Every Child a Reader

I love the exert from the Pinnell article, "...regardless of students' individual strengths, teachers have the same goal: to help all students make literacy a true part of their lives. With few exceptions, every child can become literate" (Para. 1).
To me, this should be a promoted belief by all teachers. If a teacher does not truly believe this, then how can he/she possibly build a struggling student's self efficacy to motivate him/her to want to do better?
Pinnell also noted that "...there are daily decisions that teachers can make to benefit students..." (Para. 3). We must keep in mind that we may not have 100% control over the entire scheme of things or the entire curriculum we administer, but we can make a difference on a small scale.  We must make the effort, where we can, for the benefit of our students when it comes to building on their literacy skills.

I love the area that covers putting your theory to action. To me, we have no control over these students' home lives and how much time that they are able to dedicate to reading, but we can control things within the context of our classrooms. One theory that I will ensure to employ within my classroom is to ensure that my students read continuous text every day through reading workshops and cross curriculum. Just the exposure to the written word is vital to these students' literacy development.

Real-Life Reading Inquiry > Fluency

Real-Life Reading Inquiry (Fluency)

For me to complete this assignment, I observed a third-grade classroom in a local Knox county school where the majority of the students were ESL learners (English as Second Language).  For this reason, I focused my attention on how the teacher, we’ll just call him Mr. X, worked on these students’ fluency in regards to reading.  I observed approximately 13 hours within this specific classroom and also conducted an interview of Mr. X regarding the issue of fluency in his classroom.

One specific lesson that Mr. X used to work on his students’ fluency was really cute and was an awesome way to address other areas that would affect fluency. These other areas included: comprehension, vocabulary and a cool way for the students to better understand the elements of the story. This lesson was what he referred to as a story innovation.  For this lesson, Mr. X offered the class a choice between three different grade level appropriate books. These were: Jumanji by Chris VanAllsburg, Not My Dog by Colby Rodowsky, and The Adventures of Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey.  All of the selection options for this third-grade class were fiction-based stories, but Mr. X said he has applied this lesson concept to more scientific-based unit themes like when they were studying spiders. He said he then offered a selection of informative non-fiction books and applied the same methods.

It was really neat to see the kids work and interact with each other. Mr. X had the kids in ability-based groups where he allowed each group to choose the book for use. Then each group would team-read, assisting each other as necessary. Once the story was read, the students brainstormed ideas on how they could change the story.  Each team re-wrote the story by changing characters, many to their own names, and then continued by altering the timeline, the plot, and sometimes even the endings to the story. It was a very interactive and fun way for the kids to build on their skills. Mr. X floated the room from team to team providing assistance where needed and pointing out key-words or vocabulary, for the teams to focus their understandings on. At the end of the week, each team would present to the class an overview of the original story and explain their new one. The kids appeared to love it.

I can see how you could use this method to address cross-curriculum issues and still work on building some much needed literacy skills. The kids illustrated their remade stories so I can see how using more familiar text to explain their stories would help build on fluency while possibly adding new vocabulary to their libraries.

I have found a multitude of readings online available on this very teaching concept.  A few that I wanted to share that would be of great use to us all as new teachers are the following two articles:

Story Innovation: An Instructional Strategy for Developing Vocabulary and Fluency by Priscilla L. Griffith and Jiening Ruan available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/20204592

And an example of this applied at the 1^st grade level is available at: (Lengthy but it does work and opens up helpful PDF)

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=story%20innovation%20strategy%20to%20build%20fluency&source=web&cd=6&ved=0CGgQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fhomepages.wmich.edu%2F~whitten%2FStudentsatWesternMichigan%2Fsped534strategies%2FReading%2520Comprehension%2Fstory%2520innovations.pdf&ei=5s15T6LqCZKW8gTHi7SFCg&usg=AFQjCNFe9JO1jeAtPAer7guIJNsUFSrssg

Guided Reading

I found a great to-the-point article entitled "Guided Reading in the Primary Classroom" by Mary Kreul.

This article focuses on guided reading within your classroom, but primarily at the lower-grade levels (k-2). Guided reading in listed as one component of a four-block reading program consisting of self-selected reading, shared reading, writing, and working with words.
What I got out of this article is that guided reading does something for the reader before, during, and after the reading. Before the reading: the purpose is set, vocabulary is introduced, opportunity for predictions is provided, and time to talk about the strategies good users use. During the reading we guide students as they read, provide wait time, give prompts or clues as needed by individual students, such as "Try that again. Does that make sense? Look at how the word begins." After the reading we can strengthen comprehension skills and provide praise for strategies used by students during the reading.

One great tool I have seen in classrooms is very similar to this image I have found....

Vocabulary, Read Alouds, and Technology

Vocabulary words....
Hmmm...
These words might annoy many students, both past and present, but it doesn't have to be so.  We can incorporate new and fun ways of learning or teaching our vocabulary words so it is more beneficial for all. One method is to use technology to assist.  What better way that to illustrate what you are trying to express with words by using pictures.  This will engage more students and allow us to reach many that we might not otherwise be able to.  One example would be to simply show matching pictures to go with each vocabulary word as it is introduced on your smart board, PowerPoint, or even printed handouts you developed on Microsoft Publisher or equivalent software.  There are so many things we can do with technology to assist us in this and other challenges, we just need to be creative and willing to try new things within our classrooms.

So, as you can see.. technology can aid with building vocabulary words, but it is also a helpful tool  you can apply during your read alouds. 

How will you use technology in your classroom to maintain your students' attention?

Real Teachers Support Their Readers

What does this statement mean? Real Teachers Support Their Readers???

Well, according to this week's article from Pardo (2004), Teachers support their readers in six main ways: teach decoding skills, help students build fluency, build and activate prior knowledge, teach vocabulary words, motivate students, and engage students in personal responses to text.
So the myth isn't true.. there isn't just one part to learning to read or to teaching someone else to read :-)
It is a process.
A great teacher finds a healthy balance amongst all of the areas needed.
What would this look like>

What can I say.. I'm a Visual learner:-)

Pretty much you can see it is a process to placing meaning to what one reads.

Words, What are they good for?

Words are very useful. This is, of course, very true for a student who is learning to read. Without learning his/her words, a student might simply try to get by with memorizing symbols in frequently viewed books. Of course, many might do this anyways, but this week's readings provided ample opportunities through recommended activities to motivate our students to truly learn their words.

I found several activities that I believe would be both challenging and fun for my elementary students. One activity, called odd-one-out, was one of my favorite word games from my earlier school years. So the concept is pretty simple. A list of words is provided to the student(s), sometimes with pictures, sometimes without, and the student must determine which word is the odd-one-out.

What was a fun activity that you can remember for using and learning words growing up that you might share in your future classroom?

Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic Awareness
What is it? This term is very important. It is the ability for a student to hear, identify, and be able to manipulate small units of sounds in/from the spoken word. This is sooo important for our early learners. This now explains to me why children with hearing disabilities or delays have a harder time speaking. I have kids in my family who this applies to.
I found it interesting when I did some extra research on the topic of just how much information is out there for parents and teachers to apply this type of teaching in the classroom or at home. I found several activities that I would love to access in my classroom. I believe that the Rhyming word games/activities are my favorite because they appear a little more interactive.

How will you apply this strategy within your classroom to make it fun and interactive?

Fluency

After reading the assigned articles from Deeney (2010) and Rasinski (2004) along with the Ch. 4 from our text (Cunningham, 2010), I view fluency very differently. I previously considered fluency in reading simply that of being able to read a passage or whatever one is reading in a way that flows smoothly and sounds right... I now consider it a more complex process. This is especially true for those who struggle with finding "meaning of understanding" in what they read. I have noticed a lot of classroom time in today's classroom is focused on vocabulary to promote comprehension, but is this the best approach?? What ways will you promote comprehension in your classroom while still promoting fluency without confusing the two?

Emergent Literacy

As a teacher in TN we should focus our efforts on those strategies which truly benefit our students in their learning process(es). One snippet from the IRA/NAEYC joint position statement (1998): Stages of development that really stuck with me was: "...early childhood teachers need to understand the developmental continuum of reading and writing and be skilled in a variety of strategies to assess and support individual children's development and learning across the continuum. At the same time teachers must set developmentally appropriate literacy goals for young children and then adapt instructional strategies for children whose learning and development are advanced or lag behind..." To me, this statement sums up the need for ALL teachers to incorporate different strategies to meet the needs of a variety of students. It is our responsibility, as future teachers, to educate ourself in this manner. I loved that the phases provided a three-part approach to expressing what the student, what the teacher, and what the parent(s) can do because it is a team-effort. How will you incorporate this approach within your future classroom? How will you motivate parents to get involved even when their life has a busy schedule?

What I found important from: Building the Literacy Foundation and "The Jones Family's Culture of Literacy".....

I totally see the importance of having family build a child's desire to read and work with him/her to build on vocabulary and comprehension. Now days, it does not necessarily have to be a mother or a father which does this. A great example of this was how the Jones Family worked together to ensure all family members received exposure to different forms of literature to improve upon his/her ability(ies) regardless of who provided the opportunity, it was a family affair.

Another thing that stuck out to me was the importance of the teacher reading aloud in the classroom and the opportunity given to the student(s) to have individual reading time.

I have brainstormed so many different ways to make this fun for my future students...Of course, whichever school I end up teaching in will ultimately affect how I implement my ideas.
One way I think would be fun for the kids is to incorporate reading stations spread throughout the classroom, not just in a reading corner... maybe on bean bags or something the kids will find as "fun."

Another idea is to include activities within other content areas (e.g., science, social studies, etc.) that will force learning of new and challenging vocabulary words. One way of this might be to conduct a treasure hunt in our room where the students can only move on to the next clue once he/she has determined the meaning of a given word and provided an example sentence making use of this word. This is just one idea.


Can you think of other activities to engage your students in the learning process and build upon their vocabularies?  What about ways to ensure they don't just acquire a vocabulary but a meaningful vocabulary? Thanks for sharing:-)