Self Evaluation/Reflection

          Reading Education 430 has been a very insightful class that I have learned a lot in. Going in to this class I did not know how to enhance students reading or teach students how to read. I now feel comfortable in doing so all because of this class. Also, I did not know there were so many skills that went into teaching reading. Phonemic awareness, oral language, fluency, comprehension are all vital aspects when it comes to teaching reading and learning to read that have all been made clear through this course. I will be interning in a kindergarten class next year therefore I know that I will carry everything that I have learned from this course to my experience next year. I would not feel near as comfortable going into my internship, especially in kindergarten, without knowing the information I have gained from this course and all of its resources. I know that when I teach small groups and reading lesson I will feel more confident and aware of what I am doing and what I am teaching.

         After the first day of class when I saw how many articles we had to read for this class I was honestly not too happy. My opinion changed quickly when I read the first few articles because I learned a lot of valuable activities and techniques that I can use through reading them. Before this class I had never used blogger.com before. I really liked this idea instead of writing papers because I felt like we could interact as a whole class. I truly enjoyed reading everyone's blog post to see what they thought was interesting from the articles.  I thought this was a great idea and would be good to use in the fall and spring courses. 

       Overall I feel like this class was a good deal of work, but definitely worth it in the long run. I now have a literacy portfolio full of great articles, ideas, and activities that I can use in my classroom one day. Also, I have gained great knowledge in different areas of reading from everyone's Inquiry Projects. I know that I enjoyed researching my topic and learned a great deal from doing so. I feel like I have worked harder in this class than I have almost every other class that I have taken. I am so happy to say that I have completely grown confident in teaching reading in only one month. I would assess my grade in this course to be an A. 

Katie and Courtney's Inquiry Project Link

This is a link to our full powerpoint on read-alouds. Hope you enjoy!

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AbhurhcI_LS0ZHN0dmNoYl8zaHN4cWoyZjY&hl=en_US

Assessments and Pulling It All Together

           Assessments are one aspect that can be seen within a classroom multiple times a day. Even though teachers may have different ways of going about how they assess their students, they are extremely important. In Marie M. Clay’s Running Records For Classroom Teachers, she offers readers and inside look on key ideas about using running records and how to take, score, and interpret reliable records. A running record is used to capture the behavior of a student in order for a teacher to interpret what the child was probably doing. Two things to avoid when using running records are printed text and tape recorders. I had not thought about this before considering running records but I believe this to be very true. There is not enough room on a pre-printed page of text for a teacher to record all the unusual things that can occur. Even though a tape recorder may seem easier at first, it limits the analysis because a tape does not record visual information such as the child’s movement and facial expressions. I really enjoyed reading Running Records For Classroom Teachers because it is filled with great ideas on how to record what you see, how to score errors and self-corrections, and how to interpret a running record.

            Lori Jamison Rog and Wilfred Burton discuss the types of texts that are appropriate for students at various stages of their reading development and share our criteria for determining the difficulty levels of early reading materials in their article Matching Texts and Readers: Leveling Early Reading Materials for Assessment and Instruction. They bring by asking the question what is a “just-right” text? All students should be receiving instruction for reading in texts at their instructional reading levels. I found the part of the article discussing what level books look like very interesting because I was not sure what each level consisted of. I loved how the article goes through every level describing what they look like and what level the vocabulary, print, predictability, illustrations, and content and concepts are. This is a fantastic article that I found to be very resourceful and interesting!

            In Looking Inside Classrooms: Reflecting on the “how” as well as the “what” in effective reading instruction, the authors discuss the finding from a 1 year study that’s purpose was to evaluate the impact of all aspects of school reform on student performance. This article creates the idea that it is important to know the “how” and the “what” when it comes to teaching reading skills to students. Without the knowledge of how a word sounds or what it means, teachers cannot effectively teach reading to students. Honestly this article I thought was very useful because some people may not realize how important it is to know how and what is important when teaching reading skills. Classroom literacy instruction needs to reflect best practices as identified in the research. Therefore, it is crucial for teachers to know how to teach reading and what to teach.

            Richard A. Allington article, The Schools we Have. The Schools we Need., really stood out to me because I felt like I could relate to what he was saying through my experiences in the classroom. The section of his article that stood out the most was Books vs. Blanks. This sections touched on how, even though students are reading and writing 10% more than 10 years ago, they are not getting enough time during the school day to read and write. School consists of many worksheets, for instance fill in the blanks. These worksheets take up time that could be devoted to reading and writing. I believe that reading and writing are the stems to all subject areas and with a lack of practice children will be less likely to succeed. This truly bothers me but I feel like as a future educator times are about to change and everything that we have learned will be applied and made effective. I cannot wait to be in my own classroom and try all of these techniques and strategies. 

Guided Reading

            After reading the article "Modified Guided Reading: Gateway to English as a Second Language and Literacy Learning" written by Mary A. Avalos, Alina Plasencia, Celina Chavez, and Josefa Rascon I got a great insight of how greatly the benefits of guided reading impacts English-language learners as well as students who are working in small groups. The article defines guided reading as a component of a balanced literacy program providing differentiated, small-group reading instruction to four to six students with similar strengths and instructional needs or to heterogeneously grouped students. From my personal experience I believe that it is important to provide each group with a text that presents a challenge for the readers. I feel this way because I have seen students become bored within their groups because they do not feel challenged at all and the material they are reading is easy to them. If teachers provide the students with the appropriate text then all students should benefit from the guided-reading instructional model. This article touches on how guided reading can be modified for ELL students. To be honest, before reading this article I would have no clue how to help ELL students in my classroom during reading groups. From my experiences I have only seen ELL students sent out of the classroom to work with someone else during this time.
            In order to determine if an ELL student is at their proper reading level the teacher should base this off of how the student is reading in their first language. This might seem unnecessary but it is important to know that the student at-least understands to concept behind reading. A great benefit for teachers when it comes to guided reading is that it provides a systematic, yet open-ended framework for evaluating students' needs while building upon the strengths students have already demonstrated. I feel like I will use guided reading in my classroom because it allows the students to collaborate together but at the same time they are practicing the skills they need to. My article goes on to discuss ways a teacher can plan for guided reading and some different activities that can be used for these lessons. I feel like this article is a great resource to use if a teacher has an ELL student in their classroom. Also, I found this article to be reliable of its content. The greatest aspect that the article provides is the charts. These are very informative and give validity to how effective guided reading can be!

Teaching Reading Comprehension

       Reading comprehension is a crucial step in the advancement of education. From the articles and book chapter, we are able to see that strategies and techniques for teaching reading comprehension can be introduced as early as Kindergarten. Students building reading comprehension is something that does not come natural, it must be taught. As a teacher, it is important to implement strategies and techniques as early as possible in order for your students to succeed within your classroom.
       In the first article, "What Every Teacher Needs to Know about Comprehension", Laura S. Pardo discusses how comprehension is a complex process that has been understood and explained in numerous ways. Comprehension occurs in the transaction between the reader and the text. This is a crucial point because without knowing the words comprehension is impossible. Students must make connections and infer what the text is saying in order to build their comprehension skills. I feel like the Goldilocks approach is extremely effective because I feel like in order for students to build their comprehension skills, they must be interested in what they are reading. I feel like readers should choose books that are not too hard or too easy, but just right. By doing this the student will be more willing to read. It is also important for teachers to pick their read-aloud selections wisely because you want something that will cause the students to instantly be engaged. Making proper selections of texts for students can be challenging, but when it comes to increasing reading comprehension skills this is extremely important. Not only is it important for the teacher to guide her students, it is also important for the student to have a say in what he or she is reading.
      In the second article, "The Comprehension Matrix: A Tool for Designing Comprehension Instruction", Sharon Ruth Gill discusses how the comprehension matrix "provides teachers with a way of dealing with the overwhelming amount of information available on the teaching of comprehension by helping them organize activities into pre-reading, during reading, and post-reading". I completely agree with Gill in the experiences that illustrate the three major factors that affect comprehension. 1. the reader, 2. the text, and 3. the situation. If one of these three were left out when learning reading comprehension, the process could not be done. It takes the reader looking at the text and making connections, asking questions, and making inferences in order to figure out the situation. All students can learn to read text while comprehending at the same time, but this is a long process that must be taught as early as possible.
      I was most interested in the third article "Kindergartners Can Do It, Too! Comprehension Strategies for Early Readers". In this article, Anne E. Gregory and Mary Ann Cahill tell how Kindergarten teacher Mrs. Hope implements reading comprehension within her classroom. By adapting a higher grade lesson about reading comprehension into Kindergarten curriculum, Mrs. Hope was able to come up with very unique techniques and strategies for increasing her students reading comprehension. The section that I truly connected with was the part on Visualization and Mind Movies. I remember when I was in third grade, my teacher was big on making mind movies in our head while she was reading. The first week of school she asked us to close our eyes and make a mental picture of the sound we were about to hear. She then grabbed a rain stick and turned it over. We all instantly heard the rain and made a mental picture. She then told us that every time we heard the rain stick that meant it was time to come to the carpet for a read-aloud. Third grade was when my teachers started reading only chapter books and that is why they made making mental pictures so important for us. To this day I have remembered this and already have a rain stick to use in my classroom one day!!
      In Chapter 7, Developing Thoughtful Comprehension, I found the comprehension strategies to be very similar to those discussed within the articles. Out of all the strategies and techniques I have read about I feel like the main goal is to turn your students into automatic thinkers when they are reading. They should then use inferences and questions to further their understanding of the text.  I feel like think-alouds are something that can stretch a students thought into a large class discussion or an even more in-depth or thoughtful thought for that student. I know that when I have my own classroom one day I will encourage my students to think-aloud and share what they are seeing or thinking in their head.

Vocabulary!

           Having a strong vocabulary not only permits us to effectively participate in our society but also promotes reading comprehension. There is a strong connection between vocabulary and reading comprehension, which is why vocabulary instruction is so important. I was immediately excited when I saw that our reading topic for this class session was vocabulary. As a young student I was always interested in spelling and vocabulary words that were used in the classroom. As a future teacher I am still very interested in this area and hope to promote this in my classroom by having a word wall.

            In Camille L. Z. Blachowicz and Peter Fisher’s article “Vocabulary Lessons” the importance of teaching vocabulary lessons is thoroughly examined.  The authors state that research points to four practices that teachers can use to expand students’ vocabularies and improve their reading. These include developing word awareness and love of words through word play, deliver explicit instruction to develop important vocabulary, build strategies for independence, and engage students actively with a wide range of books. The practice that really stuck out to me was the first one involving word play. I am interested in younger grades therefore I feel like activities that involve the students playing with vocabulary words will create the idea that vocabulary words can be fun. The students will then become more engaged and interested in the words and will automatically be learning these words. I loved Renee’s idea in class about how it is a good idea to use Velcro on the word wall so you can play games and activities.

            In “The Vocabulary-Rich Classroom: Modeling Sophisticated Word Use to Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth” written by Holly B. Lane and Stephanie Arriaza Allen, modeling is used to show how teachers can effectively overtime teach students sophisticated vocabulary.  I really connected with this article because I strongly believe in modeling and feel like it is very beneficial to both teachers and students. I enjoyed reading the section Modeling Sophisticated Vocabulary Use because I believe that it is important when students are learning new material that they are able to make real life connections. In my opinion this was a great article that embeds many of my same thoughts and beliefs.

            While reading the online article I noticed that there is a whole section on Basal Readers. I have had very little experience with Basal readers because, my cohort, Anderson County does not use this system. I feel like this is a great program that helps teachers gather materials and students build their comprehension and vocabulary skills. I found it very shocking that children by the age of three who come from a more privileged family have heard 30 million more words than the children who do not. I feel like all children hear tons of words because of the places they may go. For instance, daycare, after school care, the grocery store, gas station etc. I did not know that this gap was so significantly large! As a future educator this shows that it is crucial to help students develop a strong vocabulary.

            Chapter 6 is full of great strategies and activities for teaching vocabulary. The technique that stood out the most to me was teaching vocabulary words during a read aloud. I have seen this done in a classroom and I feel like it is a great idea. Introducing words that you feel students will be unfamiliar with before the story allows the students to think about those words and use context clues in the story to figure out the meaning. 

Steps and Strategies for Teaching Reading

         Teaching students to read is not as easy as one may think. There are numerous details and steps that go into this process. For instance, phonemic awareness and word recognition are both crucial processes when learning to read.  In every classroom, grade level, and school there will always be students who struggle with reading. It is our job as future teachers to learn strategies and activities in order to help these students. In “What can I say besides “sound it out”? Coaching word recognition in beginning reading” “Supporting Phonemic Awareness Development in the Classroom”, and Chapter 5 in the book I found many unique strategies and activities that I would love to use one day in my own classroom.

         Kathleen Clark's article, “What can I say besides “sound it out”? Coaching word recognition in beginning reading”, starts out by giving highly effective instructional techniques to use when helping a student to read. It is important to allow the student to sound out the word on their own rather than just simply telling them how it is pronounced. While I was reading the article one small sentence really stuck out to me. Clark states that, “The teachers all said that coaching was critical to their success in helping children learn to read, and they indicated it was a technique they acquired after completing their teacher certification program.” This made me feel a lot better because as of right now I am not very confident in my own ability to teach/coach a child to read. I will be student teaching in a Kindergarten class starting in August where I know learning to read will be an everyday activity for these students. I really look forward to learning how to become an effective reading teacher myself and after reading this article I feel like that will be possible sooner than I expected!

         Hallie Kay and Ruth Helen Yopp’s article, “Supporting Phonemic Awareness Development in the Classroom”, talks about the importance of phonemic awareness. If I had been asked to define this word prior to reading this article, I do not believe I would have been able to. They define the term as a construct relatively new in our understanding of how children become readers. Therefore, without phonemic awareness researchers would not be able to have a great understanding of how children learn to read.  Throughout the article there were several activities that I found to be very interesting. For instance, I really liked the Twenty Kids Have Hats oral reading. I thought this was great because first of all the students are able to interact in the read aloud which is important because it keeps them involved.  Also, student made work is important to have around the classroom and this would be a great opportunity. This one activity has the student reading, writing, drawing, and most importantly thinking. This is a very effective activity in my opinion and really helps the students become aware of rhyme schemes.

         Chapter 5 in the book really hits on important strategies and ideas for teaching phonics and spelling patterns. When I was little I remember my teachers discussing the importance of using context clues. This is something that I still use up to this day and I know is really effective when reading. I liked the idea of the Guess the Covered Word. I thought that this would be a great opportunity for students to use context clues in order to figure out the word that has been covered up. Also, this activity can allow the class to create a story to be posted up on the wall. This activity helps the students with spelling as well as word recognition. Chapter 5 is very resourceful and would be nice to have as a reference in the future.

Helpful Website for those interested in 1st grade

Here is a wonderful blog for anyone interested in teaching first grade. There are a lot of fun ideas to help with reading...

http://thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com/search/label/reader%27s%20response

Reading Fluency

           When it comes to fluency, there is not one universally agreed-upon definition. Overall, most definitions include accuracy, speed/rate, and prosody acting as a “bridge” to comprehension. Before reading these articles, I honestly did not know how to define fluency for myself. After reading I found that I agree with Theresa A. Deeney who believes that our understanding of fluency should be broadened rather than narrowed. Researchers have progressively decreased their main focus to accuracy and rate. I completely agree with her statement because when it comes to someone, especially a child, being a fluent reader there should be a lot more focus on other areas rather than just rate and accuracy. I also found that I agree with a statement made by Timothy Rasinski. He states that developing fluency in reading requires practice. I agree with this because when a child first learns to read they are reading word by word and not comprehending as they go. This is normal for beginning readers, but it is the teacher’s job to help the student have great progress over the year. Overall, I found that fluency is extremely important and can make a huge impact on a child’s reading ability.

            In the article, “One-Minute Fluency Measures: Mixed Messages in Assessment and Instruction Deeney discusses one-minute fluency measures and their possible effects on students. One point that Deeney brought up that really hit home for me was about endurance. She states that endurance can be a significant stumbling block for struggling readers. This hit home for me because I can read a book no longer than an hour and a half. When I hit that point my speed slows down and I am no longer able to comprehend what I am reading. Elementary school is when most students learn to read and a good percent of these students do not enjoy reading. I believe that as a teacher it is important to help each student increase their accuracy rate so the students can read, while understanding, for a longer period of time. When it comes to a one-minute fluency measures I know that they can help identify the students who can not read accurately and quickly, but some students can get away with coming off as fluent when they really are not. In my opinion there are more negative results of one-minute measures than positive results. Yes I do believe that one-minute measures should be used, but there should be other assessments given to truly know if a student is reading fluently. For example, I liked the RTI approach where the students are measured at the beginning of the week and then at the end. I like this approach because the student gets the practice he or she needs and we are able to see progression with the help of practice.

            In the second article, “Creating Fluent Readers”, Rasinski discusses dimensions of reading fluency and ways to assess and teach these different dimensions. The dimensions that Rasinski identified are accuracy in word decoding, automatic processing, and prosodic reading. After reading through his article I related his beliefs to modeling. He states that students need to hear what fluent reading sounds like and how fluent readers interpret text with their voices. I completely agree with this statement because I am a believer of students learning by example. Some students may not use dialect in their voice therefore not use prosodic reading. Students who have not been read to out loud before would not know that you could understand text better when using inflection and dialect in your voice. All readers struggle in different area therefore it is important that the teacher uses different assessments to help the students with their difficulties. Overall, students need to know what fluency is in order to know what level they are reading on.
           Chapter 4 does a great job of explaining the value in fluency and many different instructional strategies that teachers can use to help their students with reading fluency. One thing that did not surprise me was the definition in the book because I read this chapter after I had read the articles. The books definition fluency is the ability to read most words in context quickly and accurately with appropriate expression. This definition strongly relates to the two articles. One this that surprised me the most in the article was how much the fluency rate increases across grade levels. I did not know that progression in rate from one grade to the next was significantly high. One detail that the book mentions is the use of a word wall. Every lower grade elementary classroom that I have been in had a word wall. I feel like students can really benefit from a word wall and it is important for a teacher teaching a lower grade to have one. Overall, I learned that measuring reading fluency is crucial for everyone no matter how old you are.