week 10: assessment

When I hear the word assessment, I immediately think of a test. Chapter 10 of Classrooms That Work defines it as "collecting and analyzing data to make decisions about how children are performing and growing." I like that better.

One important factor of assessment is determining a student's reading level. This is done by having a student read passages at different grade levels and checking their accuracy and comprehension. This level is important for many reasons:

• It serves as a benchmark to show progress over the year
• Lets teachers know how much assistance a student will need
• Allows teachers to suggest books that won't be too easy or too hard

Beyond reading level, assessment is used in reading to identify good literacy behaviors and document student progress. The book says this can be done by assessing emergent literacy, word strategies, comprehension strategies, writing, attitudes, and interest. 

I think that this is an important part of assessment because it gives a more individual and informative representation of how each child is doing. Instead of just knowing Joe reads at a 2.5 level, a teacher is able to see his specifics strengths and weaknesses. Reading levels seem more like a broad map, while the individual behaviors are more pin-pointed. These behaviors are also able to be assessed daily, while reading level is assessed a few times a year. This regular check of skills helps the teacher get a more accurate look at how the student's are performing. 

1. Did you ever know your reading level in school?

2. Do you remember a particular student who was above/below the average class reading level?

week 9: guided reading

I found an article by Miscese Gagen called:

   The Importance of Guided Reading; The Significant Benefits of Guided Reading and 

   Specific Instructions on How to Use Guided Reading to Help Your Child or Student 

   Advance Reading Skills. 

Phew! Long title but great article! It is aptly named because it delivers everything it advertises.

Gagen defines guided reading as "reading out loud to an adult, or other proficient reader, with feedback." She explains that the key is providing guidance. "The process of the student reading out loud with correction and instruction is the essential criteria of guided reading that actually help the student learn and improve skills."

Next Gagen explains why guided reading is important. Basically it helps all readers with everything! That's kind of a stretch, but the list benefits is long. Research proves that guided reading helps with word recognition, fluency, and comprehension across grades. This isn't only true for struggling readers; good readers also reap the benefits. These benefits include helping students:

• establish fundamental skills necessary for proficient reading
• identify weaknesses and strengthen specific skills
• build fluency
• expand vocabulary knowledge
• develop reading comprehension skills

Okay so now that we know guided reading is wonderful, Gagen teaches us how to actually do it! Here are some of her main points:

• Have the child read aloud to you for at least 20 minutes a day
• You have to be reading along to provide immediate feedback
• Require complete accuracy, stopping at all errors and correcting all mistakes
• Help teach skills with coaching and strategies
• Require physical tracking (if tracking errors)
• Develop vocabulary as the child reads
• Help develop comprehension skills by asking questions
• Monitor progress and adapt to meet the child's needs

I appreciated this article because it is clear cut and explicit. It clearly lays out the benefits of guided reading, stressing its importance, as well as how to actually conduct it. It gives general instructions, but also more in depth information on each topic. This was very helpful to someone new to the concept of guided reading!

1. Do you remember doing guided reading in school?
2. Do you think guided reading should be done out of school also?

Real-Life Reading Inquiry

For my real-life reading inquiry I read with two of the kids I babysit. First I read (and reread) a few books with Sarah, who is four years old. Then I listened to Ian, eight years old, read for a while out of a shark book.

Sarah is in an "older fours" preschool class. It is obvious that they are working hard on the alphabet. She is picking up on letters she recognizes and calling them by name, usually saying "A, ahh, apple", if she notices an a, or "S, like me, Sarah!" if she finds an S. A month or two ago, she would mainly notice the illustrations of a story, naming things she saw or asking questions about what was portrayed. She still does that now, but also adds in more alphabetic knowledge. During this reading she pick out letters she knew and read some picture words (like seeing a stop sign and knowing it means stop).

Because of this, I would say Sarah is in the logographic stage reading. A handout from class on stages in children's development of word recognition describes logographic readers as "not yet reading the letters in the words but are trying to find any identifiable feature that will help them remember the words." In addition to what she pickup up on in the book, Sarah also knew the titles of almost all of the books on their bookshelf (there are dozens). This definitely fits in with the earlier parts of the logographic stage, where kids use images to identify words (like faces). She may be in the early, early, early stage of transitional alphabetic reading, where kids pick up the first consonant of a word. She does this when she notices a word from a line of text, then says a word she knows that starts with that same letter.

Next I read with Ian. He is in the second grade for the second time. Reading was a struggle for him previously, but the additional year has really helped him. Before he would become very discouraged if he didn't know a word, but now he uses strategies to get through the words. During this exercise he was reading out of a book about different kinds of sharks with many difficult words. As I watched him try to decode the words, I noticed many of the strategies chapter 5 of Classrooms That Work says good readers use. When he came across an unfamiliar word, he would reread it, look for familiar letter patterns (tion, ake, etc), and try to pronounce it. (He did not always reread the sentence to see if the word made sense)

I thought this activity was really interesting and helpful because it played out the things we've been learning in class, but in real life. I am a visual person, so actually seeing the strategies was very beneficial to me.  I babysit these kids a lot, but with four kids running around I'm not always on the lookout to see what reading stage they are in. This activity was great because it really let me apply what I've learned. It allowed me to be much more aware of how Ian and Sarah read.

This exercise relates to my future teaching because it let me study the differences between a preschooler and a second grader. Their levels span the gap of most of the stages of reading we have covered in class (logographic through orthographic). It allowed me to see overlaps between stages, which is something that will be present in all future students of mine. This activity also gave me a visual representation of the various stages of reading. From here, I will hopefully be better able to identify reading levels in students.

week 8: vocabulary and read alouds

In The Vocabulary-Rich Classroom, Lane and Allen say that vocabulary is a "critical factor in the development of reading skills". Most kid's vocabularies depend on their home environment. Some have parents who read, teach, and explain words, others don't. Knowing that a child's vocabulary is an indicator of future success, it is crucial to help fill the gap.

To help, the articles suggest teaching words that are extensions of words they already know. This is doubly helpful, because it deepens understanding of both the new and old word, linking them together.

Increasing word consciousness is also an important factor (interest in words and their meanings). Vocabulary Lessons talks about a word wall poster for new words students encountered, and they received points for using them in multiple ways. I think this ongoing activity/contest is a great idea! It encourages students to be on the look out for new words, making them excited and motivated to learn.

The other week I was helping the 10 year old boy I babysit with his science vocabulary. He had flash cards with the definitions and the vocab words, and was supposed to match them. Instead of thinking about them, he would just randomly match them up and hope some were right when I checked. He didn't have any interest in knowing words like generator and conductor.  To make the words stick, I linked them to his own interests. For generator I talked about how their power had recently gone out and they used a generator to provide electricity. For conductor, we talked about a mad scientist conducting an experiment. Putting these words into terms he understood made a huge difference because they became more meaningful to him.

Fun ways to expand vocabularies!

have a pocket full of creative
 synonyms for common words

use paint chips and a thesaurus
to find new ways to say a word

explicitly teach a word in multiple ways:
definition, visually, and in a sentence

1. How could you incorporate vocabulary learning without taking up much extra class time?

2. How can you encourage kids to be avid word hunters?

Week 7- comprehension and think-alouds

I really enjoyed reading "Kindergardeners Can Do It Too!". It describes and explains a variety of ways to teach comprehension to young readers.  I think that this is such an important topic because it raises a great question, how do you teach something so abstract to people so small?

What I took from the article is a solution to that. Mrs. Hope makes the process of comprehension less abstract and more tangible. She...

• uses charts and posters to map questions and thoughts 
• allows the students to 'click' on their brains
• lets them use physical representations of connections, questions, & ideas 
• lets students represent their ideas in illustrations. 

All of these things make the concept and skill of comprehension more concrete to the students, something they can strategize and accomplish.

I think that these strategies are great for kindergardeners because they are aimed at their developmental level.  As 5 and 6 year olds, these kids are in the pre-operational stage, where they like to use symbols, letting something represent something else.  They are also in the logographic stage of reading where they like to have pictures and images represent ideas.

1. What are some other ways to encourage reading comprehension in young readers?
2. Did you work on comprehension as a kindergardener? 1st or 2nd graders?

Week 6- Fluency

Although I know that fluency is crucial, before reading Creating Fluent Readers I didn't fully know what fluency meant.  Rasinski's 3 dimensions of fluency made the concept more clear:

       1. Accuracy in decoding- ability to sound out words / phonics 

       2. Automatic processing- little effort in decoding so they can focus on meaning

       3. Prosodic reading- use of expression, emphasis, punctuation, etc

I think that the third dimension is one that is often ignored. I remember reading our textbooks aloud in class and listening to how some students completely ignored punctuation, just reading and reading like it was all one sentence. 

On the other hand, I was babysitting a 6 year old boy who was reading Junie B. Jones an wanted to read it aloud to me.  As he read (30 pages..) I was so surprised to see how he changed voices for different characters, used inflection, and detected emotions and altered his voice to reflect them.  Although he often made mistakes, he would always go back and re-read the sentence, adding the inflection, emotion, pause, etc to the sentence.  He knew how it was supposed to sound and was practicing. 

I think that the difference between these two cases is exposure. The young boy's mother was a teacher, and she read to him all the time. Rasinski says it is important for children to "hear what fluent reading sounds like and how fluent readers interpret the text with their voices."  In the other situation, those children may have not received the same modeling. 

Other ways to help encourage fluency that I liked were:

        -having students perform speeches/scripts/dialogues/jokes

        -having students read along with the book on tape

        -teacher reads, then follow along silently, then read as a group

1. What are some other ways to encourage fluency?

2. What are some setbacks/flaws in schools teaching literacy?

Week 5: making words

I really enjoyed reading the Making Words article.  It describes a fun, interactive classroom activity that teaches students about building words and learning word patterns. Each child is given a set cards with letters printed on them. With the teacher's directions, they manipulate and arrange the cards to form multiple 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-letter words. At the end, the teacher goes through all of the words the class has made, highlighting letter patterns and sorting words that have similarities. I've listed some examples of things a teacher might discuss with her class after the activity:

1. Words that rhyme often have the same spelling pattern:   

 ride/side       pies/dies

2. Find the words that begin the same:

bag/bad/band

3. Find the words that have 2+ letters before the vowel (blends):

snip/spin/spring

4. For words with 2 vowels sound different than the vowel alone:

bat/sat  or  bet/set 

 beat or seat

5. Some words' letters can be rearranged to make new words:

nip/snip/pins/spin

6. Changing one consonant sound can change the word:

ride/ripe/rise

I think that this activity would be really beneficial to students because it puts them in control of making the words- letting them experiment and use different strategies to come up with the answer. It also teaches them about letter patterns, which is hugely helpful in learning to spell. A big part of this is getting students to realize that changing or adding a different letter makes words change in predictable ways. The more aware students are about these patterns, the better they will be able to read and write new words. 

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/

1. What is a way to make this game more advanced for older students?
2. Do you think there are any flaws or negatives about this activity?

Week 4: Chapter 5

This week's readings discussed strategies and activities to help students with spelling and reading. Chapter 5 of the textbook focused on phonics and spelling patterns.  I liked that it provided interactive and fun ways to practice spelling and reading.

One example is Guess the Covered Word.  I think that this activity is a great idea because it breaks down the steps of reading a new word and uses context clues to help.  This game also uses the idea of seeing reading as finding meaning. First, students first guess any word that might make sense in the sentence. Then the see the first letters until the vowel and alter that list of words before finding the correct answer.  This game is also nice because it can be adjusted to build off of earlier lessons- incorporating sentences and paragraphs, as well as digraphs. I really like this activity because it steps away from the boring 'sounding out' of words, and teaches smart strategies and thought processes that 'good readers' use. I also liked trying to figure out the examples of Guess the Covered Word in the book!

For similar reasons, I thought the Using Words You Know activity was a fun idea. This builds upon words that readers are already confident about, and helps them learn the task of finding similarities between known and unknown words. I also think that kids will enjoy the game because it uses rhyme and allows the students to write on the board. This activity sets up the skill to use spelling patterns to help learn new words.

               

1. What are some of the possible challenges in an activity like Guess the Covered Word?

2. What are some ways to take the Using Words You Know activity to the next level?

Week 3: valued readers and writers

I enjoyed this weeks readings because they put reading and writing in a whole new context.  In the article about supporting phonemic awareness, Yopp and Yopp explain what phonemes are and how they help young children to read and write, and many fun activities and games to get kids interested.

The article I liked most was "Letting Go of the 'Letter of the Week'". A main part of this is making the students feel confident by letting them know that they are already valued readers and writers.  I think that this is a great idea. Learning these skills can be a daunting task for young children, but by instilling confidence, the task is made easier. Kids are better readers than they are aware- recognizing food labels and media sources. Another idea I really liked in the article by Bell and Jarvis was that reading is about making sense.  One example in the article was making an alphabet using pictures of classmates and environmental print. This had real life value to the students, and they could place meaning with each letter, and transfer that into reading other words.

I have seen these ideas in action with the girls I babysit.  They may not know how to read officially, but they are readers.  They can name every movie in their collection (they have a million- it's impressive) and know which microwave button to push to make popcorn.

They also know how to write, maybe not in a way that you and I can understand, but in a way that means something to them. One of the girls just turned four today.  She is all about writing letters.  She'll draw a scribble and say- "what letter is this?", sometimes I'll take a guess, but other times I'll ask her. It might not always be right but she is having fun and is practicing.  She is also starting to recognize letters. Her name is Sarah so whenever she sees a word that starts with 'S' she says "this says Sarah!". Last week she asked me to write out her family members' names, then she got a crayon and traced over them. I praised her like crazy and she seemed pretty happy.  Next however, she got another sheet of paper and put long swirls all over it- telling me she wrote her family's names on her own. This time she was beaming.  It wasn't necessarily that she was writing properly, she was just happy to be writing something that was important to her.

1. What are some other ways to empower kids to feel like valued readers/writers?
2. Did you ever feel defeated or put down when learning to read or write like the authors of the 'Letting Go' article? How did that affect your later learning?

Week 2: Chapter 3 and the Jones family

Both Chapter 3 of the textbook and the article about the Jones family emphasize the importance of early literacy development.  They also both showed the different places from which children can draw their literacy foundations.

In the article about the Jones family, the women explain all aspects of their lives that include literacy- which is almost all of them. Some are obvious examples like reading the newspaper, magazines, the bible, and letters. Others were less obvious, like practicing oral literacy through prayer.  Lessons and examples of literacy can be applied and used in practically all situations of life.  These real-life examples help give a child a head start in the world of reading and writing.

Chapter 3 of the textbook discusses building a foundation for literacy.  Early on the authors discuss why we read and write.  I think this is an important concept to consider when teaching children.  Why would they learn if they can't use the skill?  I also appreciate all of the activities, and ideas geared towards developing children into readers. One of my favorite suggestions was providing a print rich classroom.  In addition to reading materials like books and magazines, it is helpful to label, put up charts and bulletin boards, and basically fill the room with words.  This keeps kids reading and shows the importance of reading- showing the real-life application of the skill. I also like the idea of allowing new readers and writers to practice writing on/with various different materials.  Maybe whiteboards, chalkboards, using paints, finger painting, using post-it notes, or even making letters out of noodles, or goldfish.

What area of your young life included the most literacy?
What are some out of the box ways in include literacy in a kid's day?

Week 1: classrooms that work

     After reading the article "What I've learned about effective reading instruction" and the first two chapters of Classrooms That Work I feel excited about the challenge ahead of me.  The textbook and the article cover many of the same points and ideas.  What I found to be the bottom line is that to have a class of successful students, reading and writing need to be emphasized in every area of learning.
     Aspects I found interesting were things that went against the typical routine/norm of elementary education.  The readings sort of stripped away the excess unproductive parts of instruction and got to the core of learning.
     I especially liked the idea of making the classroom more conversational.  Kids love to talk and tell you what they know/think.  Kids don't love 100s of worksheets a week.  This type of learning allows students to practice reading comprehension in a more real-life way.
     I also really liked the concept of grading proposed in the article.  It explains how effective teachers determined grades by effort and improvement, not achievement and assessment.  I think that this is a great idea because in addition to learning subjects and facts, elementary school is largely about learning how to be a student.  This type of grading allows students of all levels to be achievers, setting up a fair playing ground for each child.
   

Questions:
1. How can teachers overcome administrative guidelines to 'go against the organizational grain'?
2. What are the pros and cons of grading by improvement and effort rather than achievement and assessment?