Preparing Our Classrooms for Literacy

The first article I read was Allington's "The schools we have, the school we need. The Reading Teacher." I picked up several key points that we have been talking about this past semester in Reading Education, but also in my 422 class. These main points came through when Allington compared what teachers to to what they should be doing. For example, he compared sorting vs. assorting. Schools place such an emphasize on placing and tracking lower developed students without understanding or recognizing their full potential. It is almost as if teachers are losing time by assessing and tracking who should be placed in special help or a lower reading level. In actuality, students should be instructed on their ability. It is so important for teachers to not undermine a child's ability. In fact, I am a strong believer in integrating reading through every subject. As Allington pointed out in his article, there is slim pickings over the books in which children can choose from in the classroom. Teachers also are uncomfortable with the idea of letting kids flat out sit and read. They feel like they are not doing their job I suppose or that children aren't taking anything away from that experience. I think this is going away from everything we have learned so far. If a teacher sets the child up in supportive ways such as a word wall, pictures, reading folder, and etc, a child can use those tools to facilitate and stimulate themselves with the text they are discovering on their own. Allington mentioned ways in which we could change our classroom to support literacy. I really liked the idea of delegating two days out the week to be literacy days. However, much of the other things he mentioned involved money and funding. I see this as a long but needed battle.

The other article I read was chapter 12 out of "Classrooms that work." I looked very closely to "A Day in a Kindergarten Classroom" because so far that is what I am interested in teaching. I thought the most interesting thing that stuck out to me was giving students choice. When they walk in they have a choice, whether it is choice of center they want to do or the choice of letter they want to be when they leave for recess. There is a lot of group and individual critical thinking, but the teacher is leaving the critical thinking to the students. It is very much an inquiry based classroom. This chapter took in what we have been learning from the past semester such as rhyming, fluency, context cues, real alouds, repetitive reading and placed it into a day activity. It showed me how easy it can be to incorporate literacy into every different subject.

Real Life Inquiry

For my real life inquiry, I went to a fourth grade classroom. Once a week, I visit a school for four hours. It is very beneficial for me to see the vast amount of differentiated reading levels. During this time, I worked particularly with one little girl during centers, where reading was involved the whole time. One day, I worked with her for about forty five minutes on a tri-fold packet that asked reading comprehension questions about what they had read in class that day during group reading time. The only problem was, the little girl could not comprehend group reading it seemed because they were either reading too fast or the girl could not understand the vocabulary and order of the story. While working individually with the little girl, she often gave up very fast. I asked her to look at the first question and read to me what it said. It was difficult for her to even read the directions, and she often doubted herself while reading. When I could tell she didn't feel comfortable, I told her I was going to read the question, but wanted her to follow her finger with mine on each word. I read slowly. . . .very slowly.
   While we were looking through the text to find the answer to the question, it required that she read the whole paragraph to fully understand the answer. I don't feel like it was her fault that she wanted to copy the first sentence at the beginning of each paragraph to fill in her worksheet. I don't think she has ever been taught how to look for correct answers in the text, and she was about on a first grade reading level. The material was much too advanced for her. We spent about 45 minutes reading one paragraph. I asked her to read for me. I told her to read it slowly, and when she ran across a more difficult word, I broke the word up. I broke the word up so that I knew she would eventually get it right. The best part about working with this little girl is when she got the word right her face would light up. I think one of the major things holding her back was the lack of confidence she felt. What worried me the most was that I was personally worried for her in every other subject as well. How could she succeed in any subject if she couldn't even read directions? I think this little girl needed a word wall, reading/writing folder that fit her needs, and reading material that was on her level so that she could build her confidence.

Recognizing Words: Perfect for Kindergarten!!

I found an article called "Teacher to Teacher." While I would recommend the whole article and every chapter in it, I focused on one particular chapter. The chapter I focused on was Chapter 1 entitled, "Recognizing Words." This chapter appealed to me the most because I am very interested in teaching Kindergarten, and I have often wondered what the best methods are to teach sight words. As we have read, phonological awareness is one of the strongest indicators of a child's word-recognition ability. This is a hard process for five and six year olds, since they have to link what they are hearing or reading to the way they understand the spoken language. When a child puts together simple rhymes, understands that one-syllable words have two parts, and recognizes word patters, this will be a true measure of how well they can read.
It is important for instruction to start with words that a child identifies to. Then, implementing sight words that are used frequently within the text should be implemented. Teaching high-frequency words and high-interests words in a specific text, or words that children don't have the ability to decode yet in this order, will be more beneficial for a child to structure meaning and learn more successfully.
Here are some activities a teacher can do to teach word recognition:

WHERE THERE'S A WORD, THERE'S A VOWEL
In this activity, the teacher needs to cut out all the letters of the alphabet, except for the vowels. Ask the students to try to write as many words as they can using the letters. They will soon realize that they can't, and ask for vowels. They will understand that a word cannot be written without anyone of the vowels. The next day, write a sentence on the board, and cross out where the vowels should be. Ask the students to critically think about what vowel goes in each space. 


ACTION PHONICS
In this activity, a teacher for example writes the word "march" on one side of the card, and the letter m on the back side of the card. After having the children march around the room, show them the card. They will realize that the written word "march" means to march, and the letter "m" is the first letter of "march." Tell help them realize what the letter m sounds like, tell them to march whenever they see the letter m. 


SPICING UP VOCABULARY STUDY AND REVIEW
Memory experts recommend that it is important to attach a memorable aspect when trying to remember anything. If you are trying to teach your students vocabulary words that revolve around a specific story, have your notecards cut out into the specific shape that represents that word. For example, if you are trying to teach words that involve the ocean, cut out flash-cards out in a palm tree or fish shape. 


PRACTICING HIGH-FREQUENCY WORDS WITH REBUS STORIES
Always take advantage of art projects when they can be incorporated. They highly motivate younger children. Here is the steps in this activity:
1) Create a rebus story using words from high-frequency words list, but don't draw the pictures.
2) Type the story, triple spacing between the lines so that ample space remains from the rebus pictures.
3)Have each child create the stories by drawing whatever they choose in the blank spaces.
4) Have each child read his/her story to a classmate
5) Compile a book of the children's rebus stories for the class library. 

Value your Vocabulary

    While reading the different articles for vocabulary, I kept referring back to a story that one of my teachers told my class this past semester. One of her Roane County interns was in a second grade class and asked them to describe the beach, draw a picture, and write sentences under it. The children described a concrete black top, river, and trees. Their definition of a beach was much different than what the teacher had in mind. In that county, there is an area where families would go play and hang out on the weekends. They called this place "the beach."I thought this was a pretty good example of how diverse peoples vocabulary is. It goes back to the question from our reading, "what does it mean to know a word?" Whether it is right or wrong, it is important for teachers to allow his or her students to discover meaning of words through context clues, visual exercises, research, and reading. Students learn from indirect instruction, rather than direct teaching of vocabulary words. I wish my teachers had a better understanding of this when I was in grade school, middle, and high school. At my school, we had a vocabulary book where we filled in sentences, and wrote paragraphs using the vocabulary words. At the end of the week we had a quiz over all fifteen vocabulary words. If someone were to ask me to define those words the next week it was highly unlikely that I could be capable of doing that. Cunningham and Allington give great tips on how to incorporate meaning behind words through discovery. Drawing pictures of words, alphabet books, and letting the child discover words they want to discuss is a great way to promote critical thinking and comprehension as well.
     While using manipulative and visual objects are helpful, it is important for us to use our technological resources as well. Online vocabulary games are a great way to get students engaged. I thought a great activity that we did in class was coming up with enough words as possible with the letters provided. It is so important for teachers to be word conscious teachers. This requires that we develop an awareness of the times when vocabulary instruction and discovery can be used in the classroom. How were you taught vocabulary as a child?

Comprehension for Youngsters!

The three things that effect comprehension are "the reader, the text, an the purpose." The two articles that I read were Gill's, "Reading Teacher" and Gregory's "Kindergarteners can do it too! Comprehension strategies for early readers." Through both of these articles it is clear that comprehension is a process. It is so important for a child to be able to relate, ask questions, and formulate opinions about what they are reading. All of these things can be done through familiarity. In Gill's reading, the children would have "I wonders" about the story that would occur before, during, and after the reading. This was a way to connect what the students thought about to their personal, text, and world view. Just like Mrs. Hope used poems to help students understand and make sense of the text, Gill suggested that a good teacher gives sufficient information regarding readings. Giving students meaning of vocab words, context clues, and basically setting them up for success will greatly help their comprehension techniques. Asking students questions before a story that make it seem relative is crucial, especially for young children. I chose to read these two articles because I am very interested in teaching kindergarten. The techniques Mrs. Hope used in the classroom was very comparable to what I am seeing in fourth grade classrooms now. She is requiring that the children be creative, ask questions, draw conclusions off of what they have read and their questioning, and categorize connections that they drew. There were so many different parallel lines that could be drawn from both of these readings. Gill's article is something that should be used for every grade level, and Gregory's article only further solidifying the beneficial techniques that Gill offered in his article.

Carefully Creating Words

Reading these two articles, "Ten Important Words Plus: A Strategy for Building Word Knowledge," and "Making Words: Enhancing the invented spelling-decoding connection," made me think of how greatly this would of benefited me had I been immersed in these activities as a child. Growing up, I was not a fantastic speller, and it was always brought to my attention, especially in second grade how I needed to improve. I was trying my best to spell what sounded right to me. Had my teacher allowed us to create words using the a certain number of letters given to us, I would a. had fun, b. critically think about what words could be made out of specific letters, and c. remembered my mistakes. I think people learn how not make the same mistake twice through remembering what they did during a tangible and memorable activity.
Not only did I like manipulating cards to create different words, but I also like the idea of circling ten words that students found most valuable in the paragraph. I think it provides vocabulary awareness, past and present, and helps a child learn what context clues are. I thought it was a great idea to have different questions for different students after they read the passage to facilitate their critical thinking skills. These two articles made me reflect on what methods my teachers used to teach us words and their meanings. How did your teacher go about teaching you what words were and how they were important?

Fun with Phonics and Spelling Patterns

    This quote stuck out to me from the book, "English is the most morphologically complex language. Linguists estimate that for every word you know, you can figure out how to decode, spell, and build meanings for six or seven other words, if you recognize and use the morphemic patterns in words. This should make our jobs easier as teachers, because many English language words, already have words inside of them. For example, discovery, has the word discover in it. When I read this, it struck me how little I see phonemic awareness activities in classrooms. I am currently in a fourth grade class, and I doubt that these students would be able to define a word by the previous skill I mentioned. As the article, "Supporting phonemic awareness development in the classroom" said, phonemic awareness activities should only be ten to thirty minutes. It is our responsibility as teachers to show them rhyming schemes, counting syllables, and to separate the beginning of a word from its ending, and lastly to help them identify each phoneme inside a word. These skills should be used to help children figure out meanings and relatedness of words in every subject, not just writing. An activity that I really liked involved cuing. It helps if student clap out the different syllables in a word. This oral and physical representation of different syllables helps with rhyming and the flow of the word. Also, telling stories that have a lot of rhyming patterns would be beneficial. Integrating the clapping of the hands would also help and make phonemic awareness more concrete.