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.
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