Module 4: Activity 1

In the video, I noticed Robin doing some word building with onsets and rimes; it actually looked like he was using the chunk stacker game that I’ve used with my kids. He used this knowledge of phonograms to read some leveled texts where he was also using syntactic and semantic clues to see if his miscues made sense. He then began noticing these chunks in the environment, which seemed to give him confidence when it started becoming relevant. I noticed that he was using a white board to write out words as he was writing to read; I thought this was a great strategy because writing is so daunting for a struggling reader that the impermanence of a white board to check words and sounds before you actually “write” them into your text makes it less intimidating. And finally, as he was setting up his email account, I noticed that he was using these phonograms to “sound out” parts of the word in conjunction with the contextual clues to read the word “Congratulations.”

Module 4: Instructional Challenge

If I had a student like Marcus in my class, who often miscues with substitutions that begin with the same letter(s) of a word, although his miscues are not syntactically or semantically acceptable, I would begin with a Retrospective Miscue Analysis and invite him to listen to his recording so he could hear where his miscues were and see if he could point out when it wasn’t making sense. I would also include Shared Reading instruction with picture walks beforehand to activate prior knowledge in the hopes that he would retrieve contextually appropriate vocabulary as necessary. One possibility would be to implement writing strategies in which I would either help him construct a passage or have him begin journaling on his reading to help him to realize that he can gather meaning from what he was reading. I also think that implementing inquiry may help him to understand that text contains information and there are specific strategies we can use to gain meaning. And finally, I would implement LOTS of sustained reading, with opportunities for buddy reading and books on tape as well. The more fluent reading is modeled in a way that is conducive to gaining meaning, the better his chances of gaining meaning himself.

Module 4: Reading Reflection

The following are the strategies that  I have implemented at one time or another:  Read Alouds, Shared Reading, Guided Reading, Sustained Reading, Inquiry-reading to learn, Individual Writing Conferences, Write Alouds, Shared Writing, Inquiry-writing to learn, books on tape, Reader’s Theater, and phonics. 

Due to the nature of my classroom, we do not currently do the activities that require more student independence.  In my current classroom we have a Reading Circle in the middle of the day during which we do shared reading, write alouds, and phonics: chunking with onsets and rimes.

During our calendar time in the morning, we do guided writing with language skills to build sentences about pictures and scenes.  The students who are ready for guided reading, are pulled once a day for comprehension work with adapted materials. 

In the afternoon, we have a circle in which we do a read aloud from our themed book of the week, often supplemented with audio/visual activities on the white board.

We have a listening center where the students listen to books on tape, a reading center for sustained reading (usually with adult support), and we have a writing center where handwriting and fine motor activities are practiced with adapted materials until they are ready for guided writing with visual prompts. My students all participate in these activities but most require adapted materials and additional prompting/support.  

I am pleased with the strategies I have been implementing, progress has been made in every instance based on the student’s current functioning and goals and objectives.

Module 3: Activity 2

I believe that stressing phonemic awareness by giving intensive one on one instruction in individual letter sounds and having the students read and create non-sense words is a good strategy to do just one thing, build phonemic awareness.  The only skill that this type of activity will assess is whether the student can successfully recognize letter sounds and put them together in a sequence after hearing them.  It is an important part of learning to read, but not the most important. 

A reader also needs to be able to understand what reading is for and why we do it; the functions of literacy are what will ultimately motivate young learners.  This can be accomplished with modeling reading and writing and talking about it.  The environment also needs to be full of opportunities to read that are relevant to children such as environmental print.  This will help them to notice letter patterns which will foster their phonemic awareness on a broader scale than one to one letter instruction.

Finally, I do not believe that non-sense words have anything at all to do with proficient reading.  Reading is a language based activity.  It does not make sense to me that reading words with no meaning in isolation could promote proficient reading. 

Module 3: Mock Memo from a Reading Specialist

To: Classroom Teacher

From: Reading Specialist

Re: Comprehension Strategies

Dear Teacher,

In regards to your current classroom assessments, most of your class has incredible fluency, sight word recognition, phonics, and word attack skills.  However since most of your students are having trouble with reading comprehension, you may want to consider re-balancing reading instruction to include more strategies to facilitate reading for meaning. 

You may want to begin with administering the Qualitative Reading Inventory-4 to each student, making sure to give them a chance to read each passage silently before having them read it aloud to you.  It would also be a good idea to tape record their miscues so that you will be able to analyze very closely the types of miscues they are making.  Often students with higher comprehension will have miscues that do not change meaning, demonstrating that they understand what they read.  I would then form new reading groups based on current instructional level and the types of miscues made.  After the groups are formed, I would invest them in reading by giving them choices of high interest books and passages, giving LOTS of opportunities to read all genres. 

To further their investment in what they are reading, I would have the class begin keeping reading journals to respond to what they are reading.  Writing about what they read, in addition to their own thoughts and experiences, will give you an informal assessment tool regarding their comprehension.  The journals will also give them ideas for projects in Writer’s Workshop.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Heather Akin

Module 3: Reading Reflection

When taken as it is stated: “Skillful readers of English thoroughly process the individual letters of words in their texts.” (Adams) I disagree.  To me this means that in order to read the text and gain meaning, letters are read before words and words are read in order, as Adams further states “left to right and line by line.”  As I was reading this I was thinking that I may get what she means, even as we read and are unaware of individual letters, we still know they are there and can go back to pick them out.  And then I read further on page 109, where it is said that “Statements about the reader ‘processing’ most words could be valid, if by ‘processing,’ the authors mean perceiving rather than fixating upon.” This means that as we read and “perceive” words out of our parafoveal vision, we can pick out individual words and know what letters are in those words without fixating on each individual letter.  As such, I do not agree with the literal interpretation of Adams’ statement, but can agree with the notion that all letters are perceived.  However, regarding her statements that explain how “good readers” read all words in order, I believe that an effective reader understands the order and direction of text, although they may not necessarily focus on every word in that given order.

Module 2: Activities 1 & 2

word	me	Clockwork orange ch 1
Creech	The sound a bug makes	screech
droogs	Slobber that hangs from a dogs mouth	friends
Glazzies	Chills up your spine	Eyes
goloss	dental floss that has been frayed	Voice
Malenky	that mood when you’re sad and cranky at the same time	Little
Messel	A whole lot of something	feeling
millicents	People who wish harm
poogly	when something is ugly as poop	scared
Razrez	the residue that shaving cream leaves on the skin	tear
Skorry	when you are regretful and scared	Fast
Spatted-	when something is covered in drops of spit	dated
Zoobies	Some kind of animal toy	teeth

I consistently found myself making up definitions by using letter patterns from familiar words. For example, droogs sounds like drool, so to me it is the long strings of slobber that sometimes hang from a dog’s mouth; and creech looks like screech, so I said it is the sound that a bug makes.  I noticed that when defining these words, I was relying on what I know of the English language but also relying heavily on my schema illustrating that the author’s meaning is changed significantly by the reader’s existing schema.

Then, when reading the first chapter of A Clockwork Orange (A. Burgess), I used context to determine the meanings of the unfamiliar words.  Sometimes the clues were given before the unfamiliar word in the sentence, but most often the meaning was revealed after the word in the same sentence and in many cases, after the sentence in the reading passage, sometimes in the same paragraph and sometimes after.  I found that the definitions given varied greatly from those that I had come up with when the words were presented in isolation.  This activity made me realize just how much we rely on context to learn vocabulary.   

When reading the word lists on page 85, I found myself decoding the words by chunking them into syllables; I did not attempt to read them letter by letter.  Sounding out words one letter at a time would be a tremendous waste of time.  The words were much easier to read in chunks and this also helps to recognized familiar letter patterns.  I only read a few of the words all at once, these were the ones that I already knew how to pronounce and they were: sarsaparilla, sycophant, submandibular, plesiosaur, and ingénue.  These are also the words that I am somewhat familiar with the definitions of.  The only word that pronouncing actually gave me insight into the meaning of was plesiosaur and that is because it ends in “osaur,” once I said the word out loud I thought, “Oh yeah, I know that word.” When encountering new words in reading, I usually pause to give a stab at pronunciation, and then quickly read on to see if I’m given any insight into the meaning.  When helping students with new vocabulary, I believe that the very strategies we have used to decipher the new words we’ve encountered would be appropriate to teach to students, such as using context both within and outside the sentence or passage and also chunking words  and using their parts.

Module 2: Instructional Challenge

In the example miscues given, I think that this student is a proficient reader; the student is code switching the text being read with informal spoken English.  The student’s miscues are primarily pronouns, function words, and reversals.  I would keep an eye on this student’s comprehension to make sure they were gaining meaning and watch their writing very closely.  If this student showed similar use of grammar in their writing, then I would discuss with them the different social contexts and when it is appropriate to use informal speech versus formal English.

Module 2: Reading Reflection

According to Harper and Kilarr the idea that what is written must be read word for word to gain meaning is a misconception.  I completely agree with their statement.  Reading is a process in which several different contexts are used to identify and conceptualize unfamiliar words.  They are interdependent upon one another and the most proficient readers access all of them to gain meaning from text.  This theory contradicts the theory by which a text wouldn’t be read until nearly all of the words could be read independently. 

I feel that too often if a student is having difficulty reading fluently or with comprehension, the first thing that is tried is an intensive, boxed phonics program.  I don’t feel that this is beneficial to most students who need to be engaged and develop a better understanding of the purpose of the text through valuable connections. 

I found it especially interesting that most of a student’s new vocabulary is gained through reading. (Weaver, 46)  If we actually only encouraged students to read texts with familiar words, they wouldn’t gain the vocabulary that they will need and the skill set that allows them to gain meaning through contexts would diminish.  It would be a tremendous disservice to restrict reading to texts that were already easily understandable.   

According to Weaver, proficient readers rely on several strategies to gain meaning from texts such as predicting, monitory, and either correcting or confirming.  Using these strategies consistently means that a proficient reader can make frequent miscues that do not change meaning and still have an understanding of the text.  For this reason, it is important to analyze and track miscues made by young readers to assess what kind of miscues are being made and how they affect comprehension.  

Module 1: Activity 2

As all of the nouns, verbs, and related adjectives and adverbs in the passage were unfamiliar to me, I was unable to rely on semantic cues when reading the passage.  I was able to answer the “comprehension” questions related to the reading by relying solely on syntactic cues; function words carried the reading passage and the sentence structure was predictable,  making it easy to construct a response even though I had no idea what any of the other parts of speech meant. 

I found myself going back to the passage and just repeating what it said with no understanding of meaning whatsoever.  This tells me that questions related to a reading selection, like those on many students’ daily work and standardized tests can be answered correctly without actual comprehension.  This really makes me rethink the kinds of questions I have my owns students answer after reading a passage or book.

Clearly, we should be asking students to respond by accessing higher level thinking skills such as inferencing, making predictions and connections, and interpreting what they’ve read.  These kinds of tasks will demonstrate comprehension of texts.  I will have to re-examine some of the work that I prepare for my students to better assess their comprehension.

Module 1: Activity 1

Module 1: Instructional Challenge

Ok, so I had to Google the reading passage about Christopher Columbus; although over the years I have been familiarized with the events of Columbus discovering America, oddly enough it was not on my mind when I read the passage. 

If I were reading this passage with students, we would first make a list of things that they could remember or have heard about Christopher Columbus, then we would discuss metaphor and how it is used in literature to create imagery, finally we would discuss vocabulary words and what they think some of the unfamiliar words mean, perhaps even by way of a “heard it, know it, use it” activity.

When the content you are responsible for teaching is completely unfamiliar and doesn’t conveniently fit within your students’ existing schemas, you must spend copious amounts of time preparing them for the readings, lectures, discussions, and activities.  Often the actual reading of text takes a backseat to the priority of introducing and explaining what it will be about.  I had a student last year who was terrified of the doctor’s office and would not set foot in the clinic or allow the nurse to come near her.  When she came to school with a scrape and I approached her with a band aid, she would not allow me to apply it.  Knowing this child has a love of stickers, I convinced her that it was just a “sticker for her boo-boo,” and she wore it the rest of the day.  Since she had band aids in an existing schema from the doctor’s office and the unpleasantness that happens there, I helped her to also place them into a new schema that was not as unpleasant for her.     

I believe that students should not be asked to be responsible for information that is completely inappropriate, therefore they should not spend much time on texts that will not fit anywhere within their existing schemas.  However, for the sake of meeting standards it is our responsibility to help them make connections and understand at least what the texts are about, and to also try to engage and motivate interest where perhaps there was none.    

Initial Model of Reading Theory

My personal model of reading theory is highly individualized; reading readiness is dependent on factors such as the student’s receptive and expressive language development, previous exposure to literacy skills and phonemic awareness, and recognition of reading and writing as a form of communication.  For these reasons, students can be exposed to the foundations of reading in a balanced approach, but instructional strategies and methods must be based on individual students’ abilities and readiness.

            In most cases, children are taught the alphabet song, closely followed by introduction to the letter symbols, which is followed by the concept that these letters make sounds individually and when blended together.  Traditionally, this method often shows success; however, when a student relies too heavily on one skill over another and does not receive instruction in affected deficit areas, or when the student is not ready for instruction in a certain area, one or more areas of reading development may suffer.

            In my classroom, I am constantly collecting data and performing probes as necessary to design and implement goals and objectives, when a student shows that they are ready for any aspect of reading instruction, it is introduced in a predictable format.  The delivery of instruction rarely changes and follows a predictable sequence of fading prompts to promote independence in skill application as well as task completion; when implementing reading instruction in my classroom, the content and skill level is changed as necessary, although the format changes less frequently and in smaller degrees.  I use the students’ individual readiness and motivation to guide instruction in phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, sight words, and writing skills. 

For those students who are younger or not yet ready for reading instruction in the aforementioned areas, we concentrate on letter names and formation, for this we used tactile strategies such as forming letters with sandpaper, writing in pay-doh or in shaving cream. We also use songs to help commit letters and letter sounds to memory and engage the students in the content.  These strategies have been effective in my classroom where the students’ ability levels vary greatly.

Before I began teaching I was most nervous about implementing reading instruction in my classroom.  There are many variables and different ways to look at what makes a “good reader,” I wasn’t sure that I would be able to appropriately assess reading ability in students.  However since I have been in the classroom, I feel much more confident regarding reading assessment and determining individual students’ literacy development.  I hope to continually increase in my comfort level and ability to assess and design reading instruction for the individual student.

Module 1: Reading Reflection

The first two chapters of Weaver's "Reading Process and Practice" explore the differences between the skills approach to literacy and the comprehensive sociopsycholinguistic approach.  It demonstrates that the skills approach is a "bottom up" model in which students are taught the graphic symbols and letter sounds, then that these sounds can be blended together to create words that have a meaning.  This approach consists of discrete sequential steps which result in gaining meaning through text as a natural occurrence after text is read fluently.  This is the model adopted by many phonics based programs available in schools; it stresses phonemic awareness as one of the most important factors related to literacy instruction.

The sociopsycholinguistic model of literacy takes into account several more factors in regards to how a reader gains meaning in a textual transaction, namely pragmatics.  Pragmatics refers to the "situational, social, and cultural factors" that influence a reader's schema.  A reader will use different cuing systems based on the purpose for their reading and the situation in which it occurs.  Social and cultural factors affect a readers prior knowledge of content and language.  In contrast with the skills approach, this comprehensive model operates on a "top down" theory, in that the most important thing to gain from text is the meaning and the phonics related skills can be taught within that context.