Module 3 - Miscues

So I found this module fascinating, I remember when I wrote papers in school, I would occasionally see red writing above what I had written. My teachers would always need to review one-on-one with me what the red writing meant, simply because I could not see it. If I remember right, sp was used to represent a spelling mistake, but I’m not certain about this. In reading the directions for how to perform a miscue analysis, I kept thinking to myself, ‘but how am I going to do this?’ I understand what the purpose of this is, to represent what a reader does if they read a word or phrase incorrectly. I think I would read along with them using my own braille copy then I would go back and make markings later. I originally thought I might do this in an excel spreadsheet with each word in their own box and leave a blank line below each line of text and then I could make the comments in the box below or above the word. I haven’t decided if this method will work or not. I’m not going to be able to use some of the symbols and didn’t understand all of them because they are graphical but I got the point of the exercise. I think what I could use would be a chart with the words that I can use. For example, if they made a substitution, I would need to be able to use a letter for my notes to represent this in a form of shorthand. At least, that is what this sounds like to me, a method of shorthand. The recording would allow me to go back and actually write the notes.

Post #1 - Module 2

I thought these readings were interesting, I found that they all focused on a different area of how best to help students learn to read. I really enjoyed the article entitled The Pleasure Principle. This article made a great deal of sense to me. What better way to encourage kids to read then to let them find a book to read and simply let them read it for the enjoyment of it. I didn’t realize that the pictures in a book were so important to determining the meaning of an unfamiliar word. I admit, I have helped a student of mine break a word down into its parts to try and figure out what the word was, not realizing that was not an entirely good idea. It’s amazing to me that this process happens very quickly for me as a confident reader. This quote helped me to understand what a reader does to figure out an unfamiliar word, “when recognizing words, a reader might search for information from the letters and pictures; he gathers information from his background knowledge or from the context of the story; he links parts of unknown words with parts of words he does know; and he predicts what a word might be. A reader confronting an unknown word might also crosscheck the meaning and structural information with the visual graphophon-ics cues to confirm a prediction. The reader is constantly keeping a check on himself by self-monitoring—does the word look right? Make sense? Sound right?” Johnson C. H. In the context of this process, no wonder it takes some students quite a while to grasp how to go through the process of figuring out what a word is – this process sounds exhausting. In light of the above quote, this one made me feel better about the process as a whole “Clay (2001) says we cannot teach a strategy but can only encourage students to be strategic by the way in which we teach.” The responsibility of teaching a child to be a reader who can decipher new and unfamiliar words is admittedly quite terrifying to me. The thought of what if I do it wrong, am I going to mess this kid up for life is something that I’m hoping in time I will become more comfortable with working through. For now, I try to take comfort in knowing that it’s a process. I know that in the population of students I work with – Visually Impaired students, one of the more difficult facets to deal with is that this population of students often lacks background knowledge. Often times they are missing that background knowledge, simply because due to their lack of vision, they have not been exposed to many things that our sighted students take for granted. Since I work closely with this population, one thing we deal with is this lack of background knowledge, but that’s a tiny piece in the process that students use to determine new words... The concept of a literacy-rich environment is one that is unique to this population as well, having access to a book either in a font type or size they can read or perhaps even a book in braille is sometimes more difficult to achieve for this population of students. In thinking about my own literacy journey, I realized that I read a lot of audio books, simply because I could get a book in an audio format easier than I could get it in a format that I could read – either large print or braille. I do think that apps like the kindle app or even a few specialized apps, allow for customizing of font types for them to read visually, however this isn’t always an option either. So for this population, sometimes thinking through the process of how they have access to the material being read is just as important as can the child figure out what this word is. Is it a font type or size or is it a matter of too much visual clutter on a page as well. These things are then layered on top of all of the other concerns that go into the process of how to figure out what a word is.

Blog Post 1: Chapters One, Two, and Three of Catching Readers Before They Fall

For my choice textbook, I chose Catching Readers Before They Fall by Pat Johnson and Katie Keier. I decided to choose this textbook because I personally find teaching someone to learn to read as a difficult task. Since my major is early childhood education, there is a chance that I will be hired full-time as a teacher in grades K4 through fifth grade teacher. Grades K4 through fifth are critical times for teaching young learners, and they require a lot of attention academically. From this textbook, I hope to learn more ways to integrate different reading strategies to help young readers to be able to read sufficiently.

Since chapters one and two are smaller chapters compared to the rest of the textbook, I decided to synthesize them together. The title for chapter one is Expanding Our Paradigm of Reading and the title for chapter two is How Reading Works. The first chapter was more over an over view of how the next several chapters can help teachers expand their knowledge of teaching  literacy. The authors, Johnson and Keier, encourage teachers to create or adhere to their own belief systems because it will change as new thoughts and situations occur through our teaching careers. "Classrooms should be incredibly safe places where every student feels respected and valued; where it's okay to make a mistake; and where it's accepted by all to have strengths and weaknesses that may be different from other students in the classroom community (Johnson and Keier 2010) ". This quote sets up the mood for the title of chapter one, Expanding Our Paradigm of Reading. In order for teachers to do this we must start with making sure our classroom environment is a safe zone for our students. "Do keep trying to develop teaching stamina. The struggling readers in your classroom need you desperately. We know it's difficult and we know you can do it (Johnson and Keier, 2010)". This quote stood out to me because it's easy for teachers to lose hope when the strategies they integrate into their lessons don't work for all the students. In order to teach stamina, reading needs to be looked at as a marathon. If a child isn't persistently prepared and challenged on a daily basis by their teacher, they won't have the chance to improve academically. Students have to be constantly checked on to make sure their reading and comprehension is on the right track (Johnson and Keier, 2010).

I really enjoyed reading chapter three, Vygotsky Takes a Seat in Our Classrooms, because it introduces the importance of Lee Vygotsky and his concept, the Zone of Promixal Development. This chapter demonmstrates how we as teachers can accommodate struggling readers by teaching them in their Zone of Proximal Development. On page 32, figure 3.1, there is a explicit model of how Vygotsky's Zone of Proimal Development. The model shows three different stages of how our students learn; zone of actual development, zone of proximal development, and out of reach.
"Granted in a classroom situtation it would be difficult to have every child working within his or her ZPD every moment of every day. But we have found that when teachers understand the zone of proximal development, they strive to know their students better and try harder to vary their supporters, questions, or instruction for different students".  When I have my own classroom, I plan to have individual student ZPD charts so that I can learn my students better. My favorite statement that I plan to focus more on when I teach is:"Social interactions provide the platform for learning how to learn and for the development of self-reflection, responsibility, cooperation, and effective problem solving, and it is through social interactions that children develop and expand their capacity to learn (2003, 136)".

Blog 1

Shameeka Spann

Text Choice: Catching Readers Before They Fall

            The chapter I chose for this blog was chapter 5 titled, A Comprehensive Literacy Framework. According to Johnson and Keier (2010), traditional read alouds are read alouds in which teachers model what language of books sound like, what loving a book looks like, and what being lost in a book feels like (Johnson and Keier, 2010).  Interactive read alouds are when teachers read text with a clear instructional purpose, engage students in conversation before, during, and after the read alouds (Johnson and Keier, 2010). Johnson and Keier (2010) state that during interactive read alouds, teachers model comprehension strategies such as, making connections, activating prior knowledge, and questioning. In this text, one thing that stood out to me was the classroom situation about the importance of reading to children. The authors discussed teacher Katie reading the book Skippyjon Jones in the Doghouse, and the connection one of her students made with the read aloud and the book Where the Wild Things Are. Although she did not plan for her students to make a connection, one student made a connection on his own based on a previous strategy lesson. This actually reminded me of my students during traditional and interactive read alouds. My students have made amazing, unexpected connections during the stories with topics I taught during Science and Social Studies. Some days we were focusing on another strategy, but they still understood how to make connections. I was very impressed with them, and their excitement as they shared the connections. One special statement in this chapter that stood out to me was, “All kids need to be read to, but it is especially beneficial to struggling readers” (Johnson and Keier, 2010). This statement is very important to me because I agree with it, and based on observations of my students I know it can be true.  Reading to children is very important because not all children come from a home environment in which they have adults to read to them.  During this reading, the following statement taught me more about shared reading than I knew before, “The shared reading experience provides a time for struggling readers to try reading strategies, or build concepts within a safe environment and with the support of the teacher and other readers.  One strategy I plan to use during my shared reading is modeling for students the questioning strategy, which was explained in the text. I also learned in this chapter that for guided reading, the book introductions should include a lot of social interactions and conversations. I would like to end on this final statement about the importance of guided reading, “Remember we are teaching the readers, not the book” (Johnson and Keier, 2010).

What You Should Know About Reading Processes, Vygotsky, and Literacy Rich Environments

I chose to read Catching Readers Before They Fall by Pat Johnson and Katie Keier.  Since I do not teach in a classroom yet, I’ll be sharing some ideas that I want to implement in the future, as well as knowledge that I have gained from the readings.  This week I learned about how reading works, some theories that Vygotsky had, and literacy rich environments.  

Let’s start with how reading works. In order to understand and help struggling readers, we must first understand the complex processing system behind reading and how we use a balance of things such as the meaning of the passage, the structural information, and the visual information to help us read.  Carol Lyons says, “every child is capable of learning given the right opportunities, context, and assistance.” I think this is something that all teachers need to remember, even if the day is stressful or if a student just isn’t quite understanding something. Maybe we need to take a breather, a step back, and determine how we can approach this situation a different way instead of dismissing it as something that is already finished.  Students “are developing a way of thinking that enables them to make meaning when they are reading and helps them when they get stuck.” Proficient readers who have already developed a reading process system are thinking about what they are reading, noticing and stopping when their reading doesn’t make sense, and using strategies to fix their errors.  We have to ask the question: how do I teach a child to develop a reading process system? because struggling readers have often not built that reading process that allows them to gain meaning or “solve problems when stuck”.  There are some examples in the book of strategies that proficient readers utilize such as self-correction, predicting words, maintaining fluency, using background knowledge, and making connections and inferences.  Modeling, thinking aloud, and doing shared demonstrations are some ways that the book talked about to help a student start developing a useful system for reading. Integration of strategies also becomes crucial to the student in order for them to comprehend and read fluently.

            Next, let’s talk about some of Vygotsky’s theories and ideas. Lev Vygotsky had many theories of how children learn.  One of the most important factors that he discussed was that “teaching is the most effective when it takes place within the child’s zone of proximal development.”  What exactly is the zone of proximal development or ZPD? It’s where a child can do something with your help.  Another important thing is to understand is the zone of actual development, or ZAD, which is something that a child can do easily (without you).  The other factor to consider is that there are some things out of reach for the child.  “Oftentimes in classrooms, students who are expected to complete tasks that are out of their reach will become very frustrated and confused.”  However, if we give them something that is in their reach, we can eventually help it become a skill for them and that skill will enter their ZAD.  In order to do that, the child must see the task or skill modeled by you, do it together with you, and they will “eventually take on the new learning independently.”
           And lastly, literacy rich environments have been a big topic. These types of environments and using a literacy approach allow teachers to work with students in small groups and sometimes individually during reading or writing.  Assuming that there is a big library in the literacy rich classroom, this gives many opportunities for children to get to read several different types of books.  Ultimately, a literacy rich environment allows socializing, supporting, collaborating, and promoting growth.  All of these topics are very important and can help us to become better teachers, by becoming more aware of how processes work and how to help students construct a reading process.   

Welcome To Our Course Blog!

Welcome to our course blog! For those of you new to blogging, hopefully this experience will expand your ideas for online communication to use in your classroom or for personal use.

For you bloggers out there, please feel free to use options you are already familiar with such as adding links or other helpful media to your posts. Following each course meeting, you will be logging in and posting your thoughts and comments related to our course reading.

This is a place where you can share and discuss how what you are learning from your course readings, from our discussions in our meetings, and your interactions with your colleagues as you collaborate to find strategies and solutions to apply best practice strategies and structures for literacy instruction.

Please share successes and failures as you work to implement what you are learning into your classroom practice.  Most of all, reflect on your learning process. In order for us to extend our classroom community to an online setting with this blog, it is important that you also read and respond to the posts of your peers. After each course meetings, please post your thoughts and then also choose two of your colleagues to respond to as well. Please also feel free to share any questions, comments, or suggestions.

We look forward to the learning process that will occur from this online community.

Sincerely,

Dawn Mitchell & Melissa Wells