Week 11: Teaching Reading Skills & Strategies with the basal

I thought that the readings on the basal reading program this week were very interesting and I can see them becoming very useful to me as a beginning teacher within the next couple years. The basal reading program is effective because it gives teachers a strict outline for what needs to be covered in classroom instruction in the areas of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing development. On the other hand, it doesn't leave very much room for creativity on the part of a teacher because it does stress so many specific things to be done in one school year. In my opinion I think it is going to be very useful to be just to use as a guideline to follow especially throughout my first few years of teaching, but as I gain more hands-on experience I will try to become more creative and open to risk-taking in my teaching.
Balanced literacy instruction is another topic that is very important in the classroom. For my New Literacies Project I have chosen to focus on cultural literacy because I think that is something that many students need to understand. The United States is becoming more and more diverse and so are its schools, so I think that it would be very beneficial if not a requirement to make sure that students are aware of other cultures and other people's traditions because they are going to come in contact with students that are very different than them. Here is my write-up for my progress in the New Literacies Project thus far:
I have learned many things so far while doing my New Literacy Project. For my project, I have chosen to teach about cultural literacy through a website and also while incorporating a digital story. The reason I chose to do this topic is because I have been very fortunate to have the opportunity to travel to many countries around the world over the past five years and each time I travel my eyes are opened to the vast differences among cultures that are present. In each experience I have had to learn about all aspects of each culture and work diligently to try to form my style of living to that culture as well. Even though I feel that each person should not alter his or her own culture toward someone else’s and rather sustains their own unique culture, I do think that it Is crucial to be knowledgeable about the differences that exist and appreciate them. This is something that I have realized through research is not typically a focus in elementary classrooms.
One of the main things that I have learned about thus far in my research and website creation is about E.D. Hirsch, who is the main creator and supporter of cultural literacy teaching in classrooms. I have researched his findings a great deal and realize that he has many valid points about students’ learning. I have decided to include some of his research on my website. Something else that I have learned is that everyone has a very different opinion of what cultural literacy is. Some people think that it is just understanding what another cultural says and does in certain instances, while others believe that it is much deeper than that and includes actually practicing those differences to truly appreciate.
Over the past few weeks I have been researching this concept and also working with various website creation sites to try to determine which would be the best for me to use in order to best represent my learning about this new literacy. The website creator I think I am going to use is Weebly because I have already once started creating a website using Google Sites and I think that Weebly has a much sharper appearance. Through my learning of the navigation of Weebly, though, I have had many difficulties because it is much more difficult to do simple tasks on than Google Sites. I am hoping that I will be able to continue learning how to effectively use Weebly so that my project looks how I want it to. In addition to this, I will continue to research cultural literacy and different activities that can be used to reinforce its importance and exploration in the classroom.

Week 8

Book Club is a way for students to talk about a book and gain deeper understanding. We are using book club in TE 402 to talk about the plot in depth along with share ideas about characters and their feelings and characteristics. Book club can be done in a variety of ways, but I think the main part needs to be that the students read PRIOR to coming to class. Comprehension can be taught through book clubs using a variety of ways. In our class we had three pages of ideas to choose from. Some of the ideas that I think can teach comprehension very well is doing a character analysis, relating the story to something that reminds you of your own life and predicting what will happen next. These three activities encourage students to not only think about what happened in the story but also think about the "WHYS" which always encourages comprehension. 

Knowing how the text is structurised is important. It helps to know how to read the text. People read a text book differently than they read a graphic novel and knowing what type of text you are reading before beginning to read is helpful in comprehension. 

Helping English Language Learners develop reading comprehension can be difficult. One thing the Gibbons article really pointed out was breaking down the story at various points in the reading. I think this is where the graphic organizer can be beneficial. Organizing the story on paper and in your own words can help the student to understand what is happening. Also making a sketch of the characters and their personality traits would be helpful while reading. An ELL could have this sheet out as a reference and if there is any confusion they could look at the sheet and keep them on track with the characters. 

Call of Thunder

After doing some research online, I found a list of words from Call of Thunder that children might not know. I thought it would be fun for the children to create crossword puzzles. I would like to divide the words up into groups that relate to the chapters they are found in, and then give each group to a group of students. I would have each group work togethor to create a crossword puzzle. I would then make copies of the crossword puzzle for the whole class, and have the class complete them. I would have the children complete the puzzle that corresponds to the chapter as we read each chapter. In this way, children would get practice with one group of words at they created the puzzle, and then another as they completed the puzzles generated by their classmates. Also, children would first be exposted to the words when they made the puzzles, so they would be familiar when the encountered them in the text. We could point out the words as we encounter them in the text, and then discuss how the definition applies to how the therm is used in the text. Finally, the children would get practice with the words again when they complete the puzzle. This way the children are working with the words, and then identifying them in the text, and then working with them again. They will feel important and valued when other students complete the puzzles that they made.

See response for word list.

Week 10 (March 23)

I really liked how this chapter outlined the goals for vocabulary instruction. In always viewed vocabulary lessons as looking up words, and then writing them in sentences. However this chapter pointed hot how children really learn vocabulary in a meaningful way. I was excited to read about how connecting words to background knowledge. It made snese to me that learning words in isolation is not effective, but I feel that that is alot of how I was taught. It makes sense from what I am learning in my other classes that connecting words to what children already know will help them learn and remember more words. I couldn't beleive that children need to read, write, or say a word 8 to 10 tiems before they recognize it. This really impacted me. I now realize that vocabulary must really be incorporated into my classroom and what we are working on. Simply showing them a list or haveing them define a word once will not help. It is just a waste of time for everyone. I also liked that the book emphasized higher level word knowledge. Again, it means that students must work with words and own them, instead of simply memorizing them. I never thought about how learning bocabulary would also help the children learn stratagies that would help them learn words on their own later in life. This is really valuable because it helps them to become competent members of society. Finally, by involving the students in word activities, it again enforces that children really need to work with words and not just memorize them. I loved that this chapter enforced in many ways the importance of working with words, an offered suggestions as to how a teacher can successfully teach vocabulary.

Expanding Students' Knowledge of Words

This chapter in Tompkins was very interesting because it showed many different ways to teach vocabulary students. I thought that it was very interesting how it said that each year students learn 3,000 new words through reading, etc. At first hearing that made me think that many teachers may read this and then think that teaching vocabulary is not that important because it comes so naturally and it is not something that needs formal instruction. Unfortunately this is definitely not the case. Instruction on vocabulary is very important and is critical to students' reading development. Here is a vocabulary lesson I found online on Scholastic.com for teaching vocabulary about Roll of Thunder:

Vocabulary Builder for Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Taken from Scholastic.com
After presenting these vocabulary words to students, have them make a chart like the one shown below. Ask them to list each word in the first column. Then students should think about their familiarity with each word and make a check in the appropriate column. If they can define the word, they should write the definition in the next column. Once the charts are completed, invite those who can define a word to do so for the rest of the class. Challenge these volunteers to use the words in sentences. Then direct students who did not previously check the second column to write the word's meaning in that column. After reviewing all the words, encourage students to go back and circle in red any words that they are still not sure of.

meticulously penchant verandah morosely
dubious obnoxious raucous fallow
careened exasperation despondently chignon
acrid ashen malevolently knell
amenities subdued emaciated shroud
proprietor disposition temerity snidely
concession monotonous reprimand plantation
noncommittal maverick crescendo boycott
languidly flaunting chiffonier insolently
reverberated adamantly resiliency feigned
lethargically imperiously moronic impaled
admonished interjected flaccid compassion

Week 9 post: Fluency and Critical Standards with Book Club

This week’s reading about assessing students and then also chapter 5’s topic of developing fluent readers were very useful readings for us as future teachers. I enjoyed reading all of the assessment techniques that Tompkins laid out in chapter 9 because there are many authentic assessments in there that I never would have thought of. Chapter 5 was most applicable to my field experience because many of those concepts, such as concepts of print, phonological awareness, letter recognition are ones that we focus on in my kindergarten classroom. Each day is filled with literacy in our classroom and we ALWAYS do lesson on concepts of print and letter identification multiple times a day. Many of the students in my class don’t yet understand letter-sound relationships and that skill determines whether or not the student is ready to move on to first grade next year. These skills are very basic and lay the foundation for the rest of the student’s education.
Many of the assessments that I saw in Chapter 9 were many that my CT uses with our students, or some that my professors in the College of Education have had us practice and become familiar with. I was very interested to see all the different notes about how to nurture English learners in their struggling during assessment. First, Tompkins talked about using an attitude and motivation survey to find out what makes them want to learn and also not using tests to assess these students, but rather portfolios that display their own samples of work or audio tapes that can record their words.
For my mini lesson I have chose to focus on the part in chapter 5 of the text when the children go to Strawberry with Big Ma. The mini lesson is designed for sixth grade students. First, we would discuss what “discrimination” is and why it is important. Next, I would put the students in groups of 3-4 and then give them a small piece of paper with a prompt on it that describes a situation. They will have 10 minutes to prepare a skit of their situation and present it to the front of the class. They will also be told that prior to presenting, they must decide if what their situation demonstrates is or is not a form of discrimination and why. Hopefully, this will allow me to further promote discussion among the class after each skit about what was happening. After each skit, we will talk more in depth about the situation in chapter 5 and how negatively it impacted Cassie and her siblings. The prompts I would give would be:
1. Blue eyes vs. Brown Eyes
2. Boys vs. Girls
3. Getting blamed for something your sibling did wrong
4. Cassie and Lillian Jean in Strawberry
5. Getting a poor score on a spelling test

Week 8: Genres and Comprehension Activities for ELLs

I thought that this week's readings were very interesting because they furthered by understanding about different genres of literature. I enjoyed being able to read about each one and as I did, I began to reflect on books that I read when I was younger that came to mind. For example, when Tompkins talked about Fantasy books I thought of how I loved reading Harry Potter when I was in Middle and High School. I also thought it was interesting how Tompkins also talked about poetry in the text. I remember when I was in sixth grade and we had a unit on poetry. I remember enjoying it very much, but the topic was never revisited after that. I think that all children need to be continuously surrounded by these types of texts in order to best understand them. In my kindergarten classroom, my CT has a very large classroom library for her students that are abundant with many books from all the genres that Tompkins talked about. Even though the students are so young that they have no idea what type of book they are looking at usually when they select one out to read, I have started to try to ask them questions, such as, "What is happening in the book you are reading?" or "Is that like real life, or do you think it's more pretend?" Even though this is very basic it gets them thinking about the text a little more than they normally do.
Also, the Gibbons article gave some great teaching suggestions for gaining comprehension with ESL students. I thought it was interesting how it suggested activities broken down into before, during, and after reading so that it is very easier for a teacher to keep organized so that they can be implemented. I have actually used many of these activities when I have tutored Korean ESL students the past 3 years. For example, I always have them predict what is going to happen based on the pictures and other parts of the book. Also, I always have them reiterate to me the plot, the setting, the characters, etc. just so that they become very familiar with these terms.
I found it very beneficial to create a graphic organizer for all of these chapters because even though each of the chapters addressed a different issue or topic, I was able to make important connections between the content, which made it much more meaningful for me as a learner.

Week 8 (March 2)

Creating Graphic organizers really helped me learn about the reading. First of all, it made me evaluate what was really important to write down. This caused me to look over all the information and evaluate its importance. To determine this, I had to see how each part connected with the others, and how significant it was in regards to the topic. I feel that I learned alot from doing several chapters at once, specifically Chapters 7 and 8 in Tompkins. They each delt with teaching comprehension, but one chapter delt with the reader, and the other detailed the text and how it impacts comprehension. Creating graphic orgainizers for these chapters at the same time really helped me compare and contrast these chapters in my head. I was able to make connections in how I organized the chapters, making it obvious how they are connected, and how one impacts the other.

As far as the reading go, I was very intrested in them. I felt like none of them were totally new information, but they presented information I knew in a way that I had never thought about before. For example, I had never realized how helpful it was to understanding headings or bolded text. I realized that I use both of these to help me understand and comprehend what I am reading, but I never thought about it before. This reading made it apparent to me what I do to understand what I read. This will make me a more effective teacher, because I will be aware of what I do, and be able to relate this information to my students.

I was amazed at what I learned from the Gibbons chapter. The different stratigies that people use to understand what they read are all based on personal knowledge or cultral knowledge. I feel like I knew this, but had never thought of it. This puts an English Language Learner at a great disadvantage. Not only do they have to struggle with the language, but they have not had the experiences they are reading about, and cannot relate to what they are reading. It is difficult to understand not because they are unable to comprehend, but because it is not relevant to them at all. This made me realize how important it is to challenge ELL students, and provide them with many MANY activities to supplement reading. I found the different activities in the book to be very helpful and useful.

Week 7

My lesson plans can improve by considering transitions and time. I have it in my head that lesson plans need to be chalk full when really they need to be organized and attainable. One feedback I always get from my CT is transitioning the students from the floor to their seats. I cannot simply tell the kindergardeners to move, I have to dismiss them in an organized manner to prevent chaos. This can be done by dismissing them individually, groups of two or who is sitting the "kindergarten way". 

The readings were very helpful in regards to working with students with learning disabilities. It is not unlikely that I could teach in a school where reading specialists jobs have been cut and I will have to work with these children. One thing the Carlisle article made very clear is to do lots of different activities. Reading and writing can be done way outside of the box which can help all types of learners including those who have a learning disability. One suggestion  was to do dramatic re-enactments of the story. I think this is a great idea because it allows for the students to be creative while still showing comprehension. Also, this allows for students to ask any questions they may have regarding the plot, setting, sequence of events etc. Re-enacting the story forces students to think what came next and how the characters reacted. 

I loved reading the Applegate article on all the types of profiles in comprehension. I had a hard time classifying myself in one specific category, but I'm a lot like a quiz contestant. I search for the correct answer but it may sometimes not be related to the story. I think organizing my thoughts onto paper helps to keep me on track. I enjoyed looking at the chart and reading about the different types of interventions that can be used. This will be important to think about as teachers so that we can try to assess students in the most beneficial way.