November 25th Blog Post: Becoming an Effective Teacher of Reading

Teachers are such an important and vital link in every student's learning chain. In the articles we read this week, I found Taylor, Peterson, Pearson, and Rodriguez's article Looking inside classrooms: Reflecting on the "how" as well as the "what" in effective reading instruction and Pinnell's article, Every child a reader: What one teacher can do very interesting and truly enlightening. I am a huge fan of lists and I like how Pinnell went through each topic and explained each.. I thought all of his points were equally important and accurate when it came to creating a true and increasing learning environment. One that I always think about and think is truly the most important, is the "enjoyment of reading and writing with your students." I think that every teacher should see themselves as a role model and cheerleader. They are the rock for every child's learning and illiterate stability. I believe that to be a successful teacher you have to love your job and share a love for your students. All my life I have been blessed to have wonderful teachers that show a love for their students and their students' success. You have to want to teach to create great learners. It's our responsibility to create the future minds of the World. How do you plan on showing your love for teaching and for your students success? As a teacher, you have to not only love to teach, but love to learn. There is always room for improvement, and as a teacher, there is a huge obligation to want to learn the most valuable ways to become a fantastic teacher and person in twenty odd students' lives. I like how Pinnell took every matter and focused on how there are ways to understand and improve. It's so important to use all skills learned and use each of those skills to their maximum capacity to create the best readers we can. Not one skills is less important than the other. It's been so neat to learn each of these skills, and look back on my education and notice how my past teachers used them. It's like my eyes have been exposed to the "behind the scenes" action to teaching. In Taylor, Peterson, Pearson, and Rodriguez's article, I liked how they touched on each skill and topic and gave the "do's" and "don'ts" that can be noticed in day to day classrooms. I liked how they tied everything together in the end. I like how they finally touched on the point that was focused on in the title to represent what the data was about and how the examples could help us, as teachers, to become better ones. I loved the "full backpack" reference in the end. I thought it summed it up perfectly. That all teachers are to means for every child to stand a chance. They are the educators and have a huge impact on every students' life. They are responsible for equipping each student with a "full backpack" of skills, strategies, habits, and dispositions toward literacy." This point and statement, to me, does not only matter in literature, but in life. A teacher is a role model and educator that is responsible for allowing every student that they may come in contact with achieve their greatest ability as a learner and a person. It's amazing to me how much of an impact a teacher truly has in a person's life. It's our job to promote children to love to learn and want to succeed in everything that they do or come across in their lives. We create the doctors, the future educators, the future President's of the United States. So it's up to us to maintain the ability to be those good educators to create great people.

Guided Reading Assignment

1. My Guided Reading Definition:
        Guided Reading is a way to help students gain and understand the tools and skills to make them into better readers. It usually involves a teacher directed small group, a shared text, and a means of discussion about that text.



2.

Before Reading	During Reading	After Reading
Teacher: Correlated the book with the theme of learning. Made the children pay attention to the cover and the title. She is very theatrical to keep the student’s attention and get them to interact. Asks questions like “Do you like rain?” There is a lot of repetition. Looking at the photographs and discussing them. Talks about picture clues. Moves as if the pictures are moving. “Wha Wha”- Discusses the long W sound as in W-eather, W-ind, “Are there other words that you know on the page?” Makes the children confident that they know each word on the page. The teacher is very theatrical and makes movements with each word and with student’s accomplishments2. “Iii”- the long I sound “I-ce” “L-i-ghting” Explains how and why to use the photograph as your read. Gets them to pay attention to the difference punctuation marks at the end of the sentences.   Gets children to read aloud matching the punctuation with the sentence. Students: The students were very interactive and answered the questions. They followed each page with their finger and knew the front of the book and cover. One student before the teacher said anything says something that she notices she already knows about the reading.	Teacher: Gets children to read quietly to themselves, while the teacher walks around and listens in to help and to take notes. Uses the “secret thing” to get the children to want to read the story again. The teacher goes by each student and helps them understand each long sound and what the words on the page mean. She listens to them read and reiterates what they learned in the big group.  Students: The students do a good job of pronounciation. They pay attention to the pictures, and use them to correct with the different types of weather.  They then have the chance to read the books on their own, while the teacher listens in. Most only have trouble on the “Wh” sound.	- Teacher: “Here is something that I want you to remember the sounds at the beginning and ending of the word go with what is seen on the page.” “Sometimes when we read along it might not make sense, like “Wh-at,” go back and reread and that will help you say hey I know this and say "What." She used the pictures of what was read about in the book, and shows pictures of what each object is and verbalizes the word that goes with each picture. She puts the pictures on the table, and gives letters and makes the students put the beginning letter to the picture. She is reiterating the pictures and words they learned and the sounds of words that they learned. Then she takes the ending sounds and gets the children to make the letters with the words they heard it in. Students: The students are guessing with the picture. Giving the adjective instead the noun on some of the pictures. Ex. Windy, but should be Wind. As a group they are match each beginning and ending letter with the pictures.

3. Response to the Video:
    There were many things that I liked a lot about the video and thought very helpful. The teacher’s energy and interaction was something that really stood out to me. I think it’s important for the students to feel comfortable and able to respond in Guided Reading exercises. The teacher may have looked silly to other adults, but really did a good job connecting and finding ways to get on the student’s level and teach so that they would have ways to remember what they learned. I thought the "before reading" exercises were very important. I like how the teacher went through the entire book and each new word on the book before letting the kids read on their own. It’s important to discuss the words and their meanings in case there are some students that understand it and some that do not. It was important for the students to find the similarities in what they already knew and what they learned through this reading, so they could correlate the two to make them better readers. I also like how the teacher increased the importance on the ending sounds just as much as the beginning sounds. Sometimes the ending sounds are not as thought about, and we assume that if the child understand the beginning sounds then the flow of the word with help the child with the ending sounds. I liked her picture activity after reading, when she emphasized on this skill. I thought there was room, however, for some students to not necessarily understand some sounds or words since there was a big group and not a lot of individual advances. Some students seemed to be calling out every answer while some were not as quick. The teacher did a good job, but I think it would also be helpful to let the children tell us what they are learning instead of the teacher giving them the answer so quickly.

4. Readinga-z.com website:
       The website readinga-z.com seems to be a good resource when trying to find books and activities correlating with the books in Guided Reading activities. The website has multiple options based on level of reading and genre, so the teacher can reach out to many different readers and their interests. The website includes everything needed to help in a Guided Reading lesson, such as the worksheets and quizzes. This website would be good for me to use in my Special Education classroom as a guide to help my students understand readings or understand the world around them.

November 18 Post: Guided Reading with Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders

In wanting to be a Special Education teacher and having such a passion for the mentally disabled, I have always wondered how Reading Education differs between children with Autism compared to the average student. After finding, Guided Reading with Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (2007) by Cynthia G. Simpson, Vicky G. Spencer, Robin Button, and Sylvia Rendon, has informed me that teaching reading skills for average students are just as important as, and the same as, they are for students with Autism. In the article it talks of the national movements put in place so that ALL students exceed, and how teachers are trying to improve ideas and practices used in general education to teach students with autism spectrum disorders. The article is based on a guided reading practice performed by a elementary school teacher whose main goal was to increase the reading skills of students with autism. Her class room management system allowed her to know each student's ability and teach based on that ability. Something that I believe is very important. The authors provided three goals that guided reading was based on: "to meet the varying instructional needs of all students in the classroom, to teach students to read a variety of increasingly challenging texts with understand and fluency, and to construct meaning while using problem solving strategies to figure out complex sentence structure and gain an understand of new ideas or concepts"(pg.3). Something that seemed important to me was the portrayed importance of student- teacher interaction.

The article clearly explained how important it was for each student to be in close proximity to the teacher to pay close attention at all times. The article touched on many assessments that we have talked about in class such as, the Diagnostic Reading Assessment, running records, graded passages, and word lists. The article was interesting in that the teacher was not the only one implementing the lesson, there were other paraeducators that worked with students in the classroom. Each paraeducator had a purpose, one worked on phonic using the Spalding phonics program while another worked on a writing station and the third worked on functional math skills. Classroom management was very important in working with autistic students. The teacher used the gaining of tally marks, based on participation, to keep the students interactive and wanting to learn. The students liked this activity, because with each gained tally mark they got closer to getting a prize.  Another activity that I thought was interesting was the use of magnetic letters to make words and help to understand words in the reading. Autistic children read less challenging books in this example, their books consisted of 10-15 pages with 5-10 words on each page. The group used choral reading to get through the book, in the article this helped weaker readers get more confident and chime in with the group. This helped the stronger readers share their skills while the weaker readers were able to listen and correspond to their peers. To end the lesson the guided reading group, based on their ability, the students either wrote a reflective statement of the story, drew a picture of something remembered from the story, or stated words that they learned from the story. I thought the article was very interesting and brought a lot of memories back from when I worked with the Special Education students in my high school years. It's neat now to understand why they did the activities and had the motivation exercises that they did. I can't wait to use these exercises and this input in my future classroom.  In your opinion, is teaching Reading Education to Autistic students similar to teaching general education students?

Found Article:

Simpson, C.G., Spencer, V.G., Button, R., Rendon, S. (2007). Using Guided Reading with Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders. TEACHING Exceptional Children Plus, Volume 4, Issue 1, Article 5. 17 November 2013, http://journals.cec.sped.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1429&context=tecplus

November 18 Blog Post: Assessment

Assessment is very important in helping teachers help students achieve their highest learning ability. Every student learns differently and when it comes to teaching it is up to the teacher to understand the best way to teach to tend to every students need. There are also many circumstances where students may achieve different levels at different times. Assessment makes it possible to help challenge the faster learning children and help the teacher to know to pay more attention to the slower learning student. When observing a first grade class room in my Ed 100 class, the teacher used many assessments to know what levels each of her students were on. She used the pre- testing and post testing method. She would pretest to know what level of book each of her students would read for that week, and then as they did their weekly exercises, she would test them at the end of the week. She grouped the slower learning students together and allowed them to test with her verbally while the other more progressed students tested by themselves. She grouped in two groups rather than the three stated in Rubin's article- independent, instructional, and frustration. Although this method seemed to help the students' grades, it did not necessarily work areas that the students may be struggling at to help their reading improvement. It did not break down each category of reading like explained in Rubin's article, so the students did not know what they needed improvement in or get the practice that they needed to make that improvement. Like explained in Organizing and Evaluating Results From Multiple Reading Assessments, it's important to know the missing skills and ways to improve skills in reading to really become a good reader. The cloze test, for example, is a good way to improved vocabulary and comprehension, since the student has to know what words go in what order of a passage. Vocabulary and comprehension are two very vital skills to understand syntax and semantics, according to Rubin. The Informal Reading Inventories are important in step by step comprehension of the story. Although this may be an achievable task for student's they still may not understand what they are reading. It is important for the assessments to have more retelling and open questioning formats, like it says, so that the student isn't just able to match words in the questions to words that they see in the book read. The last mentioned, running records, is a good tool for keeping track of student's progress. It is a good way to not only test comprehension, but reading ability. Which assessment do you believe is most important?

Teachers are the most important person in recognizing a student's leaning ability and teaching based on that ability. It's up to teacher's to test each and every skill to really understand a student's reading ability. Based on Rubin's article, it is important to help improved pay attention to each and every ability to increase the less achieve skills and not just assume that if a student is lacking in one category he or she may not be exceeding in another.

November 11 Blog Post: Vocabulary

Vocabulary is one of the most vital resources in reading. The learning and teaching of words is important to every reader and writer's life. Looking back on when I was in school we always had a new vocabulary list each week. The vocabulary words were to be taken home, and then we would have to look up their definitions and learn the spelling of the words to later be tested that end of the week. At the time, I hated this activity. I would spend countless hours on looking up definitions of twenty words and I remember just looking at it as pointless, busy work, but looking back on it I realize how important it really was to me in helping me progress in my reading and writing. Most of the time teachers teach new words through recognition and repetition. All of the words I would have to learn came from either the reading or some other subject- lead lesson from that week. I liked the idea of the STAR model attributed by Blachowicz and Fisher stated in their article, "Vocabulary Lessons." I believe the STAR model is important and an easy way of helping students to learn and expose them to new words. It's an exercise that is easy to remember as well. I also love the example of Ms. Barker's classroom in Lane and Allen's article, "The Vocabulary-Rich Classroom:Modeling Sophisticated Word Use to Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth" was so intriguing and fun. I loved how she actively made her students seem important and it amazes me how such basic words can expand a students vocabulary. How else might you actively include your students in learning vocabulary? I thought it was so intriguing how the students successfully mastered and moved on through the more enhanced words just by practicing and learning synonyms of basic words. It's crazy to think that something as simple as moving through the tiers of basics words to moving to words that are seen in a variety of student's subjects help them and impact them to be. The education of words is so simple it can make it so complex. It's amazing how many words there are in the world and the ability that one achieves with the help of learning simple to more extensive words. I thought it was so interesting how just by having a classroom full of words could enhance a child's vocabulary. A big vocabulary helps readers to comprehend and want to read, because the words won't look like gibberish on the page. I like Blachowicz and Fisher's representation of the "word walls." It gives students the chance to learn the words that they want to learn, and use self learning to remember not only their words but their fellow students words as well; which, I believe can have a bigger impact on learning compared to listening to the teacher all the time.

I have always thought that word walls are important and I think that the fact the children find the words on their own and share them to their fellow students help them to comprehend the words better and remember them in their minds.



Here is a link with some other boosting vocabulary tips:
http://www.teaching-with-style.com/2012/04/boosting-vocabulary.html

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/vocabulary-instruction-teaching-tips-rebecca-alber

Reading Comprehension in a First Grade Classroom: Real Life Inquiry Project

For my real- life inquiry project I observed a first grade classroom to see what Reading Comprehension really looked like in beginning readers. I observed my passed Education 100 class's mentor and teacher, Mrs. Heartly. Mrs. Heartly used vocabulary, connections to prior knowledge, and before, during, and after questioning to help her students in Reading Comprehension. In Mrs. Heartly's first grade class they were going to read, The Farmer in The Hat by Pat Cummins. She used text-to-self exercises, to influence the students to ponder and think about what they learned through the last book and how it may coincide with their other subjects to introduce the lesson for that week. Before even opening the book to the new story, Mrs. Heartly used interactions called "Chi- Ching Moments" to allow the children to think and answer questions that she asked like "How did our book last week teach us about eating healthy?" or "Didn't we learn in science about what is good and not good to eat?" She used these exercises to practice text- to- self, text- to-text, and text-to-world experiences. She used the "Chi- Ching Moments" to bring all the material together to give an understanding of why they read the book from last week and open up or introduce what they may be learning this week. I thought this strategy was an important introduction and fun way to let the children interact with the text and it also reiterated what they learned the week prior, so it kept the information in their brain. 

For the week I did my observation, the main learning target for the children was cause and effect and the main theme for the reading was "How is a school a community?" Mrs. Heartly did something called a focus wall. On her main bulletin board in the front of the classroom she had pieces of paper that had titles on them including: Question of the Week, Genre, Text Based Comprehension, Writing and Conventions, Phonics and Spelling, and Amazing Words. As she introduced each different category she asked her students questions like: "When it's raining, do you use an umbrella to keep dry?" (introducing the cause and effect learning target) and so on going along with each point of the sheet. Each child participated and paid attention to what each child said. After the opening questions were asked they turned to the story and Mrs. Heartly challenged them to guess what the story was about according to the pictures on the first and title page. They discussed the characters and who the main characters might be and they discussed what the main plot of the story might be about. This used a lot of peer talk instead of just teacher to student talk. I liked how Mrs. Heartly had different steps that she took before she read. The break down and visual for the students helped them to understand what they were learning and the way it was up for the whole class to see helped them be able to remember and go back to it when needed through out the week. I'm always thought it is important to ask question before, during, and after reading and it was so neat to be able to see it actually work and happen in a classroom instead of just learning about it. 

After the reading was over, Mrs. Heartly asked question that continued along with the running theme for the week: "What community do you think this is?" The students soon progressed into a conversation of book talk that included agreeing and disagreeing. Mrs. Heartly would tell them to use I agree with.... or I disagree with.... as opening statements to help the children interact with each other and learn to challenge the author. As the conversation progressed Mrs. Heartly took out a laminated piece of paper titled Talking Back to Books as You Read. This made the book conversation grow deeper with the help of explanation starters like: I'm thinking..., I'm wondering...., I am noticing..., etc. These explanations not only helped the children to think, but also helped them answer each other’s questions and share point of views. She ended the conversation with questions like "What were they doing?" and "Were you surprised at the outcome?" making it possible to coordinate with the running theme and reintroduce the meaning of a community. The finishing comments and concerns were so entertaining to witness. The way the children bounced off of each other really let the teacher and I know that the students understood what they were reading and helped them remember what the story was about. It made them learn how to argue with the author and each other, and distinguish what was valid and invalid. 

During my observation of the classroom it allowed me to think back on our class reading on Reading Comprehension, specifically Anne Gregory and Mary Ann Cahill's article Kindergartners Can Do It, Too! Comprehension Strategies for Early Readers. Gregory and Cahill explained how important questioning and "I Wonders" could be in keeping the attention of students and helping students comprehend what they are reading. "Young children are naturally inquisitive, and when asking question is explicitly demonstrated during the reading of the text, they quickly begin to ask questions helping them both to interact with the text in meaningful ways and to critically examine the story"(Gregory&Cahill517,518). Mrs. Heartly asked questions the whole entire reading of the book to her students, she asked questions before, during, and after she read engaging in the students and relying on each other to figure out what it all meant or what really happened in the book. By asking the students questions Mrs. Heartly gave her students the option to infer and use their brains, another important strategy mentioned by Gregory and Cahill. " Additionally, asking questions increases children's ability and inclination to make inferences" (Gregory&Cahill518). By making inferences the students questions the text and author and had to make a further connection with what they saw and what they knew form their passed knowledge, or schema. 

    Throughout Mrs. Heartly's lesson I saw her as a good example as a supportive teacher to readers like Laura S. Pardo explains in her article What every teacher needs to know about comprehension. Mrs. Heartly practiced "helping students build fluency" by reading the story aloud to her students. "Teachers teach students how to make text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world connections so that readers more easily comprehend the texts they read" (Pardo274). Mrs. Heartly helped to "build and activate prior knowledge," by connecting their lesson from the earlier week to this lesson and using what they already knew through their common, or prior knowledge to relate to the story and infer what the story would be about. Mrs. Heartly used a graphic organizer and visuals to introduce what they would be learning about and why it all mattered. She helped them use what they knew from the outside world to understand what they were reading from the text. Mrs. Heartly, also, took time to "teach," and reintroduce, the vocabulary words that her students would need to know and recognize to understand their reading. She "motivated them" by making them get up and out of their seats and want to learn the words and do their activities. And finally she "engaged students in personal responses to text, “by getting her students to talk about the book with their other classmates by including the agreeing and disagreeing comments. The comments helped the students join in a mature conversation that allowed the teacher to just listen instead of be the leader of it all. 

            Throughout my observation, I was excited and intrigued by the fact that what we learn in class is actually taking place in real- life learning environments. I believe that Reading Comprehension is one of the most important lessons in the Reading subject. The strategies that allow Reading Comprehension can be so easy, but sometime turned into to difficult, or challenging, activities amongst students of different reading levels. I agree with and plan to use the strategies Mrs. Heartly used in my future classroom. I especially like the way she had everything laid out in the beginning with the theme, question of the week, genre, and the phonetic devices that were involved in the reading. I thought it was interesting the little amount of time that is actually granted for Reading, however, it seemed that she could not get all she wanted done in the amount of time that is set aside for the subject. The activity present seemed to be successful, and was tested by the paper activity that the children did after they went back to their seats. Each child was able to answer the question relating to the story and the vocabulary words given. I could tell that the book talk conversation really made the students comfortable with Mrs. Heartly and their fellow students. Every child seemed to participate and every child said what he or she wanted to whether they cared if it was wrong or right. I hope to have a comfortable, open atmosphere in my future classroom like Mrs. Heartly’s. Mrs. Heartly seem to be experienced and organized. The strategies that she used engage her students and made them think to latter allow them to comprehend what they were reading, the number one goal of every teacher. 

Monitoring Comprehension Lesson

Monitoring Comprehension Lesson

November 4, 2013

What is monitoring comprehension?

0Readers who monitor their comprehension know when they understand what they read and when they do not. Students are able to use appropriate "fix-up" strategies to resolve problems in comprehension.

0Basically, a reader being able to acknowledge their comprehension ability.

0Tracking: Do they understand? Can they make a connection? Are they visualizing? Are they aware when they do not understand? Do they know how to fix it if they do not understand?

0http://www.ldonline.org/glossary#M

Why is it important?

0Monitoring comprehension is extremely important, because if a student is unaware of their comprehension, then they are unable to comprehend.

0http://www.thinkport.org/a4092856-945a-4952-aceb-9f606e84af36.asset

Monitoring Comprehension with Our Students

•Sticky note exercise

http://www.scholastic.com/parents/blogs/scholastic-parents-raise-reader/what-to-do-when-your-child-cant-remember-what-he-reads

•Monitoring Comprehension flow chart activity

http://teacher.scholastic.com/reading/bestpractices/comprehension/flowchartofbehavior.pdf

Stop, Ask, Fix: Student Checklist     http//teacher.scholastic.com/reading/bestpractices/comprehension/stopaskfixchecklist.pdf

•Comprehension Questions

www.carlscorner.us.com/Literacy/Comprehension%20Questions.doc

•Tips for reading comprehension

http://www.reading-tutors.com/tips/TH_Tips_CompStrat.pdf