"Mandated tests tend to give a snapshot of a child's ability, whereas use of a variety of assessments gives teachers a more comprehensive portrait."
-Jim Ruben in "Organizing and Evaluating Results from Multiple Reading Assessments
It is important that we realize that testing only offers a small amount of insight into reading comprehension and ability. By using multiple assessments, teachers can gain more insight into how to offer more explicit instruction in the targeted areas students struggle with.
According to research, assessment of reading progress is most accurate when students read a minimum of three passages. I feel like while that may hold true, how is it possible to test the entire classroom with the time constraints teachers already face? I have never been a huge fan of formal standardized testing, and I think adding more and more formal assessment like this could be time consuming and stressful for students. What do you think?
Furthermore, Ruben explains how creating a chart or diagram to reflect the scores of your students would be helpful for seeing outliers or possible inconsistencies. I think it would be especially useful for seeing what aspects all of the students are doing particularly well or poor in, and then reflect on how to teach those areas better (or the same).
I think the most important part of assessment is to take it with a grain of salt. While it is useful for reflecting on how to improve your class or help students who are falling behind, assessment by no means reflects your ability as a teacher or the abilities of your students. I think it is important to teach to students that the numbers on these exams are just numbers, and that they are individuals all with something unique to contribute to the world.
"Guided reading is 'small-group reading instruction designed to provide differentiated teaching that supports students in developing reading proficiency'."
COMPREHENSION is key!
What are the main elements or essential components?
How is Guided Reading done?
what does the teacher do?
Gives a Reading Level for books for a student to choose from
The teacher works with a small group of students with similar needs.
The teacher provides introductions to the text that support children’s later attempts at problem solving.
The teacher prompts, encourages, and confirms students’ attempts at
problem solving.
The teacher and student engage in meaningful conversations about
what they are reading.
The teacher and student revisit the text to demonstrate and use a range of
comprehension strategies.
Students?
Each student reads the whole text or a unified part of the text.
Readers figure out new words while reading for meaning.
What is the main purpose of Guided Reading?
According to Scholastic: "You select books that students can read with about 90 percent accuracy. Students can understand and enjoy the story because it’s accessible to them
through their own strategies, supported by your introduction. They focus on
meaning but use problem-solving strategies to figure out words they don’t
know, deal with difficult sentence structure, and understand concepts
or ideas they have never before encountered in print."
How can Guided Reading be helpful for students?
Can give students more confidence in their reading capabilities.
It is different skill levels, so it is catered to every students needs. This means that students can move up at their own pace, and not fall behind or feel inferior to their peers.
What does it look like?
The ultimate goal is independent reading!
Guided Reading is especially helpful for English Language Learners. By using texts that they are already familiar with, pointing how key vocabulary words, and guiding the reader as they work through the text, the student will quickly learn more English and comprehend the readings better.
"Providing beginning EL's with structured guided reading instruction is essential for effective oral and written language development."
This week for my guided reading assignment, I found an article discussing Guided Reading instruction for English language learners. Because EL's do not have a large working vocabulary in english, it is imperative they have explicit reading instruction to ensure they get to the level they need to.
The text suggests doing choral reading of texts involving dramatic gestures and motions to provide context clues while reading a story with the child. They also suggest using a story (such as a fairy tale) that is common across most cultures. In this article, the example was Jack and the Beanstalk.
The article explains that for EL's, the most important aspect of Guided Reading is comprehension. However, I feel like comprehension should be a main goal for any guided reading lesson. It is important for students to understand the story fully before you can move into deeper ideas with them.
Lastly, the article gives a list of strategies any teacher should incorporate into their classrooms:
Support students to preview text and discuss key vocabulary words
Write short sentences that connect personal information with that of the character in the text
Create bilingual dictionaries that support word learning, simple expressions, and English grammatical structures
Link personal classroom experiences with evens and actions in the text
Use the native language to make concepts and ideas comprehensible
Participate in guided reading instruction
Engage in story retelling and summary writing of the text
Article: "Promoting Literacy Development for Beginning English Learners"
"Three major factors affect comprehension: the reader, the text, and the situation"
-Sharon Gill
I found the article discussing the Comprehension Matrix interesting. I think it gives teachers a clear direction for creating lessons that encourage and excite readers. It is important to include Pre-reading, During-reading, and Post-reading activities in lessons to incorporate numerous comprehension strategies and techniques.
The Comprehension Matrix
Some important questions to ask yourself when creating a comprehension lesson are:
What do my students know about this topic?
What specific terms or concepts do they need to understand before they can understand this passage?
How can I get my students interested in this topic?
What purposes can I provide for the reading?
What activities will help my students engage with this text?
What strategies do my students need to learn?
What strategies can I demonstrate with this particular text?
How can I help my students understand the vocabulary and concepts in the text?
I am learning that an important part of teaching is knowing your students very well, and making sure that the activities you chose are interesting and relevant to their lives. I think that is why it is important to incorporate a wide variety of activities that will excite learners of all types.
"Visualizing is an important strategy for students as they move from picture-books to chapter books"
-Anne Gregory & Mary Cahill
I found the article we read about Kindergarteners being able to work on comprehension, even though they are so young. One of the main ideas I see in many of our articles is anchor charts. One of the biggest strategies for comprehension is to create an anchor chart for asking questions, making inferences, and working closely with the text. I am a huge fan of anchor charts, and would definitely use one in my class for read-aloud activities and individual articles.
Questions for the reader:
What is your favorite strategy idea for comprehension?
How often should we do comprehension lessons with our students (so they don't get burned out or bored)? A few times a week? Every day?
"The real problem is not that they cannot think but that they do not think while they read"
-Cunningham and Allington Classrooms That Work
I really enjoyed the reading this week discussing comprehension strategies. I think in order to do well in life and enjoy reading, you must have a good basis for understanding and comprehending the information. We are given some comprehension strategies:
Calling up and connecting prior knowledge
Predicting, questioning, and wondering
Visualizing experiences from a text
Determining most important parts and summarizing
Drawing conclusions and making inferences
I also really like the idea of literature circles. I think it gives students an opportunity to read what they
would like, interact with their peers, and discuss reading. As we have been doing our book groups in class, I have realized that I am liking that format more and more. It is fun, creative, collaborative, and engaging with the text.
Think-Allouds also seem to be an important part of comprehension teaching. Modeling good reading strategies is important because without us telling them, the students would never know how or what to think about when they read. Some tips for planning a Think-Aloud are:
Choose a selection that truly makes you think
Decide how much will be read aloud
Practice before you teach the lesson!
Allow students time to collaborate and talk about their own experiences with the text
This video shows a 2nd grade teacher doing a Think Aloud
Also, because modeling is one of the most important parts of teaching kids to read I really like the steps our books gave us. 1. I do, You Watch 2. I do, You Help 3. You do, I help 4. You do, I watch
I think these steps are really easy to remember and will foster an atmosphere of helpfulness instead of authority and lecturing.
Question for the reader: Do you think there are any fun and crafty ways to integrate comprehension in the classroom? Something that would be hands-on and creative for those students who do better learning that way.
When kids are learning to read and write they often form their own spelling. The main question is how do we get our students to begin learning new words and spelling them correctly without forcing
them to do monotonous spelling quizzes?
One example is giving students an assortment of letters and have them make as many new words as they can. This will allow them to try new words and spellings to see what they can figure out on their own.
Another way is to make a fun word family using a fun craft. I think this would be especially fun because I love giving students a chance to be creative and do different word projects based on their preferences, and that would be an easy project to make lots of different word families for students to choose from.
Our articles this week gave us many do's and don'ts for teaching new words, but I think the most important aspect is to keep it interesting. If students get bored learning new words, they are more likely to not listen or be reluctant to write new words in their free writing.
How do you think we can actively engage our students to learn new words and make connections to old ones? Do you remember how your teachers integrated this into your elementary classrooms?
Shared Reading: Teachers accurately demonstrating how to read and giving voices to characters, thinking aloud while reading. Nursery rhymes, crafts about the stories, asking questions and sharing thoughts about the text with each other.
Choral Reading: A whole group or class reads the same passage at the same time together. Improves expression (modeled by the teacher), where you can have students “read like your sad, happy, ect)
Read Around: Using games like popcorn reading or starting in one place and everyone reading parts of a text. It helps fluency because you have to pick up where others left off (following along) but also be able to keep the inflection and tone of your peers. You would use short stories, books being read by the whole class, old favorites, or your textbooks.
Poetry Performance: Have students learn the importance of varying pitch, tone, voice, ect. Having a poem that students emphasize different words and how it can change the story. It shows how important correct prosody is.
Reader’s Theater: Use of a script (no props or anything) Helps with expression and practicing reading.
Repeated Reading: Reread the same text over and over to learn the words and be able to read it “perfectly” (but is this really practical?) A good activity might be having a “read aloud” by one student a week on Friday, and they spend the week practicing their book to read aloud to their classmates.
Wide Reading:reading of texts and articles that exposes students to rare words and new words that are not high-frequency but important words. It is the act of reading a lot of different texts about a lot of different subjects. (opposite of Narrow Reading, which would be like an author study)
"Fluency is the ability to read most words in context quickly and accurately and with appropriate expression" Classrooms That Work (49).
As we learned this week, fluency is an important component of literacy. Without fluency it is difficult to comprehend texts and gain a better understanding through reading. It is important to model fluent and expressive reading through echo reading and choral reading so that you can excite your students about reading well.
One of the biggest factors of fluency is recognition, which is why a high-frequency word wall is suggested. It is important to do a word wall...not just have one. In order to do a word wall our text suggests:
Be selective about the words you choose, limiting it to the most common words
Add words gradually (only 5 or 6 a week)
Make the words easily accessible where everyone can see them
Practice, Practice, Practice! Chant and write the words with your students often
Do a variety of activities so that your students can read and spell the words automatically
You can make your word wall interesting with different colors and hanging it from the ceiling.
For younger grades, you can make a word wall center so students can practice spelling these words with magnets.
In order to truly understand how to instruct and assess fluency, we must have a good working definition of the components of fluency. Deeney tells us in his article,
Fluency consists of four components: Accuracy (freedom from word-identification problems) Rate or Speed (automaticity, without hesitation) Prosody (smoothly) Comprehension
It is also important to note that one-minute assessments do not assess all four categories of fluency. Instead, they only assess Accuracy and Rate (and it can measure endurance if you have them read for longer). While it is useful to gather this information, it is important not to measure overall fluency using just these assessments.
Deeny offers a few instructional methods to improve fluency:
Increase automaticity (like using the word wall)
Decrease readability levels (to increase endurance, students must read texts they can already read fluently)
Read texts that are interesting to them
Increase reading volume
Reread books
Engage parents
Making it fun will make students excited to read well.
Rasinski also tells us how to "create fluent readers" in his article. He emphasizes that students who have many uncorrected words in their assessment probably need more instruction on decoding words and phonics skills. However those who need to strengthen their automaticity and prosodic reading would benefit from assisted reading and repeated reading. He suggests that the best passages for repeated read aloud reading includes: poetry, scripts, speeches, jokes, monologues, and dialogues. Be careful though! Make sure your students (and you) do not confuse reading fast with reading fluently. If a student can read a high number of words per minute but without prosodic and comprehensive reading, then they have not achieved fluency.
Question for the readers: Do you think that assessing fluency is this often is too much? Many schools assess fluency weekly, and even have students keep personal charts of their improvements. Do you think this is a good practice? Do you think there is a better way to assess fluency?
It is so important for kids to understand that they are important in the classroom, and that their voice matters. That is why I love the idea of teachers being "coaches". We are the best kind of coach too, a life coach. It is our job to make sure our students learn to the best of their ability, and ultimately are able to stand on their own without our "coaching".
One aspect of learning is word recognition coaching. Clark specifically tells us to encourage open discussion and questioning from the class. I think it is important for students to "discover" knowledge rather than be boringly told what they need to know. Discovery encourages deep thought and questioning that will lead to a lifelong love of inquiry, and much more likely for students to remember what they learn.
One of the biggest lessons Clark discusses is Word Recognition. A few options for practicing sight words are:
You can use something similar to this to practice sight words while crossing over to math skills.
You could have kids get in small groups or do this at stations to practice the words themselves.
I think one of the most important parts of word recognition is moderation. Focusing all of your attention on word recognition skills would ignore other important aspects of literacy. I think highly common words are important, but decoding and independent reading skills should be more heavily focused.
What do you think? Do you think word recognition exercises are one of the most important aspects for kids learning to read? Do you think there is a way for us to make word recognition exercises more than a worksheet, but more of a discovery?
I am so happy to be learning instructional tools for phonemic awareness and reading this week! As the IRA/NAEYC explains, it is so important for us to excite kids and give them the appropriate tools to become exceptional readers. Whether it be independent reading time, read alouds, or small groups, having a clear plan to encourage literacy is the most important aspect of teaching children. Reading reaches into every aspect of our lives.
"Communications that in the past were verbal (by phone or in person) now demand reading and writing—messages sent by electronic mail, Internet, or facsimile as well as print documents."
I really love Yopp & Yopp's suggestions for integrating phonemic principles into our curriculum. Activities that focus on rhyme: The Hungry Thing book. I love this idea! I also think you could incorporate other books such as llama llama Red Pajama, Dr. Suess, Moose on the Loose...well, really any rhyming book! You could easily design projects and fun activities around rhyming books that everyone loves!
Another rhyming idea I love that wasn't mentioned in the article is The Name Game. I'm sure most of us have heard it before. It is a fun song, and after listening to it you can go around the room having kids sing the song rhyming all of their classmates names. Really, any rhyming song like "Down By the Bay" or "The Saint's go Marching in" would be fun for kids.
Activities for syllable manipulation:
The article gave a few suggestions, but something I found really interesting is using the "Day-O" song to clap out syllables. I also really liked the idea of using kids' names to group them by syllables. I think you could do this with any combination of words and make it based on the students interests too.
Activities with onset-rime manipulation:
My favorite activity here was the We're Going on a Bear Hunt. It is a classic.
Activities with phoneme manipulation:
I really like the "find your partners" game, and being a huge fan of reading aloud, of course I like the book option. I think you could find a number of interesting books to show this.
"I was not going to look at my five-year olds as non-readers; I wanted to empower children with the knowledge that they were already readers, and I would move them forward from there."
- Donna Bell in "Letting Go of 'Letter of the Week'"
I really enjoyed the article concerning reading, writing, and taking the focus off "letter of the week" programs. I feel that authenticity is important when teaching children. Kids are smart, and they absorb information quickly, and as such we need to treat them like they are intelligent.
It is so important to validate their reading and writings to make them feel important and useful. That is why I loved the article, which validates giving students more freedom in the classroom to read and write. I especially loved when Donna Jarvis talked about letting kids write how they want, and then letting them edit their work to improve themselves and their writing. I loved the ideas she put forth for having a fun and interactive classroom where kids are discovering not memorizing.
I feel like much of this week's reading focussed on outside influences for reading. Allington and Cunningham focussed on children's experiences learning to read outside the classroom. Ideas such as pretend reading, the Alphabet song, and anchored word learning came up often. I can't do much to control how a child learns at home, and more importantly how much they have learned before they enter my kindergarten or first grade classroom. However, I think that considering how a child has learned at home is important to gear how the will best learn at school.
I really liked some of the ideas that were given, specifically the "being the alphabet" game where students are given random letters of the alphabet when they line up, and they must arrange themselves in the correct order. I think an activity like this encourages group collaboration and is a fun way for kids to work with letters.
I also like the idea of anchored word picture books. Making an anchored word book to learn letters which students can look at during independent reading time is a great idea! However, I think I would take it a step further by having my students draw or create their own picture book for each letter. That way, they have their own book to take home and look at and they will remember the letters because they know what they drew. I think it makes it creative and fun for the students too.
I think that this chapter mainly gave the key elements for teaching reading.
Allow pretend reading and writing, even if it is wrong because it will foster excitement for learning those concepts. Provide a multitude of writing media (pads, colored paper, chalkboard, index cards, ect) to gain excitement about "real world" writing.
Model writing for them so they can see what they need to imitate
Teach concrete words in a creative way (using their names or cereal boxes, restaurant menus, animals, ect)
I think I am most excited about teaching rhyming. I really love to read aloud, and I love the classic rhyming books and nursery rhymes. One of my favorite books is Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shell Silverstein, and I have always loved Dr. Suess.
As I was doing my Personal History for reading, I learned a lot about myself and my outlook as a reading teacher. I have grown up an enthusiastic reader, and I want to instill that same love of reading into my students. This chapter focuses on methods to excite and involve kids in Independent reading.
One of the most important aspects of reading education is assessing your students view on reading as a whole. One suggestion is giving the kids a status check, asking them about their feelings toward books, their favorite books, and more. While I like being able to see progress throughout the year, I would be wary of making kids feel like their being tested over their enjoyment of reading.
Another important aspect of reading is teacher Read-Alouds. I was always read to as a young child, and I remember being very excited about my teachers reading in our classrooms. I found it interesting that females prefer fiction while males prefer information books. I really think it is important to read a variety of materials from all different genres as well as offering these different types to kids for independent reading time. I also think it is necessary to encourage parents to read aloud to their kids as well at home. Not only does this give kids more opportunities to read and hear more words, but also the encouragement from parents is a huge factor in success at school. I also think that reading books in a series or an author with more books is a great idea. It makes sense that kids want to read the books that their teacher reads, and giving them other materials similar to the read aloud is a great way to get them excited about reading. In order to keep a balanced and interesting read aloud schedule, I think it is important for teachers to plan their readings for the year and keep a record of what they read. I also think that it is a great idea to journal about the experiences during the read aloud sessions and what books kids particularly enjoyed. I really like the idea of having a "book wall" in which kids can rate how well they like or didn't like a book. I think it would give me feedback on what they enjoy and what's working while giving my kids a chance to express themselves. Another great way to encourage reading is the Buddy System. When a child is falling behind in reading, they often don't want to be seen reading "baby books". In order to keep them reading at their level, and hopefully get them to move forward, introducing a Buddy System seems like a great option. I think getting them to read to kindergarten kids is a great way to 1) motivate them to read more at their level and 2) set a good example for the little kids on how fun reading can be! One of the most important parts of creating good independent readers is giving them time to read independently in class. Allowing kids to choose the books they want to read and giving them ample time to read them is key to getting kids excited about books. I learned about the "no wandering" rule, and I found it very interesting. It makes sense that when kids wander around looking for a books 1) they aren't reading themselves and 2)they are distracting others who are trying to read. I really liked the idea of the "book crates" system with other teachers. As a new and young teacher, it is hard to have an extensively large library that will interest and keep up with my students all year long. As my career continues, I do want a large classroom library, but it is hard to buy a large amount of books at the beginning. I think the book crates system makes a much larger selection of books for the classroom while creating excitement for students. Another interesting subject I learned was Independent Reading Conferences. The idea is to give the kids a chance to share their favorite parts of the books they are reading while assessing how the are improving, encourage their interests, and help them pick out new books to read. It is important not to make it feel like an interrogation, and keep a positive attitude. The idea is to put the responsibility of preparing for the conferences on the students. The books gives me these kind of instructions for students to complete before conferences each week:
Choose the book or magazine you want to share.
Pick a part to read to me and practice this part.
Write the title and page number on a bookmark and put the bookmark in the right place.
Think about what you want to talk to me about. Some possibilities are:
What you like about this book
Why you chose to read this part to me
What you think will happen (if you haven't finished the book)
What you are thinking about sharing with me next week
All grade levels require reading and writing skills, and creating a foundation for those skills is especially important at the elementary level. I want to foster a love for learning, and a love for reading in my classroom. I always knew it was important to be enthusiastic and inclusive in reading and writing assignments, but I was surprised and intrigued by the research on high achieving classrooms. I was happy to find that classroom's which emphasized balance did particularly well. Not only one program works, but a combination of many programs tailors to your classrooms needs. I believe this ideology empowers teachers to create classrooms that will work for their students while keeping their workload passionate and interesting.
Michael Knapp's study in 1995 showed classrooms "with the highest achievement gains" included:
Teachers who emphasized higher-order meaning construction more than lower-order skills
Teachers who maximized opportunities to read
Integrated reading and writing with other subject areas
Provided opportunities to discuss what was read
I really appreciate the idea of emphasized higher-order meaning over low-order skills. Basically, this means that these teachers focused on how to reach on answer or how to solve a problem rather than
simple getting the correct answer. I believe it is important for students to know how to problem solve so that they can use those skills in other areas of their life as well. It sort of reminds me of the saying, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." If we just give our students the right answers without making them come to their own conclusions, we are teaching them for a day; not giving them the opportunity to learn for a lifetime.
Another observational research study led by Ruth Wharton-McDonald in 1998 showed more in-depth conclusions about classrooms which had unusually high achieving students. Some of the observations concluded that these teachers:
Integrated skills teaching with reading and writing.
There was never a mundane task, but every minute in class was used well and for instructional events.
Use lots of coaching, providing support but always trying to get the most out of every child.
Emphasize self-regulation and self-monitoring.
Reading and writing was also integrated into other areas, and teacher made many cross-curriculum connections.
High expectations for their children- both for learning and behavior.
Excellent classroom managers.
I agree with every aspect of this list, and believe that integrating these policies would be beneficial to both students and teachers in every classroom. I think that a key part to keeping these aspects in a classroom would require attention and reminding. If a teacher plans on keeping high expectations, not wasting time, and giving kids the ability to self regulate, then they must constantly integrate these ideals into their notes and plans. Furthermore, I think for managing behavior and self-monitoring, the best way to go is setting clear rules at the beginning of the year. By setting out specific rewards and punishments for behaviors and then following through on those rules, I could maintain high expectations for my students. I really like the idea of having a "stress" station where students who are frustrated or having trouble can go to calm down. I also really like the idea of have a way for students to reflect on their behavior and they can do to change it for next time.
Some other unique observations made by Wharton-Mcdonald in 2001 on effective classrooms include:
Books were everywhere and used in a variety of ways.
Children did a lot of reading throughout the day and for homework.
Classrooms were caring, positive, and cooperative environments, in which discipline issues were handled quickly and quietly.
Teachers used a variety of grouping structures, including whole class, one-to-one teaching, and a variety of small groups.
High student engagement.
I think the most important aspect of this is the balance of grouping structures. Using different groupings throughout the day allows for a more diverse learning experience. It allows students who learn different ways an opportunity to learn in a style best suited to them. Furthermore, it allows everyone in the class a change of pace so that they do not become bored or unresponsive. It keeps everyone interested and actively engaged in the lessons. I believe balance is the key to good classroom management.
I also really like the idea of having a large classroom library. I think having books at their disposal will allow kids more opportunities to be introduced to books they will enjoy. Furthermore, a large classroom library gives incentives to students in their behavior and time management while hopefully fostering a love for reading at a young age.
A really interesting idea I learned was the five categories for reading development: Letter-sound, oral language, anchored word reading, and writing. The text explained that while it is accepted that children need to develop phonemic awareness and phonics skills to become successful, ignoring meaning vocabulary can cause comprehension deficits in the future (Allyn, 6).
Meaning Vocabulary: the number of words students have meanings for in their speaking and listening vocabularies.
What I also found fascinating was the idea of anchored word reading. The idea is that a teacher will print out new or unfamiliar words on note cards, which she points to as she reads them in a text. The students will then actively engage with the notes cards, talk about what the word means, and learn how to say it themselves. By actively engaging the students when learning the new word, they add them to their oral vocabularies.
Another interesting framework is the Four Blocks organizational literacy structure. The idea is that instructional time is divided into four blocks: a Words Block (sight words, fluency, phonics, and spelling), Guided Reading Block (comprehension strategies for story and informational text and building prior knowledge and vocabulary), Writing Block (both process writing and focused writing), and a Self-Selected Reading Block (teacher read-alouds and independent reading). The research shows that of the six schools who implemented it, all did better than expected on their states' literacy exams. This video goes into more depth about the Four Blocks program:
I think overall the most important part of any classroom is balance. Many of the programs and ideas explored here are great to integrate into classrooms, but it is ultimately the teacher who needs to decide what parts to include in their classroom. I think the research and tools provided in this chapter are invaluable for giving teachers the insight to create a class atmosphere that encourages reading and writing.
It is important that we realize that testing only offers a small amount of insight into reading comprehension and ability. By using multiple assessments, teachers can gain more insight into how to offer more explicit instruction in the targeted areas students struggle with. 
