Ch. 11 of the Opitz text explains the importance of student vocabulary development as it relates to other aspects of reading skills, how vocabulary develops, how vocabulary can be assessed, and provides guidelines and strategies for effective vocabulary instruction. Vocabulary development is something that I have to work very hard to support in my classroom because all of my students have a severe language delay. I have to plan and implement explicit, intensive instruction to build the vocabulary of my students. As it is mentioned in the text we begin with labeling common objects and move towards actions and descriptions; we start with the concrete and move towards the abstract.
Because my action research is based on an intervention to support listening and reading comprehension, I have also been thinking lately about the relationship between vocabulary and comprehension. If I were to ask a student if the character from a story is creative or dull, they would first have to be familiar enough with those words to make an educated guess. This tells me that as the text explained, vocabulary is a predictor of comprehension.
In Ch. 13, study skills and learning strategies are explored. As I was reading, I was wanting to show my teenage daughter that all of the things that I’ve been telling her for years and getting on to her for are true; good study skills involves developing good habits like a consistent study schedule in a place that is free of distractions. I also found the checklists in this chapter to be a good reference because it’s difficult to explain exactly what good study skills look like because of the independent nature of the activity.
This chapter reminded me that in my own classroom I need to slow down and provide more explicit instruction in study skills or just demonstrate more thoroughly through modeling and think alouds how we get information from texts. This may just be presenting students with the resources and then using strategies such as questioning, skimming, or note taking to demonstrate how they can be effective means to focus learning.
Finally, Ch. 14 promotes and explains different ways that parents can be involved in schools. It is widely accepted that parental involvement promotes higher student achievement; this chapter explains several ways that can be achieved and tips for parents on how to support their child’s reading needs. I thought the most interesting part of the chapter was the section that explained TV and computer use as not necessarily having a negative impact on students’ literacy skills. I suppose thought that is consistent with the formats in which people currently gain information.
Opitz, M., Rubin, D., & Erekson, J. (2011). Reading diagnosis and improvement: Assessment and instruction. Boston, MA: Pearson.
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