way. 

Nifty-Thrifty

I found the material from chapter five from our textbook to be the most helpful in creating activities for teaching phonics. While some of the explanations were lengthy and could be confusing, I liked the gist of what each activity was helping the children accomplish. I would definitely like to use some of these teaching strategies in the future in my classroom. my favorite activity was the Nifty-Thrifty-Fifty. This activity is a good way to help children spell and understand larger words by considering the prefix and suffix. I can see this particular lesson being used with older children, probably third or fourth grade. 

The Importance of Literacy

I found my self relating material from the IRA/NAEYC to class discussions as well as material from other classes. Again, I saw that reading is COMPREHENSION of the text and not just simply decoding words. Also, there was a statement that said as literacy capabilities become stronger, children will begin to read to learn rather than learn to read. Recently my Info Science 330 professor mentioned the same thing. Hearing statements like this multiple times reinforces these ideas. 

I like how Bell and Jarvis branched out into different forms of literacy and breaking away from the traditional forms. While it doesn't seem like the "word wall" would be solely responsible for children's learning, I like the idea of placing children's names with their pictures as well as providing environmental print that corresponds with the first letter of their name. This would be something interesting that I would like to incorporate in my classroom, but as mentioned before, I believe it will take many years of experience to get results like those of  Bell. 

I chose this picture to add today because I like the idea of bringing in real environmental print materials that children can use. These items can be used in a home center in the classroom. Children can make grocery lists with the provided materials or build structures such as this. I like how the students incorporated vegetable cans into their structure and even named it a grocery store. This, to me, shows a connection being made. 

Enthusiastic Readers

The readings from this first week really brought to the surface how simple it can be to engage children in reading and writing. By simple I mean it makes sense what a teacher needs to do to engage their students in reading and writing activities, and help those children become enthusiastic and feel positive about what they are doing. I really like the point about teachers being models for their students. Many teachers think that they are simply there just to get the material across to their students, but the most effective teachers are those that really create a connection with their students and get down on their level. 

I also like the idea of setting aside a certain amount of time for children to do independent reading each day, along with the weekly conferences. This is something I would like to do with the children I work with to get them engaged in a reading activity each day. Something I found interesting was how the book material related back the article we read on ten steps towards making a difference. Both authors emphasized the importance of setting goals for students and making those goals visible so they know what they need to do in order to reach their goals. 

One thing I would like to know in regards to the effective instruction article is how long those teachers have been teaching. If they have had many years experience then they have had many times to master their skills. How long would it take me to become such an effective teacher?