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?