Encouragement

For my reading blog I read Chapter 12 from Classrooms the Work by Allington and "Every Child a reader: What one Teacher can do" by Pinnell. I found the later article so encouraging because I feel that so many educators and teachers in training can become overwhelmed with the assessment geared, observation laden style of schooling we've fallen into. I can only hope to someday have a classroom like that of Carol's in the article.  I feel like it really spurs us all on because it reminds us to stick to our guns about helping students and wanting them to learn. Too often and too easily do teachers fall into a rut and look towards worksheets etc for lessons, instead of drawing on inquiry and engagement. I especially like her point about taking time to create a community. For some students school is there on area to feel safe and in control, creating a community helps all students to feel welcome and involved in their education.

What are good ways to not become overwhelmed and fatigued by the position?

Real Life Inquiry

Over spring break I was able to go into a classroom and observe something I've always wondered about, how teachers maintain their classes during read-alouds. It's something I have always struggled with because your attention has to be so many places and you strive to control the class with out further disrupting the lesson. The teacher I was observing, Ms. S, and her co-teacher, Ms. B, did a wonderful job of this. Before the class began reading they jumped once, got out their 'wiggles', and then sat down criss cross apple sauce, on their pockets. (Which I thought was particularly clever because it avoids the ever controversial word 'bottom' hah. ) Then Ms. S introduced the book to the class. They were reading Sense Suspense by Bruce McMillan, and to get the ready to read she explained that our senses relate to adjectives because we use them to describes how things touch, taste, feel, sound, and smell.

Once Ms. S began reading she also began to ask questions about the book, she would have the students identify the picture and ask them for what senses they think they would use with that object and how. This is were the classroom management became evident because she only called on those who were raising their hands and she would say the name of the person she was calling on. She also set rules about that before reading, saying that she would only talk to people who were on their pockets raising their hands. If another student shouted out after she had called on someone she would simply remind them that they "only have one Mike in [their] class" and then wait for Mike to answer instead. Ms. S focused mostly on the choices students were making, taking no more than a few seconds to tell them to make wise choices or remember that they are choosing to leave the carpet if they continue. She also would make whole class suggestions in a polite and involving way, " I would love it if we would raise our hands" instead of just telling them to raise their hands. At the end of the book when the class was beginning to get antsy while answering question she had them all stand up and do some brief exercises to settle them back down, while continuing asking questions about the book.

I like the idea of making student responsible for themselves, reminding them that they are making choices and all choices have consequences.
Are there any other specific suggestions about how to manage a class while reading?

Guided Reading in Special Education

For my article I wanted to focus on guided reading in special education, I found this article about students with autism http://journals.cec.sped.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1429&context=tecplus, that I felt was really en-lighting about how to engage students. What I felt was most encouraging is that the reading assessments used compared students to their own previous abilities instead of national averages. This gives a better and more realistic view of how much a student has improved. This is good for all student, but particularly those in special education because while some students may be intelligent they are seen as low-achieving due to their grades compared to national averages. As the article states guided reading is also an adaptable teaching method that can engage students at all levels because the level of the book can be changed, questions can be modified and so on. This method also provides a lot of opportunity for one on one teacher involvement to help students who may struggle.

Evoking Vocabulary

While reading both the "Vocabularly Lessons" article by  Blachowicz and Fisher, and the "eVoc Strategies: 10 Ways to Use Technology to Build Vocabulary" article by Dalton and Grisham I began to think about the practicality and limitations of technology in the class. As Dalton and Grisham say technology can be a very useful tool, especially in a day and age where everyone pulls out their Ipad/pod/phone to do anything and everything. I though their ideas about using Wordles were very useful, in fact it spurred me to look into how they can be beneficial some more and I found this blog post http://thecleversheep.blogspot.com/2008/10/top-20-uses-for-wordle.html where a lot of great things you can do with Wordles are outline. Great! 

That being said, I do feel an over-reliance on technology can be a hindrance for a classroom. Going to UT we all know that sometimes, things just don't work. On those days students need to know how to receive all the information that they were going to pull of the internet from books and other sources. I also started thinking about how I like the idea of using the Oxford English Dictionary when teaching some vocabulary, or at least a simplified similar style so that, like Blachowicz and Fisher mentioned, students can learn the etymology, and morphology of words in order them to help know roots they can apply to other words.

How much technology to you think should be used in classrooms? In what ways?

The Importance of "I Wonder..."

For reading this week I read were Gill's,"Reading Teacher" and Gregory's "Kindergartners can do it too! Comprehension strategies for early readers." Both articles discussed the importance of comprehension. It was wonderful in Gregory's article to see kindergartners being self-aware of schema. It  made me think of how you have to break things down to be on learning level with a class, but once you do they can truly build on ideas and use them to learn more. I really loved the idea of stopping and talking to a class about what they think they know about a subject of a book before reading. The 'I wonder' statements really get a class thinking about what they already know and gives them questions to be looking for in the text. When a class has guidance like that for a reading they are paying closer attention in order to find the answers to their questions.
Building off the idea of comprehension I recently saw this video about teaching  comprehension to children. 

I think that using the idea presented in the articles as well as asking question as the reader does in this video will help teachers who, as Gill says, are still unsure about whether or not students comprehend.

Finding Key Words

                                                            

Yopp and Yopp's article " Ten Important Words Plus: A Strategy for Building Word Knowledge" provides teachers with a way to hone in on material classes are reading. Their strategy of having students independently find the ten most important words it ensures that all students are fully reading the passage. It also checks for understanding and allows time for students to read at different speeds which would be very beneficial in an inclusive classroom. This is also a very adaptable strategy. Yopp and Yopp's suggest some places to go once the bar graph is constructed but that could very greatly depending on the class. You could even task students with how they feel the ten most common words could be best demonstrated and build off their ideas. The best part about this strategy is that it fully engages students and encourages to really go through passages in order to gain what is most important. 

I believe many of us have seen a student struggle with reading. So many times we are at a lost at how to help them when "sound it out" doesn't work. The article by Kathleen F. Clark "What Can I Say Besides 'Sound it Out'? " is especially helpful to future teachers because it details how to coach students into reading correctly instead of asking them to make the letter sounds and figure it out. The most interesting example to me was that of the teacher who asked his students if "fenk" was a word when they were trying to say the word "fence". Reminding students of what various sounds letters make and then having them eliminate options is a skill they can continue using for the rest of their lives. It is far more reliable than simply sounding words out because it engages their thoughts and their context for the word. Have the ever heard a word like 'fenk' in a story before? Would 'fence' make more sense?

What ways do you still use the reading skills, such as "sound it out" as we were so often taught, in your lives?

Reading Fluency

One thing I really gathered this week from bot the Rasinski and Deeney articles was how important it is to be cautious when assessing reading fluency. As Deeney displayed even when a student passes the accuracy portion of a reading assessment it does not mean the comprehend the story or could retell it accurately. Fluency is such a multi-faceted phenomenon it is an injustice to the students when teachers fail to test it correctly, really. It is unfair to a student to just figure out whether or not they can read 'accurately' and quickly  considering they might not gaining anything from the texts.

As step in the right direction then is to focus on understanding when teaching reading fluency. Rasinski's article brought up the good point that modeling fluent reading is beneficial, but only when couple with the students repeatedly reading on their own. That is where things like coaching comes into play in order to help students gain the most out of reading as well as activities such as read alouds, reader's theatre and word wall's with high-frequency words come which will help to build students excitement and confidence in reading and understanding.

Literacy is Everything

One of the things that was most definitely highlighted in the " Letting Go of Letter of the Week" article by Donna Bell and Donna Jarvis was how many students come in to the classroom as readers but they believe they aren't. When we think about reading in a classroom setting it is so hinged on the ability to pick out letters and read trade books we do seem to forget that literacy is everywhere. As shown in the article students could pick up reading cues on common brands despite of background differences. By isolating 'school reading' as a phenomenon that only occurs between the pages of classroom book or novel we're severely limiting our expectations for students and overlooking a wealth of prior knowledge. Even in older grades you shouldn't believe student can't or doesn't read just because they don't read or enjoy assigned novels, magazines, cereal boxes, board books, trade books, beach reading are all still viable forms of literacy.

Literacy as a Culture

The Amy Johnson article, "The Jones Family’s Culture of Literacy" brings up a very interesting point about how and why people learn to read. For some people reading seems so second nature that it's easy to forget it came from somewhere. People, like Kiki, who are fortunate to have a family culture centered around reading will have a stronger grasp of literacy concepts from a younger age that will be helpful when going in top school. Johnson really highlighted how people can be so immersed in literature, whether consciously or not, through religion and finances, entertainment and day-to-day life. I feel that our ability to read is sometimes taken for granted because it is so easy for so many of us. To think about just how many words you read in one day, or how many words I have to know to be able to write this, just the individual words in my vocabulary I have the ability to read, write, and say. The amount of words the average adult must know is mind-boggling and we so often pass it off as something that just happens.

When you do start to think about how central literacy is to our culture as a whole it becomes clear how important it is that students who come into your classroom are good readers when they leave. This means however, that you are going to have to find ways to connect with not only the Kikis in your classroom who have grown up in reading environments, but also with those who have grown up with little to no literacy. Knowing about literacy culture reminds us how different every student is. To be effective teachers we must not only remember how crucial the lessons are, but that every student will be learning them in their own way.
How has your literacy culture shaped how you read? Something to consider.