Week 14, Assignment 1: Approaches to Teaching Reading

1. Describe and evaluate the approaches you observed from the classroom

In the third grade classroom that I observed, the teacher uses a district-approved literacy program called Reading Wonders, a brand new core reading program by McGraw Hill designed specifically for the Common Core State Standards.  The program emphasizes “close reading” which challenges students to understand deeper meanings of the text, use evidence to support their comprehension and connect the reading with writing.  The program employs a literature anthology approach with anchor texts for each unit along with texts of the same subject with varying reading complexities.  The teacher introduces each unit through a read-aloud of the anchor text.  During and after this read-aloud, she checks for students’ understanding and provides clarification on key words or phrases.  Each of these texts is a relatively short read which give the teacher the opportunity to model “close reading” and teach comprehension strategies within a class period.  The units, typically covered one per school week, include a large variety of fiction and informational texts to appeal to a broad range of interests among students.

After the read-aloud, the teacher shows a publisher-provider multimedia video on the classroom SMART Board that reviews and defines key vocabulary words of the unit.  The interactive video shows how each word was used in the anchor text and asks for classroom participation to select a sentence with another appropriate usage.  Students are also given different classroom activities and homework assignments to express their understanding of the passage and key words.  This connects their reading with writing exercises.  For example, some assignment questions asked the student to write sentences to express the author’s purpose, main idea and a detail from the passage.  By writing about their reading, the students are challenged to really understand the passage, pay attention to details, utilize new vocabulary, and develop more advanced writing skills based on critical thinking.  Throughout the unit, the teacher has such opportunities to assess her students through formative and summative assessments.

The teacher also utilizes the reading programs leveled readers to provide differentiated instruction based on varying reading abilities.  She conducts reading groups on a weekly basis where the twenty students are grouped by their assessed reading ability.  She works with each group which is comprised of five students with similar reading capabilities.  The small groups range from one that requires more aided instruction and lower level texts to other groups that can read independently.  When the teacher works with the lower level groups, she asks the students to “preview, predict and picture walk” the new text of their leveled reader to first gain an understanding and purpose.  Then, she models the desired reading technique so that the students can practice reading with more fluency and comprehension when they each take a turn reading the text.  She will offer assistance, correct mistakes and assess each student.  After reading the passage, the students in the small reading group complete a graphic organizer like a story map to organize and document the main idea and supporting details of the text.

This approach appears to be quite comprehensive, well-thought out and differentiated.  It is quite challenging and the material is presented in a fast-pace.  The students, however, seem ready and capable for the challenge.  This program gives the teacher the opportunity to model “close reading” so the students can do the same with their leveled readers.  The anchor text provides a consistent theme for the unit so each student can stay connected despite differentiated activities.  By writing sentences based on their reading, students are connecting the two skills to deepen their comprehension and develop their abilities.  The use of multimedia further engages the varying preferences, styles and needs of the students.

Keystone Assignment - Unit Plan: Hitting a Homerun! Learning Figurative Language Through Sports

Please click the following link to view my unit plan on: 
Hitting a Homerun! Learning Figurative Language Through Sports

In summary, I created a Common Core State Standards-based thematic unit for fourth grade English language arts.  Specifically, I focused on figurative language and utilized sports fiction as the anchor literature type.  Students will develop comprehension and vocabulary skills while learning figurative language commonly used in sports and competition.  They will then apply that knowledge by writing a personal narrative.  I differentiated instruction by using small reading groups and incorporating four books with varying text complexities to accommodate students of multiple reading levels. Graphic organizers are utilized as well to help students construct a personal narrative.  Technology is incorporated throughout the four-lesson unit including multimedia Prezi presentations to start and end the unit.

Week 11: Read-Aloud Strategy

Read-Aloud

To help students in a wide range of grade levels develop fluency, comprehension and vocabulary, the read-aloud strategy can be highly effective.  They can learn how a text should be read expressively and meaningfully by listening to the teacher model effective reading habits.  By hearing how selected words or phrases should be emphasized based on multiple modalities presented in a story or an article, students learn a valuable reading strategy that can engage their interest in the text and deepen their reading comprehension.  

While modeling such fluent reading, teachers can also stop to clarify new or uncommon vocabulary and phrases.  This could be particularly useful to define figurative language that may be unfamiliar to many students.  Utilizing read-aloud can be effective for both fiction and non-fiction texts where students can learn the nuances of a character’s personality or the relative importance of a historical fact.  While students in lower grade levels can learn a great deal listening to a teacher model effective reading strategy, research shows that students in higher grade levels can improve their fluency through read-alouds.  

By utilizing a consistent read-aloud strategy throughout a curriculum, a teacher can accomplish numerous critical instructional goals while engaging students and teaching strategies that can be carried forward to future grades and beyond the academic setting.

Article on Read-Alouds:

“Reading Aloud to Teens Gain Favor” by Mary Ann Zehr

Education Week, January 6, 2010, Vol. 29, Issue 16

http://arktos.nyit.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.arktos.nyit.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=47581736&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Lesson Plans Utilizing Read-Alouds:

http://curry.virginia.edu/reading-projects/projects/garf/Third%20Read-alouds.htm

http://www.readwritethink.org/professional-development/strategy-guides/teacher-read-aloud-that-30799.html

ELL Reader Case Study

The links listed below will take you to my ELL Reader Case Study and supporting documents about a third grade student named Bryan.

ELL Reader Case Study
Student Oral Language Observation Matrix (SOLOM)
Running Record
Running Record Analysis

Week 9: Comprehension Lesson Plan

Here is my lesson plan on cause and effect relationships designed for a second grade class. This lesson utilizes the e-book "The Fire Station", a graphic organizer and a SMART Board.  Through instruction, class discussion and writing, the students will learn about cause and effect relationships and identify examples from the story.  Additionally, students will further their understanding by matching the appropriate cause for some the effects from the story.  Lastly, students will have an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge by creating their own cause and effect relationships based on the ending of the story.


Lesson Plan on Cause and Effect
Rubric: Cause and Effect
Graphic Organizer: Cause and Effect
Examples of Cause and Effect Relationships from "The Fire Station"

Running Record Assessment

The student, an above average reader at this early point of his second grade year, was able to read this text passage fairly fluently.  His accuracy rate of this grade-level text was 94% with an error rate of 1:17.  The majority of his errors and self-corrections were made as a result of visual cueing.  There were no words on this page which caused the reader to pause.  Instead, his reading ability, confidence, and desire to read quickly were evident when he made such avoidable errors.  For example, he spoke the wrong tense on two words (one was self-corrected), said “that’s” in place of “that”, and “everyone” instead of “everybody”. Three times, the student inserted a short word (two prepositions and one determiner).  One of those insertions was likely due to his eyes seeing the word in the same position of the next line.

To assess his comprehension, I asked him to retell what was taking place in these several paragraphs.  While there was no main idea, he was able place this content of this page in context with the rest of the story and retell the main details in the proper sequence.  He summarized the setting, the characters and their emotions and behaviors.  He even connected their actions with a recent incident that took place in classroom.  He concluded his summary by telling what happens next in the story.  While he didn’t recount all the details on the page, his retelling was comprehensive and his comprehension is excellent.

To help the student develop better fluency, I would encourage the student to slow down in his reading and challenge him further with a higher level of text.  He was actually curious on the errors he made and felt he should have been more perfect than he was.  Using his feedback and self-motivation, I would challenge him with a chart to track his own progress on accurate reading.  I would assign him another similarly-complex text passage and do another running record to attain an accuracy rate and set a benchmark.  We would repeat such running records with different levels (higher and lower) texts once a week and track his performance.  Assessment of his performance will be measured by improvement in his accuracy rates over time.  With his own desire to do better, I am confident he will be motivated to do well in this brief weekly exercise which can be done in 5 minutes.  This will help him slow down and increase the emphasis on accurate reading.

Reflection:

  

The running record assessment with miscue analysis and story retelling is a highly useful tool that gives objective evidence in a student’s reading ability and comprehension.  While the process is tedious and confusing at first, I can see how an educator becomes more familiar and comfortable with more frequent application. 

I did a running record assessment with two students who were both quite receptive and comfortable with the process.  It was challenging however to keep a running record as the children read at their normal pace.  Still a novice, I had to refer to an onscreen example showing the correct marks and symbols on a running record.  I was glad though that I did not have to ask either reader to slow down but I did carefully double check my notations by slowly replaying the student’s reading in my mind as my eyes (and pencil) went through my paper copy.  I’m not sure of the necessity to put a check on every correctly spoken word when we are listening for errors and self-corrections.  That seems to take up time unnecessarily and uses up the precious little space between lines.

An additional challenge was identifying the causes of the errors.  I had to refer to notes and definitions of the cueing systems to complete the running record properly.  Otherwise, the rest of the process including the calculations and story retell was pretty intuitive.

The two students I evaluated were both good readers who exhibited high accuracy rates and comprehension for the text they read.  I think my running record practice would have been more enriching if the selected text was more complex and/or the students were not as proficient.  Overall, the assessment was a valuable exercise that I am glad to have been exposed to since I know I will have to utilize in the classroom in the future.

Week 7, Assignments 2 and 3: Video review

Assignment 2

How can you ensure that your struggling readers have access to texts they can easily read?

A teacher can build an extensive classroom library that includes varying text levels and a broad range of subjects and interests.  Students of all reading abilities will then be able to find texts at their appropriate level.  Another option is to work with the school’s librarian to identify texts to match the abilities of struggling readers.  The teacher can also encourage such students to visit the local public library to find books that they can read and bring them to class to share.

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How can you foster a learning environment in which students have many opportunities to practice reading?

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An extensive classroom library filled with books is not only a strong visual reminder that reading is important, its variety of subjects and text levels will foster a learning environment that encourages students to read.  Teachers can foster high success reading by including a range of books that students can capably read with fluency.  By including regular class time in each school day to read, the teachers will create a reading culture while providing opportunities for individual coaching and assessment.

Describe ways in which you can model fluent reading in your classroom throughout the day.

There are numerous techniques that teachers can use to model fluent reading including expressive read alouds so the students can understand how they should be reading on their own. During this activity, teachers can highlight subtleties in the text with inflection or motion and explain strategies to help with comprehending difficult or unfamiliar words and phrases.  Working with small groups and with individual students provides further opportunities to demonstrate fluent reading.  While working with students, teachers should be cautious about creating readers who expect feedback after each spoken word.  Instead, to promote better fluency and comprehension, teachers should wait until the end of sentences and paragraphs to correct errors.  This will develop non-interruptive reading where students will engage in self-monitoring and self-regulating.

Assignment 3

Explain the three levels of words and how you can use word levels to decide which words to teach.

Professor Allington states there are three types of words that children will encounter.  One type are familiar, high frequency words that are so common that students should already know and understand.  On the other scale of text complexity are technical or scientific words which also do not need to be taught since students will not likely encounter them.  The group of words in the middle of the complexity range is the one where teachers need to invest the majority of their instruction.  These words appear often in everyday life but are not common enough that children will fully comprehend them.  He used examples like “freeway”, “democracy”, and “hurricane”.  He also states that these words already exist in grade level literature that the children are reading so creating new sets of such vocabulary words are unnecessary.

How do you teach your students to "chunk" words as a strategy for decoding unfamiliar words? When do you provide this instruction?

Students can attempt to decode words with the teacher’s guidance or on their own by looking at the authors clues in the passage.  The unfamiliar word may even be defined in the text passage or can be defined with the context.  Teachers can also help students decode words by looking for familiar parts of that word.  Students will begin with big words then break each one into recognizable chunks or patterns before reforming the word into its whole.  While the youngest students will sound out unfamiliar words letter by letter, this chunking strategy helps older elementary grade students to develop a deeper vocabulary and gives them confidence to read more grade-appropriate text.

Based on Professor Allington's comments and the classroom examples, what are some ways you might foster word study in your classroom?

The video shows several teachers utilizing various techniques to build fluency among their students.  One teacher displays words on charts around the classroom and introduces new words each day.  She would discuss the words with the students and have them read text with those words to embed the new knowledge.  Another teacher works with small groups to help them identify new words with contextual clues.  He helped them figure out a word on their own by applying their knowledge of the meanings of familiar words in the passage. Professor Allington says that educators need to modify curriculum materials to meet students’ needs and interests.  Such relevancy increases the engagement level of the students which will likely enhance their ability to improve reading fluency and comprehension.