Assessment

Edward Fry's article on "Readability vs. Leveling" shows how these two formulas are similar and different and also provides some current large-scale uses of readability formulas. First off, it is important to know what each of these terms means. Readability is the ease of comprehension because of style of writing. Leveling is selecting books to match the competencies of a reader or writer. I particularly found all the factors that go into determining readability and leveling scores interesting. 

Readability, traditionally, is based on two measures: Syntactic difficulty, which is measured by sentence length, and Semantic difficulty, which is measured by word length such as syllables or the number of letters. I really found it interesting that readability formulas can be done by computers through typing in a passage or scanning in a whole book. Readability provides fairly accurate comparisons of books and helps to make a match between a text and the reading ability of an individual student. Overall, readability is objective. Leveling is less objective and involves several text support factors: content, illustrations, length, curriculum, language structure, judgment, and format. 

Here is a picture of what a readability formula on two different texts looks like:

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Of the two formulas, I feel that leveling is more appealing because I think that the text support factors it takes into consideration are more in depth than the measures of readability. For instance, leveling takes into account the background and experience of the reader whereas readability does not. As we have learned so far in this course, background information is extremely important when teaching students to read. 

While leveling does have it cons in comparison to readability, both of these formulas seek to help teachers to select books for their students. The use of either of these reading formulas will help students have a successful learning experience.

1. Which formula do you like the best?
2. Do you remember if your teachers used readability formulas in your classrooms or leveling formulas? 

Guided Reading

In my article I found this week on guided reading, I learned that the teacher's role in guided reading is to interest students in the story, relate it to their experiences, and provide a frame of meaning that will support problem solving. It is also important to note that during guided reading, the teacher will work with a small group of students who have been grouped based on similar reading abilities. In these groups you will call to your students attention words in context locating and noticing specific features such as beginning or ending. Guided reading is great because it allows you to tie the students' prior knowledge into the reading and it also allows you as a teacher to monitor each individual in the group for evidence of using reading strategies. The ultimate goal of the guided reading process is to have the students being able to read text independently and silently. One important factor to remember for guided reading is that you need to select a text that the students are able to read with 90% or higher accuracy. I really enjoyed that part in this article where it provides you with connections and extensions that can be used with guided reading. One of these extensions is after reading the story, going back through the selected text and finding targeted words. These targeted words can be words that end in -ed,-es,-ing, etc. Or these targeted words can be words that begin with certain sounds like sh,th,wh. With the class as a whole, you can write these targeted words on a chart and you can have each child read the sentence where these targeted words appear.

Here is the source of my guided reading article:
Guided Reading Source

1. What are some interesting things you have learned about guided reading?

2. How do you plan to integrate guided reading into your reading curriculum in the classroom?

Real-Life Reading Inquiry

Through my observation of a reading lesson in a first grade classroom, I was introduced to a new way of reading and I also recognized a lot of the concepts that we have been talking about in class this semester. I was introduced to something called "EEKK Reading". This means elbow to elbow and knee to knee reading with a partner that involves "I read, you read" and "choral reading". I thought this was a great name for partner reading. My overall reaction to the reading inquiry was that there is a lot that goes into teaching reading to students. In addition, I found it very interesting that a lot of what we have read so far this semester correlates with what I observed in my reading inquiry. It was great to see real world application to the concepts we have been talking about. My reading inquiry showed looking for vocabulary while reading, responding to the reading by stating who were the main characters, what was the problem in the story, and what was the solution to the story, high frequency words, pointing out the title of the book, left to right reading, top to bottom reading, sweep around, ending sounds to words, and reading aloud to the class. Overall my observation recognized that the class integrated reading and writing together and that combining the two together is very important for succeeding in being a great reader. In addition, the teacher knew the importance of reading aloud in many different ways including as a class, in small groups with the teacher, and with a partner.

The readings that relate to the inquiry are Chapters 1 and 2 of "Classrooms That Work" when it talks about how an effective classroom environment has a teacher that provides a variety of instruction like whole-class, small group, and individual instruction, which the classroom I observed definitely had. It also relates to the reading by Yopp and Yopp on Phonemic Awareness by showing that each word is made up of small units of sound. The teacher showed this in small-groups with students by writing out words and dissecting the words to indicate the sounds of blends, long vowels, silent letters, and short vowels. 

I noticed that the class used invented spelling quite a bit when writing sentences using the vocabulary words from the reading. The students would ask the teacher how to spell certain words and majority of the time she would tell them to write it out how they think it sounds and I thought this was particularly interesting because instead of just giving them the answer, the teacher made them have to think about what sounds make up the word. This allows the teacher to see where the students stand on their spelling capabilities while also getting to measure their actual comprehension of the story. In addition, I also noticed that the class was doing orthographic reading. Most interesting, I noticed that the teacher practiced phonemic awareness with the students in small groups, which goes to show just how important it is to being a successful reader and writer. I also recognized that the classroom was full of labels, signs, bulletin boards, etc. You name it the class had it. Therefore, the students were constantly surrounded by reading.  

This relates to my future teaching by showing me some great ways to integrate all the necessary concepts of learning to read into my teaching. I plan to use various ways of instruction to model my reading lesson around like reading aloud to and with the whole class, meeting in small groups with my students, having them read in partner groups, and individual instruction with my students. This also relates to my future teaching by showing me how important it is to have a classroom rich with text. This includes a plethora of reading books, signs, labels, intricate bulletin boards, etc. I want to surround my students with gateways to reading and writing. 

Building Vocabulary with Technology

I chose the article this week dealing with 10 ways to use technology to build vocabulary because I am a big fan of technology and am excited to integrate the use of technology in my classroom. The first strategy deals with word relationships within the text. The article talks about a great program I have used in a prior education class called "Wordle" that allows you to create a word cloud to show the frequency of words in a text. This a great tool to visually show your students the meaning, importance, and relationship of words in a particular text. Here's a word cloud I created showing the frequency of words in the passage "Is a Whale a Fish?"

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 Another great strategy is the use of vocabulary game websites that your students can do in small groups or as an individual during center time. These websites are a great way to stimulate the student's use of words and their meanings through crossword puzzles, picture-word matching, and word scrambles. However, the one strategy I really enjoyed and know I will carry on with me into my classroom is the last strategy which combines vocabulary learning with social service. Using the website www.freerice.com promotes the students' engagement with words while also contributing to the social good because each word that the student gets correct 10 grains of rice are donated to a country in need. How cool is that!? I love the idea of using this as an opener to a vocabulary lesson having the whole class participate and express the reasons they choose each answer. In addition this works with strategies such as recognizing words that they can eliminate from the choices and seeing if the root word gives them any clues as to what the meaning of the word is. Here is a screenshot of what the game looks like!

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1. What are some other ways you can use technology to help build vocabulary that are fun and interactive?

2. Do you think as a teacher you will use technology to stimulate learning in your classroom?

Comprehension

When it comes to comprehension, there are two important parts to the puzzle that all teachers should know: the reader and the text. The most important of the two, as stated in Pardo's article, is understanding the reader. As teachers, we will know that each of our students have unique differences. So you may ask yourself the question how do we cater to each of their individual needs in order to ensure that they effectively learn reading comprehension? This article does a great job of showing that in order to best support your students in becoming competent comprehenders you must teach them decoding skills, help them build fluency, build and activate their background knowledge, teach vocabulary words, motivate them, and engage them in personal responses to the text. Of all of these skills, the one that stuck out to me as the most important is the reader's background knowledge. I feel this might be one skill extremely over looked by teachers today and it's interesting to learn that the more background knowledge a reader has that connects with the text being read, the more likely that reader will be able to make sense of what they are reading. 

READING COMPREHENSION DATABASE 

This link provides a great web database from the Virginia Department of Education and gives numerous videos on ways to teach reading comprehension.This site will be excellent to come back to when I am in my own classroom in the future. 

What I loved most in Gregory and Cahill's article was the section about visualization and mind movies. This involves students listening to the story being read and visually imagining detailed mental pictures about what is happening. The students will then draw out what they visioned in their mind. This was so unique to me because what better way to get children engaged than allowing them to use their creativity! Through doing this, because it helps students to understand what they're reading by allowing them to draw out something to represent their understanding. This is also a great way for teachers to gauge the comprehension skills of their students without having to pull teeth. I will definitely be using "mind movies" in my classroom and could even create a center in the classroom dedicated to making mind movies! 

Below is an example of mind movies using the book "Sideways Stories from Wayside School"

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What activities can you use in your classroom to engage students in reading comprehension?

Fluency

Assessing students' fluency capabilities through the one minute fluency test provides us with a limited view of fluency that only measures students that can't read accurately or quickly. While this information is useful, we need a deeper understanding of why students are dysfluent and the effects of time on students' reading. This requires us to take deeper approaches to fluency assessment which includes: getting the most from one minute measures, including fluency with other assessments, tying assessment to instruction, and assessing endurance. Endurance is an important part of the fluency equation. The reading provides several techniques for instructing fluency and endurance. One of the techniques that stuck out to me was increasing expectations. I found this interesting because it dealt with how many struggling readers avoid reading altogether because the effort and attention needed for reading simply exhausts them. This can be fixed by first lowering the text level and then gradually increasing your expectations of the reader through a set number of pages to be read or another "must do" assignment and gradually extending it over time. I think it is important to do this because many students get lost due to reading avoidance and thus have a hard time catching up to the rest of the class. Creating a deeper understanding to reading fluency is vital because it helps us, as teachers, see that readers struggle and why they struggle. 

Can you think of any other ways that teachers can create a deeper approach to fluency?

As a teacher, how would you motivate a student who struggles with reading avoidance? 

Making Words

This week's reading on making words dealt with an active, hands-on, manipulative activity in which kids discover sound-letter relationships and learn how to look for patterns in words. This is a great activity that allows children to see how words change when you add different letters and helps them understand the importance of where in the word letters occur. The Making Words activity should be used hand-in-hand with invented spelling. Studies have shown that children who participate in invented spelling are superior to others on word decoding. To me, this was extremely interesting because throughout my schooling emphasis was always placed on spelling the word correctly and never on spelling it the way I thought it sounded. This makes me wonder how many students in my class struggled with reading and writing because of this. The neat thing about the making words activity is that it provides you with a variety of ways to discover how the alphabetic system works. Think of how interested your students will be while doing this activity and think of how great it is that while they are entertained they are also learning fundamental strategies that will help them become strong readers and writers. This article is just another example of how intertwined reading and writing are.

When you were in school, did your teachers focus on spelling words correctly or did you use invented spelling? 

The video below shows a great example of using the Making Words activity. Here the teacher does a great job with showing her students that just by adding letters or changing around the order of the letters you can make different words. She also helps them listen for all the letter sounds in the word and where the vowel sound appears in the word.

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Spelling Patterns

     This week's reading was really interesting. I especially liked the information provided in Chapter 5 of "Classrooms that Work" on teaching phonics and spelling patterns. If you think about it when you read and write words, you don't even realize that you are identifying or spelling these words because you have seen or written them so many times before that it has become automatic to identify them and spell them. However, as a teacher it is important to realize that your students will come across words they have never seen before and therefore it is important to teach them spelling patterns so that they are able to make use of words that are "familiar-in-speech" to them and create a meaning for the "unfamiliar-in-print" words. I really enjoyed the different lesson formats that this chapter provided because they all contain a variety of interaction between the students and the teacher. My favorite lesson was the "Using the Words you Know" lesson. I loved this lesson because it teaches students how to use words they already know to spell and decode other words. I liked how it involved separating familiar words in different categories based on spelling patterns and allows the children to practice writing each word after they have seen it written and also allows them to use these spelling patterns to help them spell words they hear without seeing it written down first. 
     The lesson formats provided in this chapter all focus on the importance of modeling as the most direct way to demonstrate to your students what to do when they encounter an unfamiliar word. We use modeling constantly in our day-to-day life to teach a variety of skills. It is much easier to show how to do something rather than explaining it. This is especially important in helping students recognize spelling patterns so that they can apply meaning to words that are unfamiliar to them.

What were some of your favorite lesson formats provided in this chapter?

Do you remember any particular lessons your teachers used to help you learn to spell or create meaning to words that were unfamiliar?

Here is an example of "Using the Words you Know" to recognize spelling patterns.

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Children are already readers and writers

     Through the readings this week, it became apparent that children are already readers and writers before they enter into a schooling environment. Realizing this is important because not giving children literacy experiences until they are school age severely limits their reading and writing levels they will attain in the future. It is important for teachers to realize that even though students are not exhibiting reading and writing production skills, they begin to understand the concepts of             literacy and its functions at a very early age. The IRA/NAEYC reading showed that the most important period for literacy development for children is from birth-8 years old. These readings also showed that in order to develop the ability to read and write, children need regular interaction with reading and writing. The most important of these interactions for young children is reading aloud. 

     The most interesting thing I took from these three readings is that literacy is everywhere. This was shown especially in the Bell and Jarvis reading. Children don't just learn about reading and writing through story books, they also learn a lot from labels and signs, such as bulletin boards in the classroom. Reading is not just about reading words, it's about reading all kinds of symbols that help us to relate to the world around us. Therefore, it is vital to provide students with a rich environment full of written and spoken language, this was shown in the Yopp and Yopp reading on phonemic awareness. Literacy instruction should be should be playful and engaging, interactive and social, and should stimulate curiosity and experimentation with language. In my future as a teacher, I hope to engage my students in reading and writing by letting them know that they can already read and write before they even begin school. In addition, I plan to fill my classroom with all types of text so that my students are constantly interacting with it in a variety of ways.

What were some of your favorite activities from the Yopp reading for building sensitivity to sounds of speech?

What kinds of things do you think are important to have in your classroom to make it a rich text environment?

Here are some fun bulletin boards in classrooms that help contribute to providing a rich text environment!

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The Literacy Foundation

     Chapter 3 of "Classrooms That Work" focuses on building the literacy foundation. I agree with the fact that the chapter states that when we are asked when we learned to read our answers mostly reflect our experiences in kindergarten and first grade. However, I found it really interesting that the chapter puts into perspective that learning begins much earlier than that. It is important to realize that children want to do everything that adults can do. If you remember this key point then it will make perfect sense to you that if children grow up in homes where adults read and write, they will want to read and write too. Not only is it important to read to children starting at young ages, but it is also important to encourage early attempts at writing. 
     I really enjoyed all the examples this chapter provided on different ways to build your students' foundation of literacy. Not only were all of these activities interactive and easy, they also took part in making each student feel special which encourages them to have positive feelings about reading and writing. My favorite example provided was the "special child' activity. With this activity, you build the foundation of literacy with each day providing a new example just by using the names of the students in your classroom. As a future teacher, I found all these examples extremely useful and will carry these on into my own classroom. 
     Overall, this chapter helps to tie into the article "The Jones Family's Culture of Literacy" by providing an example of how parental interaction with their children at young ages creates a firm foundation for learning. The article states, "children enter schools with a legacy of meaning about literacy and educational achievement that is not easily transformed." This was interesting to me because it highlights the importance of the roles that parents play in their children's life. My favorite part about this article is that through investigating the value of literacy in the Jones family you get to see all the different ways that literacy was used in their day-to-day life. It was interesting to me to see how large of a role literacy does play and how as parents and teachers we can highlight these roles and integrate them into our teaching. 
     Do you think that parental involvement at a young age significantly helps to build children's       literacy foundation?
     What do you think can be done for students who don't have a literacy background upon entering school?

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This website provides a fun and interactive game called the Chute Shuffle that helps to teach many of the concepts of literacy foundation. For example you can build sentences that focus only on the "sh" sound and have your students pick out what words in the sentence have the "sh" sound.

Effectively teaching students to love reading!

     Through the readings this week, it has become clear that many factors go into making an effective classroom environment through which students can learn to love reading. Chapters 1 and 2 of "Classrooms That Work" shows through many different studies the factors that create an effective classroom. Of these factors, the ones found to contribute most to high literacy achievement are: time spent reading and writing, the engagement of students in the literacy activities, and the students' perseverance. 
     Classrooms that work must provide large amounts of balance, comprehensive instruction. Too often our curriculum today focuses on one component at a time. As the book explains, this causes the development of other important components to suffer. Classrooms that work also do a lot of reading and writing throughout the entire class day and not just during the reading and language arts lesson. As both of these chapters go to show, the amount of reading and writing children do has a direct correlation with how well they read and write. Effective classrooms also emphasize higher-level thinking skills. This involves teachers asking questions that do not have just one answer, rather these questions engage the students in conversations. These classrooms also teach students to problem solve, self-regulate, and keep track of their individual comprehension. Teachers in these effective classrooms also provide a variety of instructions like whole-class, small-group, and individual instruction. Most importantly, these classrooms are well managed and involve high levels of engagements. It is imperative  that children be in a safe and orderly environment in order for them to successfully learn. Teachers expecting their students to act a certain way provides a structure for the class. 
     Chapter 2 goes on to provide ways in which we, as educators, can create enthusiastic, independent readers. This was my favorite chapter because I loved seeing all the creative ways to encourage my future students to become lovers of reading. For instance, teachers reading aloud to their students is one of the major motivators for children's desire to read. It is also important as a teacher, to read a variety of materials to your students in order to engage the interests of all of your students and not just some. I loved the idea of keeping a teacher record sheet to ensure that you are introducing a plethora of materials to your students. As the Allington reading showed, teachers often feel that independent reading is a waste of class time and therefore don't provide their students the opportunity to become avid readers. I think Allington brought up a good point that maybe one or two entire days of the school week should be dedicated to reading and writing in order to allow plenty of time to teach lengthy lesson plans and provide your students time to share and respond with you and their peers. 
   In closing I would like to leave you with some questions to think about and provide you with fun examples of what effective classrooms, in my opinion, look like. What do you think are the best ways to teach your students to become avid readers and writers? Do you have any specific memories from your elementary teachers of things they did to make you love reading?

 Who wouldn't want to learn in here!
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 Comfortable set up for small-groups!
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A reading treehouse how fun!
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