Assessment and Bringing it all Together

        Assessing students seems to be a very touchy subject for some teachers because there are so many different ways of doing so. Running Records offer an evaluation of “text reading” and often indicates how well children are directing their knowledge of letters, sounds, and words while comprehending the material they are reading. I think the use of running records would be helpful because any texts can be used for Running Records. Running Records seems to be a reliable source in examining each student’s reading process, but also seems like it would take a lot of time to assess every student in a class. I think if teachers want to implement this type of assessment in their classroom, they have to carefully prepare and take time to do it correctly so the results are reliable.

            Classrooms today are more diverse in academic level than they have been in the past, so I think it is important to meet every student’s needs by offering leveled books in a classroom. Before reading the “Matching texts and readers…” article I did not realize how detailed the criteria for leveling books was. The article really illustrates the importance of every aspect included in a book, and how that can determine what level a particular book falls into. One thing I really liked about the article was that it broke each level into sections and carefully described each, so the reader has a good idea of what kind of books would be classified in each level. Although providing leveled books in the classroom is important, it is also crucial for teachers to provide other types of reading material as well.

           

           In the “Looking inside classrooms: Reflecting on the “how” as well as the “what” in effective reading Instruction” article the authors discuss a different findings from the first year of a larger national study on school improvement in reading. The results really surprised me. They talked about how whole-group instruction was seen more often than small-group instruction. I found this interesting; because I think that small group instruction is more beneficial to students and teachers when it comes to reading. Another thing that I found interesting is that students observed were involved more in passive responding than actively participating. As a student, I know I learn better by actively participating in a lesson and learn more when I am engaged through writing and reading. I agree with what the article says about teacher “telling” students instead of coaching them. There are times when “telling” is necessary, but there are many times when teachers should steer away from doing so.

            I found Richard L. Allington’s article, “The Schools we Have. The Schools we Need” to be very interesting. I agree with him, in that teachers often do mistake a lack of experience for a lack of ability. I pre-interned at Lonsdale Elementary last spring and many of the students there do not have experiences with books, stories, or print. Many of them do not have access to reading materials, however those limitations do not have an effect on their intellectual ability. It also does not mean that children coming to school with a lot more experiences with print, books, and stories are going to have the ability to read at a high level. I was exposed to so many reading materials as a child, but still struggled as a beginning reader. Allington makes a great point- it is so important that all students have ample opportunities to engage in reading and writing activities. I think that teachers should work together to find ways provide more opportunities for students to develop strong literacy. 

Guided Reading

      I found an awesome guided reading article by E. Francine Guastello and Claire Lenz called "Student Accountability: Guided Reading Kidstations." Much of the article discusses the major benefits that guided reading provides students. According to the article, guided reading creates opportunities for students to develop literacy strategies, develop abilities to be independent readers, enjoy reading for meaning, and develop different behaviors that facilitate comprehension. Guided reading is also a good chance for teachers to observe students and their abilities to self-monitor, decode, self-correct, and read with expression. This article  is very helpful because it provides information about what a successful guided reading program involves.
    The authors of the article were invited to observe and interview teachers in several schools in a Bronx school district. The classrooms in which they observed had close to 30-35 students in them. As they observed they found that because of the class size, many of the teachers were spending more time with one group during guided reading time than the other. After observing and interviewing, the authors suggest that teachers establish independent kidstations for guided reading time. The authors suggest that teachers create the kidstations prior to the school year and spend at least 5 to 7 weeks demonstrating to children how to complete the various activities. The article goes on in much detail of how each kidstation would work and provides tables of different activities and layouts for the classroom. I really liked the ideas in this article and think they would really work wonders for those teachers with bigger classes.

Reading Comprehension

    Teaching reading comprehension is one thing that I think will be a challenge for me as a future teacher. All of the readings for today give great tips for teaching reading comprehension. "What Every Teacher Should Know About Comprehension" was probably the most helpful article for me. It give several definitions of comprehension and highlights the importance of comprehension for elementary students. One thing I took from the article was how important it is to activate prior knowledge in order to help develop comprehension. I think that introducing a text and doing think-alouds is a great way to activate prior knowledge.
    I really liked the kindergarten article, because as I have said before, I will be in kindergarten next year. I think a lot of teachers don't realize the importance of starting to develop reading comprehension at this age. Making connections is mentioned in several of the articles and I think that is extremely important. I love the idea of the "Velcro Theory" and sticking ideas to your brain so you can remember them.
    "The Comprehension Matrix: a Tool for Designing Comprehension Instruction" article breaks teaching comprehension down so it is easier to grasp. Teachers need to understand how comprehension occurs, in order to be able to teach strategies for reading comprehension. Similar to the first article, "the comprehension matrix" article also goes on to talk about the importance of prior knowledge in reading comprehension. I am in the Urban Multicultural cohort so we talk a lot about how each student is a unique individual, so I really liked the point that this article made about the Transactional theory. Each student is different and has been exposed to different experience, therefore the message they take from a text could be different from other classmates, or even the teacher; so I think that is very important for a teacher to recognize when teaching reading comprehension.
    Chapter 7 thinks of comprehension as the prime motivator for engaging in reading, and I would have to agree. Being able to comprehend texts accurately will encourage students to read more, and find more books of their interest. I like the idea of making predictions before reading a text, so that students minds start working and they can be engaged in the reading. I also like the idea of the KWL chart. I actually filled out a KWL chart in one of my classes for this summer and found it to be very helpful.

Vocabulary

Developing a large vocabulary that consists of various words is extremely important. The “Vocabulary Lessons” article discusses the importance of word knowledge. It also points out how big the gap is when it comes to vocabulary knowledge. Children growing up in homes with more educated parents tend to have a more advanced vocabulary than those who come from homes with parents who are not educated. Although there is such a gap, different strategies can be applied to help a child’s vocabulary improve and grow. The article includes four practices that can be implemented by teachers to help students develop vocabulary. One of the practices in vocabulary development is to deliver explicit, rich instruction in order to develop important vocabulary. This practice includes the STAR model of explicit vocabulary instruction, which I am really interested in. STAR stands for Select, Teach, Activate, and Revisit. I really like this model because every step allows students to become more familiar with important words.

In “The Vocabulary-Rich Classroom: Modeling Sophisticated Word Use to Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth” article, they argue the importance of vocabulary in reading comprehension. The article states that vocabulary is a crucial factor in the development of reading skills and plays a huge part in comprehension. The article also discusses what it means to know a word and identifies the different levels of word knowledge. I think it is important for teachers to realize that there are different levels of word knowledge. As a student, there were words I had seen before, but had no clue as to what the meanings of them were. Another thing presented in the article that I agreed with and hope to implement is being a word-conscious teacher. I want to link words to familiar concepts so that students will be able to remember those words and be comfortable using them in their everyday language.

After reading the “The Early Catastrophe: The 30 million Word Gap by Age 3” article, I was shocked by the statistics they came up with in their research. The gap in vocabulary between the average child in a professional family, working-class family, and welfare family is unbelievable. This becomes a major challenge for teachers when implementing vocabulary instruction. This also makes it hard on the teachers to choose the most important vocabulary words for the whole class to learn. Teachers must think of ways to pick the most appropriate vocabulary words that meet all of the students in the class.

Chapter 6 presents many innovative ways to try and close the achievement gap and make high levels of literacy achievable in order to meet the needs of every student. I like the idea of providing a much real experience as possible in the classroom to build vocabulary. Having a “Show and Talk” will allow students to become familiar with objects that they might have at home, but never knew what the purpose of the object. Another activity mentioned in the chapter that I really liked was using “picture walks” to increase vocabulary. I think that this is a great way to start a read-aloud because it allows students to get an idea of what the book is about while helping build their vocabulary. 

Word Recognition and Phonemic Awareness

Learning to read requires many steps. Word recognition and phonemic awareness are both big parts of the reading process. There are many different types of instruction that aid to both of these areas in learning to read. It is important for teachers to recognize the most practical techniques that benefit their student’s reading.

In her article, “What can I say besides “sound it out”? Coaching word recognition in beginning reading,” Kathleen Clark identifies the importance of word recognition and provides many helpful ways to implement “coaching” in the classroom. She provides many examples that pinpoint helpful coaching strategies to help students with word recognition. One of the teachers described in the article talked about student coaching. I really like this idea. I think that having all of the students involved in helping out with cues that a student is struggling with will eventually teach each student to coach themselves when they are having a hard time recognizing a word. I do not recall my teachers “coaching” me as a reader, but this is something I will definitely implement in my classroom.

            In the “Supporting Phonemic Awareness Development in the Classroom” article Hallie Kay and Ruth Helen Yopp defines phonemic awareness as the awareness that the speech stream includes a series of sounds. They also provide many activities that help students build their phonemic awareness. There are activities that focus on rhyme, that you see a lot of in classrooms. I specifically remember doing activities with syllable manipulation, especially the one where you clap how many syllables are in your name. One of the activities I really liked and hope to use someday was the scavenger hunt to help with phoneme manipulation. I think the scavenger hunt is a fun way for students to learn their letters and sounds.

            In chapter 5 the book introducing many additional strategies that help with word recognition and phonemic awareness. I loved the idea of the “Nifty-Thrifty-Fifty” words to help students decode, spell, and build meaning for many other words. This idea reminded me of a word wall in a way, but adds more meaning to the words. 

Fluency

There are many definitions of fluency, but all seem to include components of accuracy, speed, and prosody. With all of these components, comes comprehension. There are different ways to assess fluency, that can help teachers identify which students are struggling readers. Teachers play an important role in teaching reading fluency by using different techniques such as modeling. All of the readings seemed to touch on the same aspects of fluency, all including accuracy, speed or rate, prosodic reading, and comprehension. 

In her article "One-Minute Fluency Measures: Mixed Messages in Assessment and Instruction," Teresa Deeney addresses the use of one-minute fluency measures, but also identifies some problems that come with these specific assessments. She defines fluency with 4 major components: accuracy, rate or speed, prosody, and comprehension. Although these components define fluency, they are not all being assessed. One thing I found to be very interesting was how big of an effect accuracy has on comprehension. If a couple of key words are misread in a text, the whole idea of that text could be inaccurate. I think that happens a lot to students because they get so caught up in trying to read fast that they misread key words in the text, therefore altering their comprehension. Sometimes it becomes difficult to measure all of the components of fluency. One-minute assessments are useful for two things: accuracy and rate, but fluency is more than that. I think that the deeper approaches to fluency assessment are crucial for measuring and improving students' reading fluency. I really liked the idea of including fluency in other assessments, and tying assessment to instruction.

The second article "Creating Fluent Readers," refers to reading fluency as having three components that include: accuracy in word decoding, automatic processing, and prosodic reading. These are very similar to the components of the other article. The article presents different ways to assess each component of fluency and also include helpful instructional strategies that foster fluent reading. I like the idea of assisted readings and repeated readings to help students develop reading fluency. I think it is important to model fluent reading to students, using expression and flow. I also think that repeated readings can be helpful to students, because it allows them to improve their speed, and decoding skills. 

In chapter 4 includes three components of fluency as well, these include: accuracy, speed, and prosody. The book explains that the development of fluency is crucial and should be a major goal in reading instruction. Chapter 4 offers many instructional strategies to help students improve and develop reading fluency. I think it is important to provide students with easy texts and ones they are interesting in to help them develop fluency. I think that providing easy texts of interest will boost their confidence in reading. Similar to the second article, chapter 4 suggests ways to promote fluency by modeling fluent reading by reading with expression and by re-reading. Another way to promote reading fluency is have a word wall in the classroom that contains high-frequency words for the students to refer to. I love the idea of the word wall and hope to use it in my own classroom one day.