Excellent Reading Teachers

The first reading I chose for this week was "Excellent Reading Teachers," and at the beginning of the article there is a list of things that "make" an excellent reading teacher. All I could think when I looked at it was that these are the things that we have learned in class all semester. I feel like before I was not anywhere close to someone that would be an excellent reading teacher but now I know that things like strategic groupings and reading coaching are fundamental skills to make a great reading teacher.

I also read "Every Child a Reader: What One Teacher can do," and the biggest key part of that article to me was also in the beginning and it ties into what I got out of the first article. It mentions that the key to being a good, effective teacher is learning. You have to learn to be a teacher, and you have to keep learning while you teach. We have to be able to be open to learning new ways to teach our students depending on their individual learning needs.

What are some ways that you think reading instruction will be changing and what are ways you can learn new things to incorporate into your classroom?

Real Life Inquiry

For my real life inquiry, I went to a second grade classroom in an elementary school that I am going to call ABC Elementary for the purpose of this assignment. I knew a little girl in the class (who I will call Jane), so even though I was just observing a reading lesson and not assisting at all, I tended to watch Jane.

The classroom that Jane was in had a younger teacher, so it had a very bright, energetic, and fun vibe to it. The kids all had the same book at their desk that was kind of like the little paper books we had in class last week. The teacher told me that on Monday she gives them a list of five to pick from and the class votes on what they are going to read that week. I think it’s a good idea to give the students a voice, but to also maintain a control over what they choose to read.

My favorite part of the entire lesson came when they were all whisper reading the book at their tables. The teacher would walk around and listen to them. When she got to Jane, Jane seemed stuck on the word “volcano.” Instead of watching Jane struggle, and distract the other students, the teacher stopped at Jane and worked her through decoding the word. She started by saying, “Wow, that is such a big word, I wonder what it could be. There’s a lot of letters so we’ll need to start at the beginning.” I like that she made it seem as if it were completely expected to be stuck on that word. I think that by doing that, she helped Jane’s confidence. Jane felt like if the teacher says it’s hard, then it’s okay to be stuck a little.

I think by her taking the time to walk around and really listen to the students and help them when they needed it, the teacher was creating a very trusting reading environment. Jane didn’t feel embarrassed by being stuck, and neither did the other handful of kids the teacher stopped to help. I think that confidence is a huge key to fluency and I was glad to see it being implemented in a classroom.

Individualizing Guided Reading

I chose an article called Individualizing Guided Oral Reading Fluency Instruction for Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders by Stephanie Al Otaiba and Mabel O. Rivera.

In the article they gave some specific advice for students with E/BD. Since almost every teacher will encounter students with E/BD I think this is a very important article for everyone to read. It describes something called "Matthew Effects." Matthew Effects is the phenomenon that makes it almost impossible for low achieving readers to catch up to high achieving readers since the high achievers are constantly learning and growing in their reading skills. I thought that was really interesting and an important issue to figure out how to address in your classroom.

They also emphasized that immediate reinforcement is what makes the crucial difference in repeated readings and guided readings. One suggestion that I really liked was to have a chart to encourage students to "beat their own time" on reading a passage.

Vocabulary

In the Blachowicz & Fisher article about vocabulary, they had a section where they discussed how learning morphology and stems is a crucial tool for vocabulary development. I connected this back to the Cunningham & Allington chapter where we learned that for every so many words a student knows, they can make 700 something more. I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but I posted about it before, so it's there. I think that students learning how to build up their vocabulary on their own is such a big part of learning and being an 'educated person.'

I also saw where they said the dictionary is a huge tool in a student's vocabulary. I think this is true, I know when I was younger I used to look words up all the time. I think this is changing though with the new generations and their dependency on the internet. If Google goes down or there is no wifi, will our students know to pull out a dictionary to complete an assignment? I know with the Kindles, iPhones, and laptops people are saying the paper generation is dead, but I think that's a bad plan. We need our books, dictionaries, and encyclopedias!


This shouldn't stop you from finding out what a word means.

Comprehension

In the Gregory and Cahill article about teaching explicitly to kindergartners, I was completely captivated by the idea of starting to use children's schemas so young. The idea that these kids even KNEW what schemas were was awesome to me. I didn't know that word until high school. i think it is so important to build on what kids know, even when they're super young and may not know much at all. The texts become so much more meaningful if they can make any kind of connection to it.

Words!

This week's Yopp&Yopp article encouraged us to explore our own vocabulary. I remember when I was in, like, 3rd grade always wondering WHY things were called what they were. Who decided that a tree was a tree and not a bench? I don't know if that makes sense to any of you, but that's how my mind always worked.

In the article I really like how they mention making sure a student gets exposed to the vocabulary in multiple ways. Repetition for me is a key part of learning something. I really liked picking the ten most important words because I feel like that will give the teacher more clues as to how they need to help their students. If your students are picking out key words, good. If they aren't, you know to focus more on the meaning of the vocabulary in the meaning.

Questions:

What are some really good ways to build a students vocabulary without them KNOWING you're doing vocabulary skills in your classroom?

Did anyone ever even LIKE copying definitions? Why did anyone ever think that was a good idea...

Hooked on Phonics!

Do ya'll remember those commercials from our childhood? I was reading this week and I think that EVERYONE should be hooked on phonics. (Not the program, just the concept.) Cunningham and Allington say that for every one word you can decipher, you can decode up to seven more you've never seen. Clearly, phonics is quite important. I think that the article by Kathleen Clark showed really good examples of different ways to help your students with their phonics. My favorite was getting all of the students involved in helping the struggling reader. I think that making things more student oriented and teacher guided helps build all of the kids' confidence in their reading!

Maybe if someone would have helped Gaston with his phonics he would have understood why Belle liked to read so much...

Do you still sound out words when you see one that you don't understand?