Blog 3:  No More Independent Reading Without Support

Earlier in this book, a term was introduced that explains to me what the authors are trying to accomplish - “scaffolded silent reading” or ScSR.  Although the authors use the acronym IR in the remainder of the book, I think ScSR is more appropriate. They advise teachers to move beyond reading while their students are reading to actively conferencing with students as they are reading independently. The authors state that teachers need to be:

*assessing “the match between student self-selected books and students’ abilities by listening to them read,

*coaching students in using reading strategies,

*and engaging them in book discussions.”

With so much emphasis placed on test scores, the authors state that “At every grade level for all ability groups,

*individual schema-based learning (Students connected new learning to what they already knew. As students engaged in IR, teachers provided individualized instructions when students encountered obstacles.),

*conceptual learning (Students self-selected with teacher coaching, two expository trade books on the same topic and then read them back to back.), *transactional learning (Readers silently read teacher-selected fiction books related to a thematic unit and engaged in teacher-monitored classroom discussions based on the texts.)

produced the highest comprehension scores. Situated practice, workbook practice, and basal reader groups produced the lowest scores.”

Early readers need more scaffolding during ScSR to include oral reading activities like repeated reading, choral, echo, partner, or assisted oral reading along with explicit reading instruction. Readers need to talk about what they read and be held accountable through reading logs and written summaries. The authors recommend using the reader’s workshop model where a focused lesson is presented, then students spend the majority of their time reading and practicing what they learned during the focused lesson. Students then close the reading time by reflecting and sharing what they have learned.

Striving readers benefit even more from ScSR than average or above average readers. They need more help in selecting appropriate books and instruction on reading strategies. For many of these striving students and for more and more of our other students, reading at school is the only reading they will do all day.

Blog Post 2

I chose the book, Catching Readers Before They Fall by Pat Johnson and Katie Keier. I will be focusing on chapters 4 and 5 for this blog post. The first thing that stood out to me in chapter 4 is figure 4.1 on page 54. It provides an example for the things that readers check for when word solving. It is an equal balance between meaningful information and deciding if something makes sense, using structural knowledge to decide if something sounds right, and using visual knowledge to decide if something looks right. All 3 of those are very important clues to check for when reading. I will be more cautious to stop and ask my students these things during guided reading if they become unsure of a word.

The chapter also states, "Many teachers who work with beginning struggling readers find themselves at a loss for what to say when a child reading with them gets stuck on a word. It happens to all of us." (Johnson and Keier) I find myself in this situation at times because I want to help my students but I become fearful that I will only confuse them more. The chapter goes on to give ideas for ways that we can encourage students by giving them promptings such as, run your finger under the word to see if it looks right, let the first part of the word help you, keep your eyes on the message. (Johnson and Keier)

I also enjoyed reading chapter five because it discusses the components of a comprehensive framework. Figure 5.1 on page 73 suggests ways to incorporate reading and writing into your classroom. It suggests, read alouds, shared reading, guided reading, and independent reading. It also suggests morning message, community writing, and independent writing. (Johnson and Keier) These are all things that we do in 4K that are a part of our daily schedule. Guided reading is something that becomes mandatory in kindergarten but I have started this process with several of my 4K students who are ready.

I really like the writing tips that this chapter suggests. We do journals twice a week in 4K at my school and I am always searching for ways to help my students strengthen their writing. Some of the tips include, check and confirm, predict what letter or word will come next, generate and recognize high frequency words, and recognizing that text is read and written left to right, top to bottom, and that there are spaces between words. (Johnson and Keier)

I highly recommend this book to all Early Childhood Educators. I am already finding ways to strengthen my teaching skills to promote learning in my classroom!

-Kristen Cochran

Blog Post 1

For this assignment, I chose the book, "Catching Readers Before They Fall" by Pat Johnson and Katie Keier. The first chapter focuses on Expanding our Paradigm of Reading. "We believe by expanding one's knowledge of reading process in all its complexity, any teacher can increase his or her repertoire of teaching reading to children who struggle (Johnson and Keier 2010)." This chapter encourages teachers to keep trying to develop teaching stamina. It suggests how desperately our readers who are struggling need us and it is so important to get to them before they fall.

Chapter two focuses on why all students are not successful. "The children who are not learning to read are often confused, frustrated, and slowly giving up hope on themselves as readers (Johnson and Keier 2010)." I also learned through this chapter that ongoing research believes that there are many things going on inside of children's brains when they are learning to read. These different things consist of keeping a constant check on themselves while reading, noticing when things are misread, and using a variety of strategies to fix their own errors while reading.

In chapter three, Vygotsky takes a seat in the classroom. Vygotsky has a few basics for the classroom that he believes. Through this chapter, I learned that he believes, the most effective learning takes place during the students zone of proximal development, the language that teachers use play a crucial role in students cognitive development, and the environment plays a huge role, the students should be in an environment that fosters lots of talking and interactions with each other.

So far, I would recommend this book for teachers to read. It is helping me to see how students think while reading as well as what will foster a successful learning environment that will encourage students to become better readers!

-Kristen Cochran

Blog Post 2: Chapters Four and Five of Catching Readers Before They Fall

I've really been enjoying this book, Catching Readers Before They Fall. The title for chapter four is Beyond "Sound It Out". This chapter was very informative to me because it teaches teachers different ways they can help their students in solving words. The chapter teaches three ways that proficient readers read: Meaningful information, structural knowledge, and visual information. The text states, "Students need to learn the importance of paying attention ti the visual information in print, beginning, with how to notice the first letter. They also need to check their predictions against the letter information or number of words on the page. Finally, they need to take on the responsibility of checking for themselves and not waiting for someone else to monitor their errors for them". The part of the chapter that I've been making sure to use more in the classroom is asking the students questions after they finish reading. Asking the students questions like, "Does that make sense?" can really help me to guide the students in the direction that they need to go regarding their reading comprehension skills. In the chapter, it discusses how teachers can purposely make mistakes in front of the students so that they can tell the teacher what they did wrong. I've tried this strategy only to have confused the students, so I think this is best for more advanced or sufficient readers. 

I previously found teaching students to use a balance of the sources of information like meaning, structure, and visual to be difficult. After reading pages 64-66 I figured the best way for me to teach balance of sources of information is to use it in my morning message. This chapter provided several prompts that help the students to be able to self-initiate problem solving. 

 Chapter five, A Comprehensive Literacy Framework, focuses on how the classroom instruction and environment is designed to help the needs of the readers. The chart on page 73 of the components of a comprehensive literacy framework. The text gives a great example of when children are participating in reading/writing to, reading/writing with, and reading/writing by. The chapter states, "If we want to support children as they build an effective reading process system, then we must show them what it looks like when a proficient reader is using his or her system. Shared reading provides a place to do just that". When I use the components of a comprehensive literacy framework on page 73, I always make sure to remind the students to make sure they are using the information they've already learned to help guide them or to make sure they are self-monitoring. 

“Blog Two: No More Independent Reading Without Support

Common Core states that students should be able to “read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently.” While this book states that Common Core does not require the independent reading to be accomplished during class time, it does require the standard for all grade levels. The standard also specifies informational texts. If you look in lots of early childhood classrooms, you will find that they are filled with lots of fictional stories but less informational texts. The amount of time students spend in IR (independent reading) makes a difference too. Good readers and poor readers need differing amounts of IR time to get the most out of the experience. The book states that “ . . .different time allocations should be provided for students at different stages of development.” (REALLY?! Not only do I need to let them read, I have to know how many minutes will be most beneficial??!! Sorry – that is just a little much to expect.)

Studies conducted on students said that “. . . reading easier texts during IR resulted in achievement gains” while other studies showed that students needed to be challenged in their reading to make gains. I’m not sure which I believe the most – or both could be correct under a given set of circumstances. The classroom library makes a great difference in students’ accessibility to the type and number of books – especially for poor readers. A study by Krashen (2011) shows “ . . . access to books as a factor in increased reading performance, while the evidence for workbooks, computer programs and other materials is not as strong.”

Mark Twain said, “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who can’t read.”

Blog 2: Comprehension: The Bottom Line

Blog 2

Shameeka Spann

 This week I chose chapter 8 in the book Catching Readers Before They Fall. This chapter was titled “Comprehension: The Bottom Line.” It focused on comprehension and comprehension strategy instruction. According to Johnson and Keier (2010) “The end goal of reading instruction is for the students to be able to comprehend what they read” (Johnson and Keier, 2010). Johnson and Keier (2010) also state that proficient readers automatically apply comprehension (Johnson and Keier, 2010). So, struggling readers are in more need of comprehension instruction. Teachers should also focus on the transitional readers with comprehension because there are areas in comprehension that could still be covered with them to succeed. One thing that stood out to me in this chapter was when Johnson and Keier (2010) stated, “If we ask top readers to slow down, learn about a strategy, name it, or learn how it works, it would interfere with their processing (Johnson and Keier, 2010). So, basically the authors are stating that these students are able to comprehend so we should not interfere with their fluency by asking them to slow down when reading or explaining strategies they used. This actually opened my eyes because when I noticed my strong readers making errors I would tell them to slow down reading. Then, I noticed they would struggle to focus. Now I have learned, that those were miscues my students were making. I was interfering with their fluency. I’ve learned through this process and the chapter in the text that my strong readers need to be trusted because as teachers we have a hard time letting our students grow. According to Johnson and Keier (2010), “Students do not have to be aware of how they comprehend, as long as they did” (Johnson and Keier, 2010). The gradual release of responsibility was discussed in this chapter on how teachers should introduce strategies that includes: modeling, shared demonstration, guided practice, and independence. I have used this model most of my years of teaching because I view it as the “I Do, We Do, You Do” concept. In chapter 8, a sample lesson was presented focusing on what strategy instruction should look like. The teacher, Pat modeled for the students how to practice the questioning strategy without naming the strategy, but thinking aloud to model it. Then, students actually shared what they observed. This is new learning to me because I always thought I had to name the strategy at the beginning of the lesson for my students before I modeled. Visualizing was also modeled by the teacher Pat as she used poems during shared reading. I used Pat’s model of not naming the strategy in my classroom as I taught a lesson about drawing conclusions. My students were able to understand the strategy and use the strategy during the read aloud. In the upcoming week I am also planning to use shared reading as I introduce author’s purpose without naming the strategy, but involving student conversation. In conclusion, Johnson and Keier (2010) state that effective teaching in comprehension should include: text large enough for students to see, teacher reads as students follow along, students engage in conversation, students practice strategy with partners as teacher observes, students share how the strategy was helpful. (Johnson and Keier, 2010). “Comprehension is thought- and that is definitely the bottom line when it comes to teaching reading” (Johnson and Keier, 2010).

What You Should Know About "Sounding it Out" and a Comprehensive Literacy Framework

We have to keep in mind that English is not consistently phonetic and that 40 to 50% of words cannot be solved by sounding them out. Students can use other ways along with letters and sounds to solve an unknown word. We have to support children as they build word-solving strategies. If you are a proficient reader, you know that you don't depend only on phonetics. You also look at the structure of the sentence, what part of speech the word is that is unknown, and what word makes sense with the content. Struggling readers who are focusing only on phonetics need to be taught or shown how to use other sources to figure out a word or sentence which include meaning, structure, and visual. Does it make sense? Does it sound right? Does it look right? These are questions that students should ask themselves when reading (or self-correcting). Beginning readers tend to focus on one source, which is chosen by which comes easiest to them. You can teach students to listen to themselves when they read in order to fix something if it doesn't make sense. Another thing that can be taught is using a picture and a first letter to figure out the word. Students should also be taught to skip the word and read the rest of the sentence and try to figure out what makes sense in the sentence. Modeling strategies can help students perform them as well in order to become fluent and proficient readers.
We also want to keep in mind the components of a comprehensive literacy framework. Reading includes read-alouds, shared reading, interactive read-alouds, guided reading, and independent reading. Writing can include morning message, community writing, and independent writing. Reading aloud is very beneficial for struggling readers. Hearing more and even being able to follow along can help them to see if the word looks right or sounds right. Shared reading can provide an opportunity for community, as children talk, think, listen, and join in on the reading. "Actively engaging children in reading a familiar text can support them as they begin to transfer strategies into their own reading and writing." During guided reading, children can try to solve words with help from the teacher. An introduction can be provided in order for the student to think about what he is reading. During independent reading, children can reread books, which can help build fluency, allowing the student to think more about the content of the text rather than the words, and it can also build confidence in reading for the student. Community writing can be together or in small groups. During this time, students can contribute and learn what can fit in to prewritten sentences and they can create their own sentences with the help of one another to suggest and correct as they go. It's important to focus on reading and writing because using what they know in one area can help them in another.