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.