Guided Reading

 

The article that I read for Guided Reading is called, Promoting Literacy Development for Beginning English Learners. The article is written about a third grade classroom with a Chinese ESL student. With the help of his ESL teacher and her techniques, he becomes a more enriched reader and writer. His teacher begins the expansion of the cognitive process by choosing a story that is familiar to children from all around the world, Jack and the Beanstalk. Many children have read this book time and time again and are familiar with the plot in their own language. From there, they began by reading the story in Chinese. After the story was read in Chinese, they read the story chorally in English. Reading the story chorally allowed the teacher to help the student make personal connections and comparisons to the other version of the story. Once both languages had been read, they made a word bank of all of the sight words that he had the phonemic knowledge about. With each reading of the story, the teacher pushed him to increase his vocabulary and sentence structure by encouraging him to think aloud and add more depth to his sentences. The project took two months to complete, but at the end of it, he could read the story and comprehend the vocabulary. He displayed his understanding by writing paragraphs about details from the story. The article lists many ways that teachers can help ESL students in their classrooms. In your own classroom, what are some ways that you believe will be beneficial when helping ESL students read?

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Written by: Eurydice Bouchereau Bauer, Juliana Araz

Vocabulary and Read-Alouds

In the articles that I read, the common theme was the importance of a wide vocabulary in students of all ages. The articles suggested that by providing a high literacy environment, students will absorb new vocabulary and it will help them become better readers. In the article, Vocabulary Lessons, by Fisher and Blachowicz, they give many strategies to help teachers provide new ways to present novel terms. They suggest playing word games with students as well as reading to them. They also give the suggestion of having a word wall in the classroom. In the example that they listed, children obtained a point for every new word that they put on the wall and shared with the class. This is a great way for children to get excited about discovering new vocabulary and wanting to improve on vocabulary skills. In the Lane and Allen article, the main focus of the article was how educators should model vocabulary usage in the classroom.By modeling how to correctly use the words, students will become more comfortable in using them and want to share the new words that they have learned. They gave two classroom examples about how vocabulary words were modeled throughout the school year and how the children's reading and writing assignments became filled with these novel terms. The classrooms were a Kindergarten class and a fourth grade classroom from at-risk schools. The modeling took place during each classrooms circle time and the teachers and outside onlookers saw a major difference throughout the school year in the children's personal conversations as well as their school assignments. Question to consider: How would you model using new vocabulary in the classroom? Do you value word games or conversation more? Or do you like both equally?

Comprehension and Think-Alouds

In the article, What Every Teacher Needs to Know About Comprehension, Pardo gives some excellent strategies on how to help children understand what they are reading. She begins by stating the importance of teaching children how to decode words and increase their fluency. She says with these skills, children will spend less time trying to tackle difficult vocabulary words and more time comprehending the material. The part of this article that I enjoyed so much, was her suggestion to build children's knowledge on subject materials. It is also important to discuss the concept of a schema with the children. This allows them to think about their previous knowledge. With prior knowledge about a subject, the children will have to spend less time thinking about what the text is saying, and will be able to spend more time making text to text, text to self, and text to world connections. They will gain much more from the readings if they are able to make these types of connections. It is also beneficial to discuss the book that you are reading. If you provide some type of information and background about the story, the children will be able to understand what is happening more easily. Another great suggestion that Pardo gave was to provide the children with questions about what they are reading so that they can "check-in" and be able to monitor if they are grasping the content of the text.
The second article that I read was, Kindergarteners Can do it too! Comprehension Strategies for Early Readers. In this article, Gregory and Cahill suggested many of the same ideas that Pardo did. The biggest idea in the article was the idea of discussing schemas and making connections to the literature. The teacher in this article taught reading in a creative way and her students had many creative ways to express their thoughts and ideas. They created charts, had meaningful discussions and expressed their thoughts about the stories they read. The idea that I liked in this article was teaching the children to think about the "Mind Movies" in their heads. They were able to imagine what was going on in the story and draw the pictures and ideas after the story was over.

Making Word Connections

                                                                   

After reading the two articles assigned for this week, I began to think about my strategies for teaching reading. I learned to read strictly through a phonics approach, but I know that this way may not work for each individual child in a classroom. It is important to have many techniques and options handy while working with beginning readers. The Cunningham and Cunningham article suggests an activity called "Making Words." I enjoyed reading about this lesson, because of the unique twist it puts on spelling and gaining word meanings. It allows children to learn to spell with a hands on technique that is meaningful and engaging to them. They will be able to understand that some words have other, smaller words inside them. They will be able to make so many connections with words. In the Yopp and Yopp article, they suggest providing texts that have rich vocabulary repeated several times throughout the book. The more that children see a word, the less they need to think about decoding it and what its meaning is. They also suggest using a technique in which children choose the ten most important words out of a book or passage and provide a definition for them along with a small summary of what they read. Choosing these novel words forces the children to reread sentences and use context clues to conduct the word's meaning.
-Question to consider: How would you modify these lessons in order to fit the needs of struggling readers?

The Importance of Phonemic Awareness

 

 In language and reading development, Phonemes are the smallest units of sound that contain meaning. I strongly believe that in order to properly help a child learn how to read, the concept of phonemic awareness must be taken into account. All three of the articles that we read for today stress the importance of focusing on the smaller units of sounds within a word. In the Allington chapter, it states the importance of the Nifty-Thrifty-Fifty words. All of these words contain common word beginnings, and ends that can be easily broken down into chunks. The chapter suggests placing these words up on a wall a few at a time and making them available for the children to observe and compare other words. The idea in the Clark article about how to coach reading was wonderful. The idea of sounding out words may work on some occasions, but on many others it may not. For example, the word bow in the sentence, "The ballerina took a bow after her performance." If a child reads the word bow, like the word snow, the word takes on a completely different meaning that is not correctly matched with this sentence. Providing context clues in coaching helps children decide the meaning of the word in a more appropriate manner. It allows them to think of other scenarios and provides other forms of knowledge than the ones already in their minds. I loved the idea of the game, "Teacher May We," in the Yopp and Yopp article. It is a perfect way for children to hear the breakdown in syllables in a word, and also gets them moving their bodies and releasing some built up energy. So forget the old way of sounding out words, bring on the coaching style of teaching children how to read!

Reading Fluency

All three of the readings assigned for this week had much to say about the concept of fluency. Fluency involves many aspects of reading including the rate of reading, comprehension of the materials, and the way a reader reads the given materials. In the Rasinski and Deeney articles, the authors agree that something needs to be changed about the way in which children are tested for fluency. They state that current fluency tests are designed to test the rate of words per minute, but not designed to test if children are comprehending the text. Comprehension of text is a large part of the definition of fluency. The Deeney article provided some helpful charts that explained what teachers should be looking for when they are doing the one minute fluency tests. it requires the teacher to go more in depth and take the extra mile, but it is so much more beneficial when it comes to readjusting curriculum to fit your students' needs more appropriately. The Allington chapter was a wonderful resource to have when it comes to helping children better their fluency. It provides great strategies and tips like "echo readings," word walls, and the FDL(Fluency Development Lessons). They even provided examples of great books for children to read and suggested to provide fun and interesting texts that are below grade level reading for the children who are struggling with reading in your classroom.
-What types of strategies and techniques would you include in your teaching practices and classroom?
-How would you include students who are struggling with reading in your classroom?

Bell and Jarvis/ IRA&NAEYC

While reading these articles, there were three main facts that stuck out to me. The first point is, providing a print rich environment for your students no matter how old they are. I am hoping to teach PreK or Kindergarten and in previous classes, I have learned the importance of providing a print rich environment for children. It allows them to  make connections with their everyday lives and helps them realize that print has meaning. I loved how in the Bell and Jarvis article both teachers brought in items from popular restaurants, well liked movies, and other items that the children would easily recognize. The second point that I would like to write about is how Bell included her children in the classroom print rich environment. She was able to connect the children name's with recognizable environmental print artifacts. Her documentation proved just how powerful this was in helping the children learn how to read and recognize their letters and letter sounds! The final point that I would like to write about is the connection the two articles made about expecting to have children from diverse language as well as reading backgrounds. All of the children in the class were able to recognize the environmental print items brought in by the teachers, and documentation was provided that showed how ESL students were learning their letters and learning how to read based on this method. It gave me some good ideas that I would love to use in my classroom one day.