Real-Life Reading Inquiry.

The topic that I chose to focus around for this project was vocabulary, word study, and phonics.  I wanted to try the activity we did in class that required us to take the different letters given to us, and make as many words as possible using the ending letters that were provided on the board. 

I was very curious to see how my sister (7 years old), would do with this activity.  She will be going into the 2^nd grade in a few weeks. I learned as I was explaining to her the activity that “oh don’t worry sissy, I am reading on a 4^th grade level so I’ll probably be pretty good at this”.  This was probably the best quote I could put to explain my sister. She loves school and was excited to show me her stuff with this activity!

I felt this was a very interesting activity to engage in with my sister.  I was very intrigued to see how she would do with the different letters and the spelling of different words.  I was very impressed with her progress throughout the whole activity, and loved that she even used letters from each level (easy -1 letter, medium – 2 letters, and hard – 3 letters).  She asked many questions about when to capitalize and how to spell certain things.  I noticed that she would look at her letters intently and move them in front of each ending to see it if made sense. I thought that was really neat and wondered if it was something she was taught to do, or if she came up with it on her own!

I enjoyed doing this activity with her and think that I would definitely use this in my future classroom.  It is an excellent way to take a break from the norm of “spelling lessons” and gives the students an interactive way to be engaged right on their desks! I loved this idea and loved getting to do this with my sister! Little did she know she was exercising her literacy skills for my benefit!

I feel that Chapter 5 of our Cunningham and Allington textbook for this class as well as the Cunningham and Cunningham reading on making words (Making Word: Enhancing the spelling-decoding connection) supports my choosing of this activity.  (Also worth noting is the obvious support being as we did this activity in class!)

I have attached two photos of the end product of our activity, one with her in it and one with a better look at her words she made (top).  

Assessment.

I really liked the Fry article about leveling vs. readability and learning the ends and outs of each one.  I particularly found myself "siding" more with the idea of leveling because it seems like it is a personal way to care for your students in picking books for them. I liked the many different categories that go into leveling as opposed to the two in readability formulas.  This is just my personal opinion however, and what I got from the readings!


The second reading I chose by Lose, was a different aspect to do with the kinds of readers in the classroom.  This article focused on those with Learning Disabilities and how to prevent labeling children into these molds so early.  I like the topic that children should be assessed early and if they do fall into a "learning disability" that there is early intervention techniques that can be provided early in their childhood to catapult them out of the label of LD.  I personally think that there are too many children being labeled with learning disabilities among other things (like ADD) by teachers who don't know how to effectively and strategically work with these children to put them in the best position to learn and succeed.  I could be completely wrong in that thinking, but I could see how a teacher would become frustrated with themselves and the child and try to "pass them off" to someone else. I agree with many aspects of this article and hope that many teachers read it before being in the classroom.


I think I would have absolutely loved to go read in this loft when I was younger!  I think I would enjoy playing out my "mind movie" about the book I was reading up there too!

Vocabulary!

These readings made so much sense to me, and have been something I have reflected on and worried about doing in my own classrooms. The Lane & Allen reading about vocabulary in your classroom was interesting to me, especially the "affable Annie" example. I really loved that because it gave a challenging way for the children to find new vocabulary words, but it played completely off of their interests.  In a way it seemed very easy to incorporate that in my classroom.


The second reading that I chose to read is the Blachowicz and Fisher.  Something that I agreed with completely and needs to be emphasized more in classrooms is an environment that makes vocabulary within reading fun. Much like the affable Annie example, that made the classroom environment fun.  I think the word wall that children were able to write words on their own was a great idea too because it gives children a sense of ownership in their own work (finding new vocabulary words) and the ability to show off their work!


These two pictures are an example of a "word file" idea that I saw on Pinterest. You do one word a day and let the child write a sentence and depict the word and put it all together in a "word file". I love this idea for them to use after the whole year of school for the next grade!

Comprehension

The two readings I chose are the Gregory and Cahill article, and the Pardo article. Both dealt with comprehension and how you can teach the skill to comprehend reading at a young age. I liked that the first reading by Gregory and Cahill because I felt I could relate to it better from a teaching standpoint. When the reading explained a concept, it always provided an idea or example of how a teacher did it in their own classroom.  Personally, I learn better when I read about or see examples that I can follow or go off of and create myself. I really liked the idea of starting off with "schemas" and then incorporating different hand signs to show the teacher what you want to say. I think that this will be very beneficial for me to know in my classroom!


The Pardo article, in my opinion, was more geared towards scholarly readers and I felt was written in a literature for a teacher to understand.  I like that they explained activities or tips and tricks with each component of comprehension in the article, but it was very hard for me to read. One thing I did like was that it showed how to get to know the text you choose for your students in many different ways.  I think I will be referring back to this article when trying to choose what to use in my classroom for reading and especially in comprehension training!


I thought this was a cool thing to have in the classroom, although I'm SURE it could be a little more fun and colorful! :)

Fluency Activity

Repeated reading

What is repeated reading?: The act of rereading certain passages over and over again until a certain number is reached OR a method that requires students to listen to a teacher read a selection and then read the selection after the teacher. (Reading the same book over and over).

Example (http://cec.vcn.bc.ca/cmp/modules/rea-rep.htm):

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.

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.

Ideas to incorporate this activity into a weekly schedule.

At the beginning of the week (Monday) 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 (as seen in your observation of Monday's activity) 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 talk about any phrases or words that gave them trouble the night before and then be assigned a “Kindergarten Buddy” to reread their story from the week to their buddy.

Fluency

I found the above self reflection sheet on Pinterest (of course right?).  I thought it was a cute and fun way to let children assess themselves on their fluency, and an easy way to see if you and the child were on the same page about their progress.

The two readings I read were the Deeney and Rasinski articles. The second of the two was really interesting to me because I obviously read more in depth about fluency in reading, but the cool thing to me was the three parts of fluency.  I have not heard of the three different dimensions they were talking about but when I read about each, I knew exactly what it was referring to because I remember going through decoding words as a read and trying to stumble through pronouncing different words, as well as finally reading for the first time not having to worry about how to pronounce most of the words and I could understand the deeper meaning of the text or what the words were actually saying and knowing what the punctuation meant while reading. I also liked the different prompts and responses that you could use while teaching fluency that this article supplied throughout the text, as well as the rating sheet (1-4) in how to measure fluency when teaching it.

The first reading listed emphasized the uses of One Minute Assessments on reading fluency and if they were helpful or hurtful, but in my opinion it also went into greater detail about the components of reading fluency. I am glad that I read this one second because it went into greater detail about the three (or four in this article) components that I read about in the first article. I found that I enjoyed that because it gave me another view point on what the earlier one was talking about.  The rest of the article about the One minute assessments, I found that as I was reading about how/why they are conducted in the classroom, I agree that some aspects can be good.  Something that I didn't agree with was that these assessments didn't measure comprehension, which to me is very key in measuring reading fluency, as well as reading in general. I think that these are considerable tools that we as teachers can use to give quick feed back about 2 aspects of reading fluency, but I think that we should also use other measures and ways to relate to and understand the child about their reading fluency experiences.  Especially when it comes to deciding how to teach or work on "problem areas" for that child.

Reading and Writing

As I was reading the Yopp and Yopp reading, I agreed with the central idea that written experiences will greatly enrich your vocabulary, even more so than a reading experience although that is required as well.  I could really relate to this because as I was learning spanish, I noticed that whenever I attempted to write anything I found myself searching and seeking out the right words to use, which in turn helped me to learn new words to use in my vocabulary. So from a personal experience, this really hit home to me and helped me to relate this reading to my own life. 

Further in the reading, I liked the idea of the "Ten Important Words". I think this brings a different strategy into the classroom for reading, especially young readers or struggling readers.  I think that it takes a comprehensive approach, that you really have to read the piece to truly participate in the activity, as well as bringing the class together and comparing answers and asking questions.  I thought that this was a great thing for the class as a whole to do.


The second reading reminded me a lot of the different activities that we did on Tuesday at the end of class.  I loved that there were several ideas and guidelines to making two letter, big letter words, and double vowel words within this reading to really help out a teacher looking to do this kind of lesson.  I always appreciate authors who take time to provide their audience with things like this if it is in the right context. I also like that everyone can be involved at once and get immediate feedback from the teacher. 


As I was looking up websites that I would use as a teacher, I came across this one that has multiple writing prompts for all ages.  I liked the ones in second grade so that's why I chose that particular page of the website!


2nd grade writing prompts

Phonics in the classroom!

I chose the two readings by Clark and Yopp & Yopp. The former reading really hit home to me because I have been involved with sports my whole life, from participating in Rec leagues at home, to playing here at UT competitively for a shot at 2 National Championships.  In having this background I am completely at home with the notion of "coaching" children as an aspect of teaching.  The method almost comes naturally to me because I have been around it for so many years of my life.  As I was reading about it, I noticed many similarities between the coaching in sports and coaching in the classroom.  


As I read about the different cues of facilitating children to read I really came to like certain ones.  Some of my favorites were: "take a running start", "throw away the gh (like the word through)", and "breaking a word into two parts".  The first cue I had not heard of before, and I really liked the idea behind that, the other two however were significant to me because they were used to help me read as a child and in my case, were best for my style of learning. A very distinct quote in this reading hit home to me and made the most sense to me when thinking about teaching children to read [in regards to three key factors that make a teacher a highly skilled coach]: "third, the teachers were aware of students' individual strengths and weaknesses". I am a true believer that knowing my students in this way will most help me as a teacher tailor their learning experience and help my understanding of how to teach effectively. 

Fun chart for learning phonics "chunks" weekly.

The second reading focused towards more activities that you could do in the classroom to help with phonics and reading as well.  This reading seemed more informational to me than the first one, being as we are reminded of what each aspect of phonics is again.  Being completely honest, this reading was hard for me to really get into until I got to the different activities. The songs "The Ants Go Marching", and "Down By The Bay" were a couple of my all time favorite songs to sing as a child, and until now it hadn't even dawned on me that they were songs built for working on rhyme! I loved learning that about the songs because at the time it didn't even seem like I was "learning".  I thought there were many great games and activities for phonics in this reading!

I absolutely love this video [minus the accents! ha] but I think this would be a cute to show the children initially to learn the song and maybe sing along with after they have learned the words! 

Letters, Letters, Letters!

After reading many blogs about the "letting go of the letters of the week" reading, I found myself agreeing with the many things said about it and loving the different ideas behind promoting it in the classroom. My school did letters of the week, but one things I did like about it was that we could bring something from home every week that started with that letter and write the word of the object on the board to show our peers.  I distinctly remember doing that at the end of the week after we had finished with a certain letter and was so proud to share my new "word" that I could spell all on my own for everyone.  In saying this, I agree with what Bell and Jarvis are outlining in their reading and agree with the classroom tactics very much.  I also know that it was a very special memory for me in doing this "letter of the week" in my classroom, and in knowing that I think it will be hard for me not to want to do it in my classroom!


Something that really surprised me about the IRA/NAEYC position paper was the idea that teaching is harder or more challenging in classrooms today.  I have not heard this mentioned in any of my other classes, and it is somewhat refreshing to hear.  I have personally felt this way for a while especially when examining the way I was taught in my elementary years, and even further the way my parents and grandparents were taught during their elementary years. I agree with this reading in that a big factor are children's background in literacy and overall, as well as daycare. I don't think that daycare was as big of a deal for my parents or grandparents before they entered kindergarten whereas I think that now it would be rare to find a child that has not attended a daycare before attempting to be in a kindergarten classroom. 


Something else in this article that I think struck me was that kindergarten was a critical year for vocabulary development. I too, am an avid pinterester and this was something that I thought was really neat for a kindergarten classroom in learning vocabulary! I think its a great interactive way for the students to have a chance to demonstrate learning and be creative with what they are learning!

1st Reading

 

Throughout all of these readings that we had to do for our next class, I found myself thinking that there were "steps" or certain "formulas" that will ensure certain outcomes in classrooms. Between the 6 T's of teaching, the family cultures, and the research results I realized there was a lot more into literacy and reading in the classroom than I even realized. 

I guess that when I started teaching I would assume I would just build in reading and writing into my lessons during the day with ease.  I learned through these readings that a lot of work has to go into the art of teaching children to read and the planning of teaching children how to read. I have learned in other classes I have taken at UT that learning can take place in multiple subjects being taught not just "spelling" or "math".  

Something that really jumped out at my in the Jone's Family Culture reading was the financial and spiritual aspect of reading. The financial aspect brings in math concepts and spiritual aspect brings a special bond between family members through reading.  I really enjoyed reading about that and intend on keeping that in mind when teaching and having a family of my own. 

I found that through the book reading and Effective Reading Instruction reading much emphasis was on talking about reading, the time you take to read in your classroom, and the selection of books that are presented to children. Some of these aspects I have learned about, but others I had not and especially with the research results in the chapter of the book, it backed up a lot of what was written. I appreciate that all these resources brought something different to my learning experience.

 

I would LOVE to read in there!!