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ASSESSMENT

Running Records by Marie Clay starts by discussing what reading records are.  Clay points out that a child’s progress in reading is typically measured by testing the number of letters, sounds, or words they know, but in most classrooms students are asked to read continuous texts, therefore systematic running records provide evidence of how if well students are learning letters, sounds, words, and understanding the messages in text.  Running records also provide clues as to what a child can do with the information they get from print and it gives the teacher valuable information on a child’s progress and how to tailor instruction for each child.  Clay states that taking records should be as relaxed as sharing a book with a child and that with practice teachers should be able to take a running record with any text, at any time, as appropriate.  Clay also advises that teachers should avoid using pre-printed texts on scoring sheets and using tape recorders.  Teachers may also include comprehension questions at the end of a record or they may ask the child to retell the story which will help the teacher understand more about the reader.  Clay also discusses interpreting the record after it has been taken, suggesting that teachers look at each error and self-correction and try to determine if the child used meaning, structure, or visual information.  Clay also discusses the ways that running records can be used to track progress over time, and concludes by outlining the different uses for running records, including school entry checks, teaching individuals, and teaching groups.  The Rog and Burton article discusses a book leveling system that was implemented in one Canadian school district.  The article begins by stating that children learn and apply reading strategies with text that provides a balance between support and challenge.  The article discusses the three levels of texts and states that a “just-right” text is one where the child can read 90-95% of the words which places the book at the level where instruction will be the most effective.  The article goes on to discuss how there are many level book systems in existence, but they are not consistent with each other.  The teachers in this Canadian school district used existing information to develop a ten-step leveling system for reading instruction based on five categories including vocabulary, size and layout of print, predictability, illustration support, and complexity of concepts.  The authors state that the purpose of developing this leveling system was to provide teachers with a tool to support making informed decisions about reading materials.  In addition to a breakdown of what books look like at each level, they also added a description of the strategies need by readers to access texts at each level.  The article concludes by again stating that the purpose of a leveled book system is to assist teachers in choosing appropriate books for reading education and that these books are only one part of a balanced literacy approach. 

Clay’s book had a lot of good information on conducting running reading records.  I have done them before in a first grade class, but I actually didn’t realize how much valuable information could be gleamed from them.  This book offered specific tips on how to perform them, how to score them, and how to analyze them to get tons of useful information that could be used for improvement in many areas.  This book will definitely be a good one to have on hand so that I can refer back to it when I am in a classroom and want to perform assessments like this.  I really enjoyed the Rog and Burton article.  I like how the teachers in this school district took the information that was out there and re-fashioned it to where it was most beneficial for them.  The breakdown of the characteristics of books at each level as well as the breakdown of the reading strategies necessary for each level will be a great tool to use in choosing books for my own students.  The information given on using books at a student’s instructional level made sense, and the idea that easier texts are considered at a student’s independent level coincides with the information we read on fluency and how giving students easy books to read can be beneficial.  This article also points out that a great rule of thumb is to choose texts two levels below a child’s instructional level for independent reading practice.  Again, this article re-stresses the idea that students should not be restricted only to leveled books because this may jeopardize the motivation that comes from choosing their own reading materials.  This is certainly in line with a lot of our class discussion where we have stressed that it is important for students to choose their own books to increase their interest and also to help them learn how to self-select materials appropriate for them.  Even though the article provides great information and guidelines on selecting leveled books for your students, it also points out that doing so requires professional judgment from the teacher and that they must know a lot about their students, the books, and the reading process.  I think this is very important and that no matter how many guidelines may be available to help simplify the process, nothing will be more important than knowing our students and how to best teach them.  I found the end of the article very interesting; it discusses how this school district does not use standardized tests to assess early reading, but that they use reading records and reading levels to collect data on all early readers in the district and use it to make comparisons and identify needs.  I thought this approach was great; it’s nice to see a school district not be concerned with test scores, but instead use data for the purpose of determining where students are at, where they need to go, and what the school needs to do to get them there. 

BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER

The Taylor, Peterson, Pearson, and Rodriguez article was extremely informative.  This article went into detail about the research method the authors used for determining what constituted effective reading instruction.  The beginning discussed all the prior research that has been conducted which states that effective reading teachers teach directly, ask questions to monitor understanding, provide feedback, model and coach, stress higher level thinking skills, provide more small-group instruction, and engage students in their learning.  The authors of this article performed an in-depth observation study and analysis to describe the teaching practices observed in the classroom, compared them to the effective practices that had been observed in the past, and provided examples of the positive and negative practices observed.    The most important findings of the research were that excessive amounts of “telling” had adverse affects on student performance and that a more student-support stance involving modeling and coaching is most likely necessary for more effective teaching.  In addition to what teachers are teaching how they teach it is also highly important in reading instruction.  In the article “The Schools we have. The schools we need.”  Allington discusses what he calls “confusions” about literacy teaching that have affected our ability to make positive changes in the classroom.  In the beginning he talks about how society has changed the way it views how children should be educated and that society expects schools to do more and how schools are expected to adapt to the changes in public expectations.  Following this, Allington goes into detail discussing the confusions that have developed as a result of this changing expectation.  He talks about experience vs. ability, acceleration vs. slowing it down, sorting vs. supporting, curriculum vs. instruction, books vs. blanks, teaching vs. assigning, and understanding vs. remembering.  Allington argues we need to change how we look at each of these groups and how we operate as teachers and schools, because until we do we will not be able to make the changes necessary to ensure that children are getting the education they need and deserve.  Allington ends the article by naming the various suggestions or possibilities he has thought about for curbing these problems and most require that we abandon the long-standing traditions of American schools and ideas about learning. 

I really liked all the information provided in the “Looking inside Classrooms” article.  It was great how the authors listed all the practices that effective reading teachers employ.  It was also great how they provided concrete examples from their research of what good teachers did and what less effective teachers did.  What stood out most for me was the comment the authors made that what they sensed from their study is that some teachers feel so pressured to make sure key information is discussed that they talk about it themselves and as a result their students are not provided an opportunity to test their own knowledge and skill and the teacher is then not able to assess their student’s growth.  I think this is a trap that would be really easy for a new teacher to fall into; I could certainly feel pressure to make sure they cover certain content and end up discussing it myself instead of allowing my students to talk and learn.  Hanging onto this article would be a great reminder of what to and not to do.  I also liked how the article pointed out that their study demonstrates that not only is what teachers teach important but how they teach it is equally important.  I think this goes along with what we have discussed at length in class about paying a lot of attention to how we teach something and how to do it in the most effective way.  Allington’s article really blew my mind when I read it.  Again, these are things I had never really considered, but having Allington throw it in your face, you realize that most of what he is saying is right.  I can understand his viewpoint and really agree with a lot of what he is saying.  His comment on how society now expects schools to educate all students to the same level when historically such was expected for only a few, it really set the tone for the rest of the article.  I thought about this comment and found it very interesting; his comment is true, and I wonder where it was along the way that society decided that all people needed to be educated the same instead of education being for a select few.  The whole section on experience vs. ability really hit home for me.  It reminded me of the discussions we had in my Ed Psych 210 class about using intelligence tests to basically label children as needing special education.  It had never occurred to me during those discussions that some of these children who test low may not have lower ability they just haven’t had as many opportunities for learning.  I also like how Allington points out in this section that just high quantity of reading is extremely important in literacy development.  I think this has been an underlying idea throughout our class.  I also liked seeing the information on all the studies that have shown that instruction is more important that curriculum.  As an emerging teacher, I actually find this comforting.  I feel like it offers some relief for the feeling that you must be perfect; instead this lets me know that if I really focus on being a great teacher I will not have to worry as much about the curriculum I am teaching.  For all of the suggestions Allington offers as possible solutions for the problems he mentions, I found my response to most of them being “is that feasible?” or “would it really work?”  Although I definitely think he makes a really good argument for what some of the problems with today’s schools are, I’m not sure we have any really good and effective ideas for how to fix them.  This article was definitely an eye opener and it gave me a lot to think about, but at the same time it’s also frustrating because it leaves me thinking “I see all these problems and I know we must do something, but where do we start?”  I do think however that as a result of this article and reading similar articles in the future it make me a much more aware and self-conscious teacher. 

Guided Reading

The article on guided reading I chose is titled “An Important Aspect of Guided Reading: Books Galore!” by J Lois Lanning and Rene LaMere and published in Classroom Connections.  The article opens with a brief description of what guided reading is.  The authors describe it as one of the principle teaching techniques in primary grades as part of a balanced literacy program.  They point out that guided reading is very beneficial to students needing intensive reading intervention, but it is also beneficial to those students that don’t.  The main point of guided reading is to give students the opportunity to practice and deepen the reading strategies they are learning.  The authors describe a guided reading program as formatted with four lesson elements: an introduction appropriate to the student’s needs and the characteristics of the book, supported reading with teacher guidance, focused teaching of specific skills or strategies, and ending with some type of follow-up activity.  All of this requires a knowledgeable teacher who understands the reading process, knows the strengths and weaknesses of her students, and is familiar with numerous books.  The next section of the article discusses the reasons why guided reading should be used in the classroom.  Guided reading groups are made up of four to six children who can read the text used in the lesson with 90-95% accuracy; membership is also flexible and dynamic.  The main purpose of the groups is to help students develop the strategies of good, independent readers, which requires that the students acquire “fix-up” strategies that help them process and comprehend text.  These small groups allow the teacher to adjust or differentiate instruction specific to each child’s needs and abilities.  The small groups also allows opportunity for student discussion about the text helping them make connections between the text and their existing experience and knowledge of what is in the text.  The participants in the group mediate the processes the reader uses to understand the meaning of the text though problem-solving strategies.  The teacher will also model and explain, and then move to prompting the student’s use of specific skills and strategies.  During these lessons the teacher also has an opportunity to observe and assess a student’s progress by monitoring language development, conduction a running record or inventory, and listening to group dialogue understand their thinking.  The author then points out that for all of this to be realized teachers must carefully plan their lessons and the must have a large supply of books along with a system for managing them.  The article offers suggestions for ways to obtain lots of books like through district budgets, grant funds, pay projects, recycling anthologies, buying from bargain companies, and by putting together collections from all the books gathered throughout years.  The main thing to remember is that gathering books is a gradual and costly process that occurs over time.  The article then offers suggestions on how to level all the books you have collected.  The books should be leveled based on readability, interest, and genre.  Teachers can level books themselves by using characteristics like the layout of the book, the language structure, and the complexity; or they can get help from reading teachers, language arts consultants, or other colleagues who have experience.  The article points out that all publishing companies, reading authorities, programs, and curriculum frameworks use different terminology the classify their book levels, but Fountas and Pinnell and Yukish and Lanning offer charts that may help sort out these different leveling systems.  Another important aspect of building a guided reading library is to offer a large variety of texts including fairy tales, plays, fiction, how-to-books, poems, and non-fiction; this will help build student interest and motivation for reading.  Once teachers have a collection of books the need to have them sorted and organized in an efficient manner in order to keep track of them and provide ease of use.  The authors conclude by stating that the books are not the only requirement for a successful guided reading program, a thorough and well trained teacher is also needed.  They also point out that there are numerous resources to consult for assistance with guided reading instruction.  Most importantly, guided reading programs require time, money, training, books, and dedication, but the results are definitely worth the effort. 

This article provided me with a lot of great information on guided reading, especially with how to set up a system with lots of books.  I have observed several guided reading groups so I understand a little about how they work and what takes place.  But it’s also good to have information on all the books you will need, how to get them and how to organize them, especially if you will be working in a school that does not have a great guided reading program set-up or design.  I really look forward to all the other aspects of guided reading that others in the class will find, especially as it relates to anything I don’t really know or understand, or if like this article it offers great suggestions on how to make guided reading work in your own classroom.          

Article can be found here:  http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED450358.pdf

Comprehension

The article “The Comprehension Matrix”, by Sharon Gill, is dedicated to understanding what comprehension is and how teachers can teach it.  It begins by pointing out that the idea of teaching comprehension can be overwhelming for teachers.  The article introduces the Comprehension Matrix which is an organizational tool that can help teachers understand and plan comprehension instruction.   The Comprehension matrix is composed of the three factors that affect comprehension: the reader, the text, and the situation.  According to the author, teachers need to understand how comprehension happens, which can be explained through schema theory, transactional theory, and constructivist theory.  Comprehension is also a process that starts before we begin reading, takes place while we are reading, and continues after we stop reading.  Most research on comprehension has focused on identifying the strategies used by good readers and then teaching students to use those strategies.  The Comprehension Matrix can help teachers develop activities for use during pre-reading, reading, and post-reading to help comprehension and the use of comprehension strategies.  Teachers must ask themselves several questions as they preview any text to determine what their students already know and what they need to know, and then they can use the matrix to develop appropriate instruction.  Laura Pardo’s article discusses what comprehension means and how teachers can help their students develop good comprehension.  The author presents a model of comprehension and then discusses each part and the teacher’s role.  The first part is the reader who engages with the text and teachers support readers by teaching decoding skills, building fluency, building and activating prior knowledge, motivating students, and engaging students in personal responses to texts.  The second part is the text; teachers support texts by teaching text structures, modeling good text selection, and providing independent reading time.  Another component to the comprehension model is the sociocultural context, which can be affected through environments that value reading, contain a variety of texts, and provide time for reading both aloud and independently.  The transaction part of the model is where comprehension takes place.  Teachers support transaction through explicit instruction of comprehension strategies, teaching students to monitor and repair, teaching multiple strategy approaches, providing scaffolding support, and by making reading and writing connections visible.  The author concludes by stating that comprehension instruction is crucial and should begin in kindergarten, and that teachers need to use the knowledge they have on how one learns to comprehend in order to plan classroom activities that will help readers develop the abilities to comprehend texts.  In “Kindergartners can do it too!” Gregory and Cahill use the example of Mrs. Hope’s kindergarten class to demonstrate that young children can learn comprehension just as older children can.  Young children are able to interact with text while using schemas, making connections, visualizing, asking questions, and making inferences.  The article pointed out that comprehension instruction certainly looks different for younger children as it is much more active and visible, but that young children are able to use these comprehension strategies in a manner similar to older children, with the result that they are better able to understand what they are reading.  The first point that Cunningham and Allington make in chapter seven of “Classrooms that Work” is that some children do not think while they read because they don’t know they should, and that when teachers over-emphasize accurate word pronunciation and give only beginning reading materials they may create readers who do not understand the purpose of reading and who do not comprehend the story.  According to the authors, in order to think while you read you have to be able to quickly identify the words, have sufficient background knowledge, be familiar with the text and how it is organized, and know that reading is thinking and how to apply that thinking through comprehension strategies.  Cunningham and Allington also suggest that teachers provide lots of modeling during initial comprehension strategy lessons, and then the responsibility should shift from teacher-as-model, to joint responsibility, to independent practice by the learner.  The authors conclude by sharing several, varied examples of comprehension lessons that they divide into four categories: literate conversations, think-alouds, informational text lessons, and story text lessons.

 

I found the article on the Comprehension Matrix very interesting.  Before reading this article, if someone asked me how I plan on teaching comprehension as a teacher, I would have told them I have no idea.  I agree with the idea that it seems teachers have always tested comprehension but never taught it; I know that was my experience in school.  Reading is so second nature that I have never really thought about the different factors you experience that might affect how you read, but having them listed in this article I realize how changing these factors in different ways may change how I read and how well I comprehend.  The Comprehension Matrix will definitely be a useful tool once I am in the classroom to help me come up with activities to use in a lesson focused on comprehension.  Pardo’s article was very similar in concept to the Comprehension Matrix article, but I like how this article provides a graphic model to represent how all the components of comprehension interact.  This article also gives a little more detail on how teachers can help foster the development of comprehension in their classrooms.  All the suggestions for how to teach comprehension include combinations of all the topics we have discussed in class up to this point including decoding strategies, fluency, and vocabulary.  I also really like how Pardo includes motivation as a key to helping students learn to comprehend.  We have been discussing all along how making activities fun and interesting helps students learn a variety of skills, therefore it makes sense that teaching comprehension is no different.  By motivating students to read through high-interest material and by giving purpose to the reading, teachers can really affect how much their students read, and thereby directly affect how well they learn to comprehend.  The article also points out how important independent reading time is, an idea we have seen in other articles; the common theme seems to be that practice makes perfect when it comes to the skills involved in reading.  “Kindergarteners can do it Too!” was a great article for me since I was beginning to wonder when reading the other articles how comprehension instruction would look for younger children.  I’m glad to know that the suggestions for teaching comprehension to older students can be altered for working with younger children.  It does make sense when you think about it; young children are very inquisitive and often able to pick up on new ideas very quickly if presented in the right way.  I’m sure this article will be very useful once I am in the classroom.  I really like how the chapter stresses the point that all types of text require different ways of thinking and comprehending since this is something I hadn’t really considered, my original thought was that if you can comprehend text well, you should be able to comprehend any text.  I also hadn’t really thought about the idea that children are better at comprehending stories than informational text; this will be important for me to remember as I become a teacher in the lower grades and it means I may have to spend more time teaching my students how to comprehend informational texts than stories.  The chapter offered lots of detailed examples for teaching a variety of comprehension strategies which I’m sure will come in very handy for my own classroom.  Like the Gill article, Cunningham and Allington point out that comprehension teaching occurs in very few classrooms and that you usually only see comprehension assessments given to students after they read something.  At the end of the chapter the authors point out that there is plenty of great information on ways to teach comprehension and that most of it is very similar in nature, so I think it’s good to know that there are numerous resources out there for teachers to call upon if they want/need to know more about how to teach comprehension in the classroom. 

Vocabulary

“Vocabulary Lessons” by Blachowicz and Fisher focused on the main ways teachers can improve students’ vocabularies and improve reading.  The article states that it has long been understood that a reader’s vocabulary enhances their reading comprehension, but that recent information on literacy has devoted little time to the idea of teaching vocabulary.  Research has shown that a student’s reading vocabulary usually runs about two years behind their oral vocabulary, and also that exposure to written materials is crucial to vocabulary development during the school years.  Blachowicz and Fisher propose four ways teachers can approach vocabulary development.  The first is developing word awareness and love of words through word play.  The second is delivering explicit instruction to develop important vocabulary, which is accomplished through the STAR method which stands for Select, Teach, Activate, and Revisit.  The third way to help students increase vocabulary is by building strategies for independence.  The final suggestion is to engage students actively with a wide range of books.  Blachowicz and Fisher conclude by saying that teachers can instill an appreciation for words and motivate students to build their vocabularies for the rest of their lives.  The Lane Allen article talked about how to promote vocabulary growth and word consciousness in the classroom.  The article began by telling two stories about two different teachers who exemplified vocabulary development.  Like the article by Blachowicz and Fisher, this one points out that vocabulary is a critical factor in the development of reading skills; but it also points out that receptive vocabulary is a predictor of decoding skills.  Research quoted in the article has shown that to have an effect on reading, vocabulary instruction should include several exposures to a word, both definitions and contexts, and engaging students in deep processing.  More research is presented stating that vocabulary can be divided into four parts, and that receptive vocabulary plays a key role during the years children learn to read.  Lane and Allen discuss how developing vocabulary isn’t just about how many words students know, but also about how well they know those words, and most researchers have divided the understanding of a word into four or five levels from no knowledge to rich, decontextualized knowledge.  Accordingly, the goal for vocabulary instruction should be an emphasis on breadth and depth.  Lane and Allen go on to say that research has developed a three-part model on selecting what words to teach based on level of utility.  One important idea is to select words that are more sophisticated labels for familiar concepts because it will expand breadth, but also depth because it will help enhance understanding of both the new and familiar words.  Another point the articles makes is that incorporating new words into daily routines will create an atmosphere where children become motivated and competent in word usage, thus increasing their word consciousness.  The authors also discuss the importance of modeling sophisticated words use and trying not to use over-simplistic language with students.  The overall idea is that explicit instruction is the best way to make sure that students learn words and their meanings, and that through promoting incidental learning and word consciousness by modeling sophisticated vocabulary teachers can add breadth and depth to their students’ vocabularies.  “The Early Catastrophe” by Hart and Risley discusses a study they conducted which demonstrates the vocabulary gap that occurs in children from different levels of socio-economic status by the age of three.  The article details the study and how it was performed, and then it draws the conclusion that some type of intervention is needed in an attempt to do the best we can in equalizing children’s early experiences in order to minimize the gap as much as possible.  Chapter 6 in our book focuses on building valuable vocabularies.  The chapter mentions that copying and memorizing word definitions has no effect on reading comprehension, which is the main purpose in building vocabulary.  The chapter goes on to describe in detail and give examples of how teachers can directly teach vocabulary, use read-alouds and independent reading to help student learn new words, teach how to use context, morphemes, and dictionaries to help students figure out words they don’t know, teach students how to assess their own vocabulary knowledge, and to encourage a sense of word wonder for seeking new words and building vocabularies. 

“Vocabulary Lessons” was filled with facts I did not know, and other ideas that I hadn’t given much thought to before.  I think it’s definitely true that someone is considered educated if they have a strong vocabulary, and I have even made comments myself about how my good vocabulary is related to all the books I’ve read, or that I read a lot to increase my vocabulary.  I also did not know that a student’s reading vocabulary runs about two years behind their oral vocabulary, although it makes sense when I think about the things that come out of my nieces mouths sometimes and I wonder where do a 6 and 7 year old get this stuff?  I was also encouraged by the studies that show how much more reading students do when they engage in daily independent reading in the classroom.  I can really relate to Blachowicz and Fisher’s idea that vocabulary is built through word play, and that the key component to this idea is the word “play.”  I implemented this strategy when I worked with a group of first graders who were struggling with their sight words, and I was shocked by the progress they made.  A couple of the kids I worked with went from dreading learning their sight words to loving them and being proud that they had learned so many.  My work with them really instilled in me the strong opinion that one of the most important ways you can teach anything to young children is through “play” with fun and interesting activities.  I was also able to see firsthand how playing with words turned them into objects they could use and examine.  This also relates to Allington’s idea that teachers should be enthusiastic about teaching new words and help to encourage that mindset in their students.   The STAR method discussed in the article looks like a great guideline for developing instruction on vocabulary words.  The concept of rereading is brought up again in this article, which further stresses how important it is for students since it not only builds fluency, but it can also enhance vocabulary.  I thought “The Vocabulary-Rich Classroom” article was great.  I loved how it sucked you in from the start by describing the activities that took place in two classrooms and demonstrated what vocabulary instruction might look like.  This article points out that the gap between low-performing and high-performing students will widen if vocabulary does not become an integral part of literacy instruction; I have not previously thought about this gap in relation to differences in vocabulary and what that can mean for students.  The breakdown of vocabulary into the concepts of breadth and depth is new to me, before I had strictly thought about vocabulary as how many words you know.  Even though as a teacher you know you will be introducing new things and developing reading and writing skills, it was interesting to put a number to it by reading that students typically learn between 3,000 and 4,000 new words each year.  Once I stop to think about it, it makes sense that the acquisition of word knowledge happens through oral communication and casual reading.  Again, when I think about some of the words and phrases my nieces know it shocks me, but it makes sense because they have heard these words in context and can understand what they mean and how to use them, if they know nothing else about them.  It also goes along with the idea that we should not “dumb down” our language for children because they truly do have a unique ability to grasp things, like vocabulary, even when we don’t think they can.  Even though children can pick-up on the things you least expect them to, this article helped me understand that over-simplifying things can have negative consequences.  My favorite part was the end where the authors point out that any teacher can accomplish what the two teachers in the article did by creating word-rich classrooms with sophisticated models, this really helped encourage me to think that this is something I can accomplish and that when I do have a classroom of my own I can have students that learn things beyond what anyone besides me expects.  The idea of a knowledge gap between students was first mentioned in the Lane and Allen article, but the “Early Catastrophe” article goes into much more depth.  This article was really interesting to me because it seems like the idea of children from lower socio-economic status having more trouble in school has been mentioned before.  However, it is truly shocking to see this put into numbers and to see just how great the difference is.  It makes sense that everything children learn in those early years they learn from their parents, but I think it’s a reality check for a teacher to realize that no matter how hard you try, you may not ever be able to make up for what children missed in those first years.  This article also really impresses upon a teacher how much a student’s home environment will impact their learning.  I feel this is a very important point for teachers to remember when they are designing their classroom and their instruction, especially if they have a large number of children from one socio-economic status, since this might drastically change how the teacher operates.  I also find it interesting that this article essentially states that it appears any type of intervention could only really just slow down the widening gap and keep those in the lower socio-economic groups from getting further behind, but yet the Blachowicz and Fisher article makes the claim that high-literacy classrooms can reverse the trend in literacy learning for students from low-literacy homes; I would be interested to find out what accounts for these differences.  I like how the chapter starts by pointing out that copying definitions is not really helpful or effective, because I did a lot of that when I was younger and now I don’t feel so bad that it didn’t help me learn anything.  The analogy Allington uses to describe how learning new words is like getting to know people was really effective for me.  I think keeping this in mind will go a long way to helping me teach students new words once I become a teacher.  When the chapter discusses how effective it is to bring in real things that students can connect with new words they are learning, it reminded me of the Lane and Allen article that talks about the two teachers and all the things they did to give their children direct experience with words.  The scale Allington mentions for helping students assess how well they know a word is similar to the scale presented in the Lane and Allen article describing the different levels of understanding one can have for a word.  The chapter also had a section on promoting word wonder which I also think is important as I really think you can encourage your students to be excited about learning and to enjoy things if you model that enthusiasm yourself as a teacher. 

Word Study

The articles I read for this post are all about word study.  The first article by Yopp and Yopp describes phonemic awareness and how it can be developed in the classroom.  Someone with phonemic awareness has the ability to recognize and manipulate the smallest sounds of speech.  The article describes how it is critical for beginning readers in order for them to understand the written system.  The article goes on to describe all the components that should be taken into consideration when planning phonemic awareness instruction.  The article breaks down several different examples of phonemic awareness activities using various tasks and units of sound.  The article ends by stressing that phonemic awareness instruction should not replace other areas of instruction and that it should be included in a broad literacy program encompassing a variety of reading instruction.  This article helps lead into the book chapter on teaching phonics and spelling patterns.  Phonemic awareness is recognizing the sounds in speech, and phonics is putting symbols to those sounds.  This chapter concentrates on strategies for teaching students how to decode unfamiliar words.  Allington points out that once you have developed the ability to quickly figure out the pronunciations of unfamiliar-in-print words, it enables you to then pull from your storage of familiar-in-speech words and therefore create meaning.  The majority of the chapter details a variety of different lessons that can be taught in order to help students learn to decode unfamiliar words.  Allington concludes by suggesting that while students are learning high-frequency words and building fluency, they also need to learn patterns so they can quickly decode and spell words they have not learned.  The last article discusses the effectiveness of coaching in word recognition.  In this article, Clark states that coaching can help foster students’ abilities to become strategic independent readers.  The article details two main types of instructional cues-general cues to prompt thought and more focused cues to prompt specific action.  The article describes how the teachers involved in the study would begin by giving general cues, and then move towards more specific cues if necessary.  The article concludes by describing the three factors that appear to contribute the most to coaching effectiveness- teachers having explicit knowledge of phonics, awareness of student instructional histories, and awareness of student strengths and weaknesses. 

The article on teaching phonemic awareness provided a lot of detailed information about a topic I was not previously very familiar with.  The guidelines for planning instruction for phonemic awareness will be extremely helpful once I reach the stage of developing my own lesson plans and classroom instruction.  I have seen a lot of the types of activities suggested in the article used in classrooms, but I’m not sure they were actually used for the express and direct purpose of developing phonemic awareness, which the article points out can make them less effective.  I am concerned about the idea of time allocation requirements some school districts have and wonder how as a teacher, especially a new teacher, you can develop lessons along the idea that what is most important is the quality of your instruction and how receptive the students are to it, not how much time is spent.  I think the activities suggested offer a great stepping stone for developing other similar activities and give good examples of how they can all be adapted and used for a variety of purposes.  I can also see phonemic awareness being another unit of study where a teacher would have to keep an eye out for struggling students and then try and figure out now to give extra assistance to those students while continuing to move forward with the other students.  I can also understand how the authors might be concerned that phonemic awareness instruction could possibly take over other areas, especially when there may be time allocation requirements.  I see how it could be a situation very similar to the information we read on fluency measures that suggest when one specific factor is stressed very highly, it can be to the detriment of other factors that are just as important, or sometimes even more important.  I found this chapter in the book to be very informative and am sure that it will become a valuable resource once I am teaching on my own.  The chapter is filled with detailed examples of teaching phonics, spelling, and word recognition.  I would have probably thought this chapter to be quite overwhelming if I had not seen most of these activities used in the classroom, or if I had not previously employed some of these strategies myself in working with students.  The chapter did help drive home the point that learning to decode words you don’t understand and then make sense of them using words you have heard before is a very important part of reading instruction.  I found the article on coaching to be the most interesting.  It’s funny how sometimes you can realize you have been doing something all along, but never know there is a specific term for it.  I have used coaching methods in the past to help students with reading, but I never before realized how powerful a technique it can be, and how it can be affected by different factors.  This article provided a lot of great information on how to hone my own coaching techniques.  I have seen how coaching can help struggling readers, so I am really interested in learning how I can use this method in the most effective ways.  It certainly seems like coaching is something that is developed over time, and after learning how to get to know your students so you can benefit them in the best possible ways.  I believe that thinking about reading instruction in the way Clark describes it in the article as “a problem-solving activity that students increasingly learn to handle on their own” helps you to understand what coaching is and how it can really help. 

Instructional Activities for Fluency

http://www.teachingheart.net/readerstheater.htm

Fluency

The three readings for this post centered on fluency.  Allington's chapter on fostering fluency defines the three components of fluency as accuracy, speed, and prosody.  The rest of the chapter offers suggestions on how teachers can help support better reading fluency; they include mandating easy reading, offering frequent independent choice reading, teacher modeling of expressive reading, plenty of re-reading opportunities, and doing a word wall.  Rasinski's article is similar to the Allington chapter in providing suggestions on creating fluency, but this article also brings in ideas on fluency measures.  Rasinski identifies the components of fluency as accuracy, automaticity, and prosody.  He also states that all three are easy enough to assess and provide teachers with a general idea of where students stand.  The main focal point of this article is that fluency instruction depends entirely on what areas each student needs help with.  Rasinksi suggests assisted readings, repeated readings, using performance passages, teacher modeling of prosodic reading, and coaching students in reading.  Rasinksi points out that the concept of fluency has become corrupted in some schools who value speed over meaning, but that fluency is the most important factor in reading education.  Deeney's article focuses on fluency assessment and how the nature of an assessment can influence the definition of fluency, which she asserts is made up of accuracy, speed, prosody, and comprehension.  Deeney cites research that suggests accuracy and speed are the only two components that can be reliably measured, and that most commercial assessments do just that.  However, the problem with this is that often the measure of the assessment becomes the definition of the construct.  The article offers many suggestions on how to make assessments useful and gives ideas for increasing fluency and endurance.   Deeney points out that while one-minute measures can be useful, they don't point out why students are dysfluent, and that in order to effectively teach fluency you must understand the student's problems and then develop appropriate instruction to address those problems. 

The first thing I found interesting about these articles is that only Deeney actually included comprehension specifically as one of the main components of fluency.  I also think that as students, parents, and teachers, it can be difficult to regard comprehension as a central goal along with accuracy and speed.  As Rasinski pointed out, reading rates have become increasingly more important and as a teacher I could understand feeling the pressure to produce large numbers of fast and accurate readers without any regard to whether or not the students are actually understanding the words they are reading.  The articles offered many great suggestions on how to help build fluency, some of which I have seen demonstrated in the classroom, including word walls, assisted readings, modeling prosodic reading, and large reading volume.  However, one of the ideas I have not really seen is Deeney and Allington's suggestion of easy reading.  I have been in classrooms that have students on a variety of reading levels, and those at the lower end of the spectrum do certainly read less difficult books, but it always seems that it is with the express purpose to tackle an easy book and move on to the harder ones, hoping the child will eventually reach their grade level in reading.  I have not seen very much encouragement for the children to read a lot of easy material, especially the struggling readers.  But, this concept makes a great deal of sense to me because I feel it is vitally important for children to first build an interest and desire for reading and then work on increasing their skills.  I have listened to struggling readers read me a story, and per the teacher's instructions read it over and over and over, and while they may initially make some improvement in their accuracy, after reading a book they are not interested in four plus times, they begin to get frustrated, bored, and lose all interest, and once that happens they are no longer invested in how well they do and attempting to improve, which in my opinion reduces the strategy into a pointless activity.  I love Deeney's ideas on providing these struggling readers with easy books on topics that interest them, therefore spiking their initial desire to read, and keeping them from losing interest while they practice reading, and once the child is able to read that book fluently, in my opinion they will revel in their improvement and increase their desire to keep working and keep reading.  Although I fully agree with Deeney and Allington's concepts on giving struggling readers easy texts, I also forsee many parent conversations centered around having to explain why you as a teacher have their child reading "baby books" and how it will really benefit them in the long run.  I must admit that Allington's suggestion that most people spend a majority of their time ready easy texts initially came as a surprise, but thinking it through it makes great sense.  I think it's true that most people when they read for pleasure or for necessity in their everyday life, they are reading things that are "below their reading level."  I think this idea would go a long towards building the confidence of struggling readers and encouraging them that reading things that are easy and entertaining to them makes them just like everyone else, regardless of what their technical "reading level" may be compared to fellow classmates.  Maybe this idea would encourage those students to continue reading, maybe even to read more, and then their skill and fluency would develop along the way.  After reading this material, I definately feel that fluency, including comprehension, is most important in reading education.