Week 8 Blog Post

Question: How do today’s readings help you understand your own reading comprehension processes? How do the readings help you understand the reading behaviors of the learners in your classroom?

      I was able to make connections to the "Overview of the Comprehension Strategies" table on page 262 in Tompkins. While reading I notice myself using the "connecting" strategy in order to better comprehend a text. I think I am more likely to comprehend a text when I am able to make personal connections and relate with it. I also use the "monitoring" strategy while reading. This strategy involves checking if you understand the text while you read it. A lot of times when I am reading I will reread a certain part of the text if I find myself confused or not understanding it. 

     In my classroom I see my mentor teacher pushing the students to practice some of these strategies in order to have comprehension of the texts they are reading. The strategy I see being practiced the most in my classroom is the "summarizing" strategy. After the students read, the teacher has the students come up with big ideas of the text they read. They make a list as a class. I think this is a good way to ensure students are comprehending the text. I have also seen the "predicting" strategy used in the classroom. While the teacher reads the text she often asks the students, "what do you think will happen next?" This requires the students to understand what is going on in the reading in order to infer about what will happen next.

What do you think?

Initial Post: Draw upon today’s readings and other pieces we have read this semester to respond to the case presented in What do you think? (access the case on ANGEL; post initial response on your noteblog)

Eddie:

After reading the article Marcus: Gifted and Challenging and Mrs. Potter's description of Eddie in her classroom, it would seem like the two have similar traits. Marcus had trouble sitting still and doing things according to other people's schedules, and Eddie keeps moving about the classroom and has trouble focusing. Because Marcus would get frustrated and not do his work, I have a feeling this may be a reason why Eddie does not complete his. It seems to me as if Mrs. Potter could benefit from trying some of the strategies that Mrs. Jenson used with Marcus- such as encouraging him to complete his work saying that she knows he can do it, giving him smiley stickers on a chart for every activity completed even if it is not at the same time as the other students, and allowing him to make choices in his learning such as picking his own book to read or choosing how he wants to solve his math problems with blocks or writing, etc. Being flexible with Eddie and accommodating for his need to move around a lot may help him to focus on the tasks at hand. For example, if he wants to stand up at his desk while doing his work instead of sitting like the rest of the class, let him if it is not disturbing anyone else. 

Jonathon:

Based on Mrs. Potter's description, Jonathon struggles with and does not feel confident in his reading ability. Instead of trying to read or asking for help with reading he sits at his desk. More specific information would be needed in order to tell what exactly Jonathon is struggling with as it could be a number of things- slight autism, dyslexia, just needs more practice reading in general, etc. After reading the Breitfelder article on accommodations for students, it seems to me that Jonathon may benefit from some visual representations to go along with what he is reading. Math is a very visual subject, with many different visual ways problems can be represented, which may be why he performs average in that subject. Placing other opportunities for visual aid in his work may give him insight into what the assignment is asking and also make him more comfortable asking for help given that he now has a way to gain some more understanding and can now ask for help in clearing up any confusion. Also putting Jonathon with students who he feels comfortable with and would be willing to help him might make him more willing to ask for help when confused as well. 

Lupita:

Being raised in Mexico, Lupita is an English Language Learner, which means that at home with her parents she may not be exposed to English as much as her first language of Spanish. She is most likely very quiet in class because she does not feel she has the vocabulary to communicate her thoughts. Not having much experience with toys, scissors, puzzles, paper, and crayons can be easily changed by allowing her to use those items. After helping other students with their puzzles, it is clear that not having had the opportunity to interact with other children before has not effected her ability to interact with them now. It seems as if Lupita would benefit from more activities that reflect her background and funds of knowledge- she was able to finish her Spanish assignment early because that is something familiar to her. Giving her extra practice with her English through alphabet and phoneme practice and also stories that reflect her funds of knowledge would help involve her more in the class and continue her development with English. 

Noteblog (everyone posts on this topic): Study the writing sample(s) you collected from your classroom.  Discuss the ‘stages of spelling development’ evident in each sample (see Tompkins, p. 169) and give examples. Design a ‘literacy center’ activity that would help your students improve their spelling and explain why you think it would support students’ learning.

From the writing sample I acquired and from I have seen so far this school year, the students in my class are having difficulty spelling. This is their biggest problem. I am in a 4th grade classroom and they are still having trouble spelling words a 4th grader should know. Their biggest problem is understanding the sounds in words. Their phonemic awareness is quite poor. A big part of this is because I am in a classroom with ELL students. There are a total of 11 of them. Even in 4th grade they are still having trouble sounding out words. I can honestly say about 5 times every time I go into class they ask me for help on spelling a word. I usually don't just give them the correct spelling. I have them sound out the word and have them figure it out themselves. I hope from continuing practice of sounding the word out themselves, they can learn to read sounds better in each and every word.

A good writing center I could use for this particular issue would be to give the student who is struggling a worksheet I have created for them. At the top of the worksheet would be a specific topic. This topic should have some relevance to them so they can understand the words. Under the topic word will be a bunch of words listed with one or two missing letters in the word. The child is responsible to fill in those letters to correctly spell the word. This hopefully will enhance the child's spelling. Using words of relevance will keep them engaged to sound out words in the future so they can correctly spell any word at their level of understanding.

Writing Sample- Kindergarten

·         Noteblog (everyone posts on this topic): Study the writing sample(s) you collected from your classroom.  Discuss the ‘stages of spelling development’ evident in each sample (see Tompkins, p. 169) and give examples. Design a ‘literacy center’ activity that would help your students improve their spelling and explain why you think it would support students’ learning.

Because of the snowstorm on Friday, school was canceled and I was not able to collect a writing sample from my students. However, I have seen many different samples in previous weeks during the language arts lesson. After doing assessments with the students, I have found that on average they know at least half the alphabet, and about a quarter of the associated phonemes that go with each letter. This is reflected in their writing samples. One student's writing that I have recently looked at is most definitely an emergent speller- his writing is a bunch of scribbles all over the page and have no connection to any phonemes at all. Another students work shows that she knows how to write her name, and can begin to use the letter sounds she knows to write words putting her at the Letter Name-Alphabetic spelling stage.

Because the students struggle with matching the correct phoneme to the alphabet letter, I planned this literacy center activity to help improve these skills. This literacy center would be a two-part matching game: the first part consisting of the students hearing a recorded version of the phonemes and then having to match it to the letter cards on the table. The second part would be similar to Go-Fish with each student having seven cards in their hand- a mixture of phonemes in the form of pictures of familiar things and letters- which they then have to find the matching phoneme for each letter. These activities will strengthen the students visual and auditory understanding of letters and their associated phonemes which will in turn help them to begin spelling.

Noteblog Initial Post: Consider the ideas discussed in today’s readings about different types of classroom talk. What type(s) of talk are you seeing in your classroom? What scaffolding is needed for response-centered talk to take place?  What types of learning resources are available that have the potential to promote rich discussions? Think about specific students in your class who do not participate actively in classroom talk. What types of scaffolding do they need to participate successfully in response-centered classroom talk?

Classroom Talk in my classroom:

      In my classroom I rarely see group talk. The students really only get to talk and share their thoughts if they are working in pairs. Most of the time in my classroom students work by themselves, and the only time they will be able to voice their opinion usually is when the teachers asks questions for whatever they are discussing. Scaffolding is usually only used when she asks the students why they thought their specific answer was that answer. In my opinion I think it would be more useful for the students to have more student led conversations in the class so the students could learn off each other. From what I have seen the ELL students in my classroom participate less than the non-ELL students.

Tompkins Chapter 4: Working with the Youngest Readers & Writers

·         Literacy is a process that begins in infancy and continues into adulthood.

·         The implication was that there’s a point in children’s development when it’s time to teach them to read and write. For those not ready, a variety of “readiness” activities would prepare them.

·         This prospective on how children become literate—that is, how they learn to read and write—is known as emergent literacy.

·         Literacy development has been broadened to incorporate the cultural and social aspects of language learning, and children’s experiences with and understandings about written language—both reading and writing—are included as part of emergent literacy.

·         Concepts about the Alphabet

o    Young children also develop concepts about the alphabet and how letters are used to represent phonemes. Pinnell and Fountas (1998) identified those components of letter knowledge:

§  The letter’s name.

§  The formation of the letter in upper- and lowercase manuscript handwriting.

§  The features of the letter that distinguish it from other letters.

§  The direction the letter must be turned to distinguish it from other letters.

§  The use of the letter in known words.

§  The sound the letter represents in isolation.

·         How children develop as readers and writers

o    Stage 1: Emergent Reading and Writing

§  Children accomplish the following

·         Develop an interest in reading and writing

·         Acquire concepts about print

·         Develop book-handling skills

·         Learn to identify the letters of the alphabet

·         Develop handwriting skills

·         Learn to read and write some high-frequency words

o    Stage 2: Beginning Reading and Writing

§  Children accomplish the following:

·         Learn phonics skills

·         Recognize 20-100 high frequency words

·         Spell phonetically

·         Reread their writing

·         Use capital letters to begin sentences

o    Stage 3: Fluent Reading and Writing

§  Children accomplish the following:

·         Read fluently and with expression

·         Recognize most one-syllable words automatically and can decode other words efficiently

·         Use decoding and comprehension strategies effectively

·         Write stories, reports, letters, and other genres

·         Use capital letters and punctuation marks correctly most of the time

·         Instructional Practices

o    Morning message

o    Shared reading

o    Language Experience Approach

§  Based on children’s language and experiences.

o    Interactive Writing

o    Manuscript Handwriting

o    Writing centers

Gibbons Chapter 2 and 3

·         Classroom Talk: Creating Contexts for Language Learning

o   Research that has come out of second language acquisition studies also suggests that interaction is a significant factor in language development.

o   One clear teaching implication of studies into second language acquisition is that the degree of facility of second language learning in a classroom depends largely on how classroom discourse is constructed.

o   There is a common 3-part exchange between teacher and student.

§  The teacher first asks a question; the student responds, often with a single word or short answer; and then the teacher responds by evaluating the answer.

§  Referred to as IRF (Initiation, Response, Feedback)

o   Group work has a number of advantages for language learning.

§  Learners hear more language, a greater variety of language, and have more language directed toward them: group-work situations increase the input to the learner.

§  Learners interact more with other speakers, and therefore their output is also increased. They tend to take more turns, and in the absence of the teacher, have more responsibility for clarifying their own meanings. In other words, it is the learners themselves who are doing the language leaning work.

§  What learners hear and what they learn is contextualized: language is heard and used in an appropriate context and used meaningfully for a particular purpose.

o   Some suggestions for Group and Pair activities Across the Curriculum

§  Picture sequencing

§  Hot Seat

§  Questionnaires

§  Problem Solving

§  Paired Problem Solving

o   Both student-student and teacher-student talk can provide rich contexts for second language development. But just allowing talk to occur is not enough. Productive talk does not just happen—it needs to be deliberately and systematically planned, just as we plan for literacy events.

o   It’s quite possible classroom talk determines whether or not children learn, and their ultimate feelings of self-worth as students.

·         From Speaking to Writing in the Content Classroom

o   Regular teacher-guided reporting is one way of providing an authentic and meaningful context for students to develop the more academic registers of school.

o   We can also see that is not simply the linguistic features of language itself that affect students’ comprehension, but also the previous knowledge they bring to the new language they are hearing.

o   As we have seen, however, ESL learners must from the outset use their second language for curriculum learning, and they need many contexts in which they can do this.

o   In effect, they moved successfully toward the language of the curriculum, throughout the unit of work, rather than being expected to master it prior to their learning of science.