Travis Davis ENGED 275

Chapter 7 – Reading Fluency

Fluency!!!

Fluency – The ability when reading to decode and comprehend at the same time. It also means to be able to read expressively and meaningfully as well as accurately and with appropriate speed. Simply stated, it means reading easily and reading well.

Fluency has 3 dimensions –

Accuracy in word decoding – sounding out words in texts with few errors.
Automatic processing or automaticity – reading automatically, not having to sound out each word or to think about reading, and using little mental effort when decoding.
Prosody or Prosodic reading – Prosody is a linguistic concept referring to features in oral language such as intonation, pitch, stress, pauses, and duration placed on specific syllables. This all simply means reading with expression.

Effective Fluency Instruction – There are 3 parts to Effective Fluency Instruction: Instruction, Practice, and Assessment

Instruction – The teaching of basic skills like phonemic awareness and phonics skills as well as modeling what fluency looks and sounds like.
Practice – Using decodable texts and other independent-level texts to strengthen the sounds and spelling that are taught in the classroom.
Assessment – Assessing includes all 3 dimensions of accuracy, automaticity, and prosody. Assessment monitors students’ progress and informs instruction.

Automaticity – Using little energy to read as it comes automatically

Prosody – Prosody is a linguistic concept referring to features in oral language such as intonation, pitch, stress, pauses, and duration placed on specific syllables. This all simply means reading with expression.

Predictable Text – Texts that can be read with ease. Predictable books have familiar context and settings or are predictable to most children. Their pictures are supportive of the text and the language is natural and can be repetitive.

Types of predictable texts:

Chain or Circular stories – the plot is interlinked and the ending leads back to the beginning
Cumulative stories – every time a new event occurs, the previous events are all repeated
Pattern stories – scenes are repeated throughout the story with some variation
Question and Answer stories – the same or similar questions are repeated throughout the story
Repetition of Phrase stories – Word ordering in phrases and sentences are repeated
Rhyme stories- rhyming words, refrains, or patterns are used throughout the story
Songbooks stories – familiar songs with predictable elements such as repetitive phrase

Strategies to assist with fluency – For Groups of Students:

Choral Reading – Reading aloud in unison with a whole class or group of students after the teacher has read and discussed the selection first. This will include oral reading, often of poetry, that makes use of various voice combinations and contrasts to create meaning or highlight the tonal qualities of a passage.

Echo Reading – Method of modeling oral reading where the teacher reads a line of text and students echo the same text back, copying the teacher’s intonation and phrasing.

Fluency-Orientated Reading Instruction (FORI) – The teacher reads the basal story in class followed by brief discussion. Then students read story to parents followed by students rereading story with partners in class. On the third day the students chorally read story and finally on the fourth day they partner-read.

Readers’ Theater – Several (two or more) readers take the parts of characters and give an oral presentation or reading of a story, a drama, a play, prose, or poetry.

For Pairs and Individual Students:

Repeated Readings – Students reading short passages of text more than once, with different levels of support, to develop rapid, fluent oral reading

Paired readings – Students read their own passages with a partner several times with different levels of support to develop rapid, fluent oral reading. The partners may give or ask for help and it often includes self-evaluations.

Fluency Development Lesson (FDL) – An instructional framework designed to develop oral reading fluency. It also incorporates various repeated reading techniques such as paired and choral reading. There are 6 steps in a FDL:

Reading the text expressively to the class while students follow along silently with their own copies.
Discussing the content of the text with attention to developing comprehension and vocabulary as well as the expression the teacher used while reading to the class.
Reading the text chorally several times with the whole class.
Having the class practice reading the text in pairs.
Having a brief word study activity with words chosen from the passage.
Having volunteers perform the text as individuals, pairs, or in groups of four.

Peer Tutoring – A paired reading strategy where a more fluent reader tutors a student who struggles with fluency.

Automated Reading – Listening while reading a text. This is a reading approach where students listen individually to audio recorded stories while reading along with written text.

Oral Recitation Lesson (ORL) – A two component and 5 step lesson that makes use of direct instruction and student practice while including reading in chorus as a means of incorporating fluency into daily reading instruction. The first component, direct instruction, incorporates comprehension, practice, and then performance while the second component, indirect instruction, involves practicing until mastery is achieved. The five steps for ORL are:

The teacher models fluency by reading a story to the class.
Next, the teacher leads a discussion of the story, and asks students to summarize what happened.
The class discusses what expressive oral reading is like.
Students then read in chorus and individually, beginning with small text segments and gradually increasing the length of the segment.
The teacher chooses individual students to select and orally read a portion of the text for their classmates while other members provide positive feedback.

Support Reading Strategy and Cross-age Reading are two more strategies that emphasize specific aspects of fluency training and integrate the teaching of fluency with other important aspects of reading such as comprehension and word recognition.

What parents can do at home to help their student become a fluent reader:

Read more – spend more and make more time for reading
Read aloud to them
Reread familiar texts – children love to reread their favorite stories
Echo-Read – Parent, guardian, or anyone who reads fluently reads a segment first followed by the student echo reading after.
Use predictable books

Assessing Fluency – Fluency is usually assessed using timed samples of students reading and is usually done using a 1-minute assessment. Teachers must remember that fluency isn’t just about reading fast, it’s about decoding words and comprehending at the same time. All aspects of fluency-accuracy, automaticity, and prosody-need to be assessed. However, most tools only assess accuracy and rate but not prosody or their smoothness, phrasing, pace, and expression. These assessments can be done through informal observation during lessons or using the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) Oral Reading Fluency Scale.

Reading Rate – The number of words read per minute; Automaticity is also known as reading rate.

WPM or WCPM – Words Per Minute or Words-Correct-Per-Minute – the number of words read correctly in a minute. The number of correct words per minute assesses both accuracy (the number or words the reader is able to identify) and automaticity, also known as reading rate.

Classroom Application – For me personally, I think one of the key takeaways from this chapter was the little section on what parents can do to help at home. While I don’t always like to generalize or assume, it seems that many parents aren’t reading to their children enough or even reading at all anymore. When I was a Head Start preschool teacher, I used to ask parents how often they read to/with their children and the answers were never as much as they should be. But the part I found intriguing the most was that there is nothing wrong with reading the same story over and over and that it can actually be beneficial to young children. It also had some simple and effective advice that any parent could understand.

Video Summaries:

Choral Reading – This video discusses choral reading and what it looks like in an actual classroom. While choral reading can be done across grade levels, the focus should still be on comprehension. The text also shouldn’t be too difficult as well. The text should be at the independent or instructional reading level. They should also contain dialogue or rhythm and be relatively short. During choral reading, each student should have their own copy as well. The teacher reads the text first and then discusses the details and checks for comprehension. Students will often read with more expression and more confidence during choral reading.

An Explicit Fluency Lesson with a Prosody Element Focus-Smoothness – This video discusses that good readers read smoothly. They read just like they were talking. The teacher models first and demonstrates smooth reading. Then she discusses why they read smoothly. Then the students all read together with the teacher. Next, the students read on their own while the teacher walks around to check for good smooth readers. Then the teacher models and explains how and why smooth reading is important. Then the students read on their own again and then reread the whole passage attempting to read smoothly. The video had very clear words and definitions as well as great examples of what to say and what to do during a lesson.

K-3 Essential 3, Bullet 3: Small Group Fluency Instruction Sample Video – This video discusses some of the ways teachers will use small group time to work on fluency instruction and practice such as echo reading, repeated reading, and reader’s theater. The teacher efficiently explains the definitions of the teaching practices and demonstrates how each is done. She explains how and why she models and shows excellent positive feedback towards her students. Great examples and explanations and great video overall.

Reading Multisyllable Words with Xavier – Reading expert Linda Farrell explains what happens when students read multisyllable words and how to teach students how to read them correctly. They start with nonsense words and begin by reading a few of them and practicing working with syllables. Step 1 for reading multisyllable words is to look at how many vowels are in the word. Step 2 is to look at whether the vowels are together or apart. She talks about how vowels will separate a syllable and that all syllables have a vowel in them. She then mentions that if the vowels aren’t together then they will be separated in syllables. She then mentions that reading multisyllable words will have vowels and if they are separated by consonants then those will be the different syllables and that will show us how many syllables there are in the words. I believe she does an incredible job at demonstrating a simple and effective technique for reading these words.

Chapter 12 – Reading and Writing Across the Curriculum

Learning Tools

Learning Tools – Reading and writing are learning tools because reading has a powerful impact on writing and vice versa. When students read about a topic first, their writing is enhanced and similarly if they write about an idea from a book they’re reading, their comprehension is deepened. Below are many examples of these learning tools.

Trade Books – A published book that isn’t a textbook. These are the types of books that are found in bookstores and libraries. They are high-quality picture books and chapter books used by teachers during thematic units. These books keep readers interested, are relevant, and help students by making a connection to their own lives.

Text Sets – A collection of sets of books, magazines, and other reading materials on topics to use in teaching thematic units. They are carefully chosen and include many different genres, a range of reading levels, and multimedia resources that present a variety of perspectives. Some examples teachers collect and use are:

Atlases and maps
Brochures and pamphlets
Digital articles
Films and videos
Magazines
Models and diagrams
Newspaper articles

Nonfiction books
Photographs
Poems and songs
Primary source materials
Reference books
Stories
Websites and WebQuests

Mentor Texts – These are the stories, nonfiction books, and poems teachers use and students are familiar with to model the writer’s craft. Teachers read and/reread these texts and point out specific features, and then student imitate the feature in their own compositions.

Writing to Learn

Learning Logs – A journal students use to record and react to what they’re learning in social studies, science, or other content areas. Students take notes, write descriptions, and make graphic organizers in learning logs and they are a “place to think on paper”.

Double–Entry Journals – These are journals that are divided into two parts with different types of information in each one. For example, one side might have important facts and the other might contain their thoughts or opinions.

Quick Writing – Students write on a topic for 5 to 10 minutes while letting their thoughts flow without focusing on their mechanics or revisions. The purpose of this is to activate students’ background knowledge at the beginning of a thematic unit.

Demonstrating Learning

Demonstrating Learning – There are four ways students demonstrate learning:

Writing reports: Best known type of demonstration of learning. Students write and make posters, All About…books, Alphabet Books, Class Collaborations, and Individual reports.
Developing Essays – Students write essays to explain, analyze, and persuade.
Crafting Poems: Students often make poems as projects after reading books to demonstrate content area learning as part of thematic units. They create “I am …poems”, Two Voice poems, and Found poems.
Constructing Multi-genre Projects: Students explore a science or social studies topic through several genres in a multi-genre project. They create blogs, post cards, timelines, songs, riddles, and word sorts.

Collaborative Books – Students work together in small groups to make collaborative books. They each contribute one page or work with classmates to write a page or section of the book using the writing process to craft and edit their pages.

Content Area Textbooks

There are 5 stages of the reading process and teachers use a variety of activities during each stage to make content area textbooks more friendly and to improve comprehension.

Stage 1: Prereading – Teachers prepare students to read the chapter and nurture their interest in the topic in these ways:

Activate and build students’ background knowledge about the topic
Introduce big ideas and technical words
Set purposes for reading
Preview the text

Anticipation Guides – Teachers will introduce a set of statements on the topic of the chapter, the students will either agree or disagree with each statement, and then the students will read the assignment to see if they were right.

They also use activities like KWL charts, anticipation guides, exclusion brainstorming, prereading plan, word wall, possible sentences, and question-answer relationships.

Prereading Plan – Teachers introduce the big ideas in the chapter when they create a prereading plan in which they present an idea discussed in the chapter and then have students brainstorm words and ideas related to it.

Question-Answer-Relationships – Sometimes students will turn to the main headings into questions and prepare to read to find the answers to the questions or to check the questions at the end of the chapter to determine the Questions-Answer-Relationships.

Stage 2: Reading – Teachers support students as they read the textbook chapter in these ways:

Ensure that students can read the assignment
Assist students in identifying the big ideas
Help students organize ideas and details

Stage 3: Responding – Teachers help students develop and refine their comprehension in this stage as they think, talk, and write about the information they’ve read in these ways: They…

clarify students’ misunderstandings
help students summarize the big ideas
make connections to students’ lives

A few popular techniques teachers use are the think-pair-share, quick writes, and double-entry journals.

Stage 4: Exploring – Teachers ask students to dig into the text during the exploring stage to focus on vocabulary, examine the text, and analyze the big ideas in these ways:

Have students study vocabulary words
Review the big ideas in the chapter
Help students to connect the big ideas and details.

Word Sorts – A collection of words taken from the word wall that students, or teachers, will sort into two or more categories.

Semantic Feature Analysis – This is a chart teachers and students will create to help examine the characteristics of vocabulary words or content area concepts and to classify important information.

Stage 5: Applying – Teaches support students as they appl what they’ve learned by creating projects in these ways:

Expand students’ knowledge about the topic
Have students personalize their learning
Expect students to share their knowledge

Learning How to Study

SQ4R Study Strategy – A six-step technique in which students survey, questions, read, recite, relate, and review as the study a content area reading assignment. This strategy also incorporates a before, during, and after reading component as well as a recently revised and added “relate” step.

Thematic Units

Thematic Units – Thematic Units are interdisciplinary units that integrate reading and writing with social studies, science, and other curricular areas.

How to Plan a Thematic Unit – There are 9 steps to developing a thematic unit:

Determine the focus and what standards you are teaching
Collect a text set
Coordinate textbook readings
Locate digital and multimedia materials
Plan instructional activities
Identify minilesson topics
Plan ways to differentiate instruction
Brainstorm possible projects
Plan for assessment

Alternative Assessments – Teachers monitor English learners’ progress using a combination of observations and question asking. Many times it is more productive to interact with these students about the activities they are involved in to get a better assessment of their learning progress. Other assessments teachers can do for English learners involve making drawings or graphic organizers instead of writing essays, they can conference and talk with their teacher about what they’ve learned. Instead of giving tests with written answers, teachers can have ELs give answers orally.

Classroom Application – One of the best tid bits from this chapter involved the demonstration of learning. I really like how the book details the many ways teachers can have students demonstrate the information they’ve learned instead of simply giving tests. Some students do not perform well on tests or may have test anxiety and giving students the option to show that they’ve actually learned the material in different ways is a great idea. By having students great a diagram, poster, or presentation are fantastic ways for students to show what they’ve learned and can even help teach this information to other students. These students also develop a better understanding of the information as well. I also like how the book describes a few ways to make textbooks more interesting too. Simply reading the textbook doesn’t always help students understand the material and information. But by activated and using active learning, students can better understand the information and produce greater results.

Chapter 11 – Differentiating for Success

Differentiation – Differentiated Instruction is based on an understanding that student differ in important ways. Differentiation is also providing specific ways for students to learn as deeply as possible and as quickly as possible without assuming one student’s road map for learning is identical to anyone else’s. Differentiated instruction is also characterized as rigorous, relevant, flexible, and complex.

Rigorous – Teachers provide challenging instruction that encourages student’s active engagement in learning.
Relevant – Teachers address literacy standards to assure that students learn essential knowledge, strategies, and skills.
Flexible – Teachers use a variety of instructional procedures and grouping techniques to support students.
Complex – Teachers engage students in thinking deeply about books they’re reading, compositions they’re writing, and concepts they’re learning.

Teachers Modify Instruction In Three Ways:

Content (what): This is the “what” of teaching, the literacy knowledge, strategies, and skills that students are expected to learn at each grade level. It is also how well does the student know the content. If not at all, they may receive more practice. If they know it, the activities they do may be more challenging or the teacher may move them through the content quicker.
Process – This is the “how” of teaching, the instruction that teachers provide, the materials they use, and the activities students are involved in to ensure that they’re successful. A student may need more hands-on activities or be placed in a smaller guided reading group if needed.
Product – Teachers vary the complexity or requirements of a project. The product is the result of learning, and it demonstrates what students understand and how they can apply it.

Grouping for Instruction – Teachers use three grouping patterns for instruction: whole class group work, small groups, and individually. Decisions about which type of grouping to use depend on the teacher’s purpose, the complexity of the activity, and the students specific learning needs. In differentiated classrooms, students are grouped and regrouped often and are not always grouped by academic performance.

Guided Reading – Guided reading is usually done in small groups and can also be helpful for English learners, older readers, and those struggling who need more teacher support to decode and comprehend books they’re reading, learn reading strategies, and become independent readers. These are 25–30-minute lessons with four or five students who read at the same level. The students do the reading themselves and they use books that the students can read with 90-94% accuracy. The teacher will observe each of the students for a few minutes to check their fluency skills among other things as well as their attempts to identity words and solve reading problems. These observations can be helpful for teachers to plan future lessons as well as interventions.

Tiered Activities – Teachers create tiered or related activities that focus on the same essential knowledge but vary in complexity to match student needs. They vary activities by first varying the complexity thinking. Second, by varying activities according to the level of reading materials. Third, by varying activities by the form of expression. Tiered activities is also not RTI. Tiered activities have 3 different assignments as well: assignments that are on grade-level, assignments that are for struggling students, and assignments for advanced students. The advanced assignments are more challenging than the others and are not simply extra work.

Characteristics of a Struggling Reader – These factors predict early reading difficulty in kindergarten or first grade:

Difficulty developing concepts about written language, phonemic awareness, letter names, and phoneme-grapheme correspondences
Slower to respond than classmates when asked to identify words
Behavior that deviates from school norms
Children with a family history of reading difficulties are more like to experience reading difficulties as well.

Characteristics of a Struggling Writer – Students struggling with writing will:

Have difficulty developing and organizing ideas
Struggle with word choice and writing complete sentences and effective transitions
Have problems with spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and grammar skills
Other students struggle with the writing process and using writing strategies effectively
Show little interest and do the bare minimum
Helping struggling students requires both high-quality classroom instruction and sustained personalized intervention.

High-Quality Classroom Instruction – Teachers use a balanced approach that combines explicit instruction in decoding, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing along with daily opportunities for students to apply what they’ve learned. It is also standards driven and uses research-based procedures and activities.

There are four components to enhance literacy development of struggling readers and writers:

Differentiating Instruction
Appropriate Instructional Materials-books for struggling readers too
Expanding Teachers’ Expertise-professional development
Collaborating with Literacy Coaches

The quality of classroom instruction has a tremendous impact on how well students learn to read and write. Teacher expertise is the critical factor!

Interventions – Schools use intervention programs for economically disadvantaged children and their parents to address low-achieving students’ reading and writing difficulties and accelerate their literacy learning. For early interventions, there are two programs funded by the United States federal government: Head Start, which is a program similar to preschools, but here children grow rapidly in their knowledge of concepts about written language and understanding of literacy behaviors; and Even Start Literacy Program which integrates early-childhood education and literacy instruction for parents into one program. Teachers have developed three types of interventions for preschoolers, kindergartners, and first graders:

Preventive programs to create more effective early-childhood programs
Family-focused programs to develop young children’s awareness of literacy, parents’ literacy, and parenting skills
Early interventions to resolve reading and writing problems and accelerate literacy development for low-achieving K-3 students

Reading Recovery – 30-minute daily one-on-one tutoring by teachers for the lowest-achieving first graders. Reading recovery lessons involve these components:

Rereading familiar books
Independently reading the book introduced in the previous lesson
Learning decoding and comprehension strategies
Writing sentences
Reading a new book with teacher support.

Response To Intervention (RTI) – RTI is a schoolwide initiative to identify struggling students quickly, promote high-quality classroom instruction, provide effective interventions, and increase the likelihood that students will be successful. It involves three tiers with all decisions being data driven:

Tier 1: Screening and Prevention – Teaching high quality instruction and screening all students
Tier 2: Early Intervention – Early interventions, individualized instruction targeting specific needs, often happens outside the classroom
Tier 3: Intensive Intervention – Special education teachers provide more intensive intervention to individual students and small groups

Interventions for Older Students – ¼ of students in the upper grades are struggling readers who need effective classroom interventions in addition to high quality reading instruction. These interventions should include:

High-quality reading instruction: vocabulary and comprehension focus
Instructional-Level Reading Materials: appropriate reading material for their age and reading level
More Time for Reading: struggling students don’t read at home, they need to practice at school

Classroom Application – The best thing for me personally being both a math interventionist and resource teacher would be the chart/table with the great information on how to address struggling writers’ problems. Occasionally, I will have some free time in-between interventions, and I will usually walk around and try to find a student or two who need help with their assignments. Many of the middle school and high school students have to assignments called “daily writing” where they need to write a minimum of two paragraphs, and sometimes more, about a certain topic or topic of their choosing. I have found out during these last couple months that many of them have trouble writing/typing their thoughts down or are simply not sure when and how to begin their writings. But if I ask them a few questions or we brainstorm ideas the students could talk their way through 4 or5 paragraphs. And when I try to get them to start writing it all down, they freeze up and are never really sure what to write or where to begin. Going over some of the problems and how to address these problems with the students would help them tremendously. Even breaking down a few of the most relevant or most important ones could be used to help younger students as well.

Chapter 10 – Organizing for Instruction

Basal Reading Programs – Commercially produced reading programs are known as basal readers. These programs feature a textbook of reading selections with accompanying workbooks, supplemental books, and related instruction materials at each grade level. Phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, grammar, and spelling instruction is coordinated with the reading selections and aligned with grade-level standards. The teacher’s guide provides detailed procedures for teaching the selectins and related skills and strategies. Instruction is typically presented to the whole class, with reteaching to small groups of struggling students. Testing materials are also included so that teachers can monitor students’ progress. Publishers tout basal readers as a complete literacy program, but effective teachers realize thy aren’t. Below is an overview of the instructional approach for Basal Reading Programs:

Components of a Basal – There are five components to a basal reading program: reading selection in the grade-level textbook (anthology), instruction on strategies and skills, workbook assignments, independent reading opportunities and a management plan that includes flexible grouping and regular assessment.

Materials in Basal Reading Programs – Figure 10-1 below shows the materials in Basal Reading Programs:

Literature Focus Units – Literature focus units are units featuring popular and award-winning stories, non-fiction books, or poetry. They also feature either a single book: chapter or picture book, genre unit, or author study. Literature focus units include activities incorporating the 5 stages of the reading process too:

Prereading – build background knowledge
Reading – read the selection either independently or with the teacher
Responding – discuss the book and then write in reading logs
Exploring – word-study activities and comprehension activities
Applying – students apply their learning through different projects

Steps in Developing a Literature Focus Unit – There are 6 steps in developing a literature unit:

Select the Literature
Set goals
Develop a unit plan
Coordinate grouping patterns with activities
Create a time schedule
Assess students

Literature Circles are small, student-led book discussion groups that meet regularly in the classroom and are often called book clubs.

Key Features of a Literature Circle – There are three key features for literature circles:

Choice: Students typically choose what book they want to read, they groups they participate in and setting the schedule for readings and discussions, and how they’ll share their book with classmates.
Literature: The books students choose need to be interesting and at students reading level. It is recommended that students choose picture books or shorter books at first so students can learn the process of literature circles before. These books are typically fiction books or stories but can also be nonfiction works as well.
Response: Students then discuss what they are reading through literature circles (when they discuss). Here they summarize, make connections, learn vocabulary, and explore the author’s use of text factors. These students participating in literature circles learn through the discussions and talking to their peers.

Types of Talk During Literature Circle Discussions – There are many different ways students talk to each other and talk during literature circles. Figure 10-4 presents four of these ways:

Roles Students Play in Literature Circles – Many teachers have students assume roles and complete assignments in preparation for discussion group meetings. These roles are detailed below in figure 10-5:

Below is an overview of the instructional approach to Literature Circles:

There is also a 7-step series of activities teachers use when organizing literature circles in the classroom:

Step 1: Select Books
Step 2: Form Literature Circles
Step 3: Read the Book
Step 4: Participate in a Discussion
Step 5: Teach Milestones
Step 6: Share With the Class
Step 7: Assess Learning

Reading and Writing Workshops are a student-centered approach to student learning where students are involved in authentic reading and writing projects. The components for a reading workshop involve reading, responding, sharing, teaching mini lessons, and reading aloud to students. Writing workshops involve writing, sharing, and teaching mini lessons. These workshops also include three main characteristics:

Time – Students have large chunks of time and the opportunity to read and write. Reading and writing also become the core of the literacy curriculum.
Choice – Students assume ownership of their learning through self-selection of the books they read and their topics for writing. Students choose their own books instead of everyone reading the same book or the teacher choosing the book. They also choose their own writing projects and choose topics related to their hobbies or content area units.
Response – Students respond to books they’re reading in reading logs that they share during conferences with the teacher. They also do book talks with classmates to share books they’ve finished reading and they share their rough drafts and completely compositions they’ve written too.

Think-Alouds – A procedure in which teachers or students verbalize their thoughts while reading or writing to describe their strategy use.

Grand Conversations – Students talk about the text with their classmates about stories and poems and in discussions about nonfiction books and chapters in content area textbooks. In these conversations, students share their personal responses and tell what they liked about the texts.

Goldilocks Strategy – This is a strategy for choosing books based off the folktale “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”. Using the folktale as the model, teachers create three categories of books: “Too Easy” books, “Too Hard” books, and “Just Right” books. The easy books are books the student has read before or can read fluently, the too hard books are unfamiliar and confusing, and books in the just right category were interesting and contained just a few unfamiliar words. The books in each category vary from student to student according to their reading levels. This approach is interesting because it can work at any level.

Responses in Reading Workshop – Students usually keep reading logs in which they write their initial responses to a book. They also dialogue with the teacher about the books they’re reading, and the journal allows for ongoing conversation with the teacher. There are three categories when it comes to these responses:

Immersion Responses – Students indicate whether the book is making sense to them. They draw inferences about characters, offer predictions, and ask questions.
Involvement Responses – Students show that they’re personally involved with a character, often giving advice or judging a character’s actions. They also reveal their own involvement in the story as they express satisfaction with how the story is developing.
Literary Connections – Students make connections and evaluate the book. They offer opinions, sometimes saying “I liked…” or “I didn’t like…” and compare the book to others they’ve read.

SSR – Sustained Silent Reading is an independent reading time set aside during the school day for students in one class or the entire school to silently read self-selected books. It has similarities to reading workshops in that the students are reading and reading books they choose themselves, but reading workshops have five components whereas SSR has only one: reading.
Management of the Workshops – Teachers establish their workshop environment in their classrooms in the beginning of the year. They provide time for students to read and write and teacher them how to respond to books and to their classmates’ writings. They also develop a schedule for reading and writing workshop with time allocated for each component as well as make a classroom chart to monitor students’ progress. Teachers also take time during reading and writing workshops to observe students as they work together in small groups.

Classroom Application – One of the best tid bits from chapter ten that I thought would be really useful was the use of roles students play in literature circles. This keeps the circles and discussions livelier so the same few people who like to talk a lot take over discussions and others hardly get a word in. I also feel like this is great for students to see how their role can influence their thoughts on the book as well. I also like the idea that each person has a job, and they get to feel like they are part of a team and community furthering their interest and involvement. I also personally liked the idea of explaining to students that their choices in books matter by relating it to Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I can remember when I was in elementary school getting books that were way to hard for me because they were about a cool subject. I would only ever look at the pictures or attempt to read them briefly. Explaining this idea to young students sounds like a great idea to me.

Chapter 9 – Promoting Comprehension: Text Factors

Text Factors – While comprehension involves reader factors, it also involves text factors. Stories, nonfiction books, and poems can be easier or more difficult to read depending on their text factors. The most important three text factors are genre, text structures, and text features.

Genres – A category of literature or writing form. Stories can be categorized in different ways and genres is one of them. Within genres are three general subcategories as well: Folklore, Fantasies, and Realistic Fiction.

Narratives Genres:

Folklore – These are stories that began hundreds of years ago and were passed down from generations to generations by storytellers before being written down. Within the Folklore category we have fables, folktales, myths, and legends:

Fables – Brief tales told to point out a moral. There characteristics are that they are often short and less than a page, their characters are animals, the characters are one-dimensional: meaning they are either strong or weak, or wise or foolish, they don’t have a strong setting and could take place anywhere, and the theme is stated as a moral at the end of the story.
Folktales – Stories in which heroes demonstrate virtues to triumph over adversity. Folktales often began as oral stories, told and retold by medieval storytellers as they traveled from town to town. Their characteristics are that they often begin with “Once upon a time…”, the setting could be anywhere, the plot is simple and straightforward, the characters are one-dimensional like good or bad, or stupid or clever, and the end is happy where everyone lives “happily ever after”.
Myths – Stories created by ancient peoples to explain natural phenomena. Myths have the following characteristics: they explain creations, their characters are humans with supernatural powers, the setting is barely sketched out, and magical powers are required.
Legends – Stories, including hero tales and tall tales, that recount courageous deeds of people who struggled against each other or against gods and monsters. These are simply myths about heroes.

Fantasies are imaginative stories where authors create new worlds for their characters which are based in reality. In the Fantasy category we have modern literary tales, fantastic stories, science fiction, and high fantasy.

Modern Literacy Tales – Stories written by modern authors that are similar to folktales. They are related to folktales and fairy tales because they often incorporate many characteristics and conventions of traditional literature, but they’ve been written more recently and have identifiable authors.
Fantastic Stories – Imaginative stories that explore alternate realities and contain elements not found in the natural world. Fantastic Stories are realistic in most details, but some events require readers to suspend disbelief. Their characteristics include the events in story are extraordinary and things that happen in today’s world, the setting is realistic, the main characters are people or personified animals, and the themes often deal with the conflict between good and evil.
Science Fiction – Stories that explore scientific possibilities. Science fiction stories are when the authors create a world in which science interacts with society and can involve traveling through space and meeting aliens. Their characteristics involve a story is set in the future, the conflict is between the characters and natural or mechanical forces, the characters believe in advanced technology, and detailed descriptions of scientific facts are provided throughout.
High Fantasy – Stories that focus on the conflict between good and evil and often involve quests.

In the Realistic Fiction category, we have contemporary stories and historical stories. Realistic Fiction stories are often lifelike and believable where the outcome is reasonable, and the story is a representation of action that seems truthful. These stories help students discover that their problems aren’t unique and that they aren’t alone in experiencing those feelings or situations.

Contemporary Stories – Stories that portray today’s society. With these stories, readers identify with their own age and have similar interest and problems. Their characteristics include characters acting like people or like real animals, the setting is in the worlds as we know it today, and the stories deal with everyday occurrences or relevant subjects.
Historical Stores – Realistic stories set in the past. These historical stories are set in the past, and the details about food, clothing and culture must be typical of the era in which the story is set because the setting influences the plot. The characteristics of historical stories are that the setting is historically accurate, the conflict is between characters or between a character and society, the language is appropriate to the setting, and the themes are universal, both for historical period of the book and for today.

Text Structures are organizational patterns. The most important story elements of the plot, character, setting, point of view, and theme. Authors use these elements to structure a story and to manipulate them in order to develop their stories.

Elements of Story Structure:

Plot – Simply stated the plot is the sequence of events (beginning, middle, and end). The plot could also be stated as the sequence of events involving characters in conflict situations, and it’s based on the goals of one or more characters and the processes they go through to attain them.

Characters – The people or personified animals in the story. Structurally, the characters are the most important element in the story. Characters are developed in stories through their appearance, their actions, their dialogue, and their monologue.

Setting – Where the story takes place. Setting has four dimensions: Location, Weather, Time Period, and Time.

Point of View – The particular viewpoint from which stories are written and this perspective determines the reader’s understanding of the characters and the events of the story. Here are the points of view:

First-Person Viewpoint – This point of view is used to tell a story through the eyes of one character suing the first-person pronoun I. the narrator, usually the main character, speaks as an eyewitness and a participant in the events.
Omniscient Viewpoint – The author is godlike, seeing and knowing all, telling readers about the through processes of each character without worrying about how the information is obtained.
Limited Omniscient Viewpoint – This viewpoint is used so that readers know the thoughts of one character. It’s told in third person, and the author concentrates of the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of the main character or another important character.
Objective Viewpoint – Readers are eyewitnesses to the story and are confined to the immediate scene. They learn only what’s visible and audible and aren’t aware of what any characters think. The focus is on recounting events, not on developing the personalities of the characters.

Theme – Theme is the underlying meaning of the story; it embodies general truths about human nature. Themes can be either explicit or implicit. These themes usually deal with characters’ emotions and values too.

Text Features – The literary devices and display conventions that authors use to achieve particular effects in their writing. Also described as narrative devices, these are what the author uses to make their writing more vivid and memorable. While imagery is the most frequently used convention, authors also use flashbacks, foreshadowing, and symbolism as well. Here is a list of several narrative devices and their descriptions:

Dialogue – Written conversation where characters speak to each other. Authors use dialogue to move the story forward while bringing the characters to life.
Flashback – An interruption, often taking readers back to the beginning of the story. Authors use flashbacks in time-warp stories where characters travel back in time to a particular historical period.
Foreshadowing – Hinting at events to come later in the story to build readers’ expectations. Authors often use foreshadowing in the beginning of the story.
Imagery – Descriptive words and phrases used to create a picture in the readers’ minds. Authors also use metaphors and similes as they craft images.
Suspense – An excited uncertainty about the outcome of conflict in a story. Authors use suspense in the middle of the story as characters attempt to thwart one roadblock after another.
Symbolism – A person, place, or thing used to represent something else. For example, a lion often symbolizes courage, and a dove symbolizes peace. Authors use symbols to enhance the theme of their story.
Tone – The overall feeling or mood in a story, ranging from humorous to serious and sad. Authors create the tone through their choice of words and use of other narrative devices.

Text Factors of Nonfiction Books

Nonfiction Genres – Nonfiction books provide facts on any topic you could imagine. There are a few different examples of nonfiction books:

Alphabet Books – Many of these alphabet books are designed for young children who are learning to identify the letters of the alphabet. Many are predictable and feature a letter and an illustration of a familiar object on each page while others are more imaginative or playful.
Biographies – These are books written about a person’s life. Some biographies are written by other people, and some are written by the person themselves. These are called autobiographies.
Reference Books – These are books that are used by students to reference or track down information and to research topics.

Expository Text Structures – How nonfiction books are organized. Here are the five most common expository text structures:

Description – The author describes a topic by listing characteristics, features, and examples.
Sequence – The author lists or explains items or events in numerical, chronological, or alphabetical order.
Comparison – The author compares two or more things.
Cause–Effect – The author explains one or more causes and the resulting effect or effects.
Problem–Solution – The author states a problem and offers one or more solutions.

Nonfiction Features – Nonfiction books have unique text features that stories and poems normally don’t have like margin notes and glossaries and their purpose is to make text easier to read and to facilitate students’ comprehension. Nonfiction texts often include these features: heading and subheadings; photos and drawings; figures, maps, and tables; margin notes that give supplemental information; highlighted vocabulary; glossary; index; and review sections or charts.

Text Factors of Poetry – Poetry is often easy to recognize because the text looks different than a regular page from a story. Layout, or the arrangement of words on a page, is an important text factor. Poems are also written in a variety of forms like free verse to haiku and poets use poetic devices like rhyming to make their writing more effective.

Formats of Poetry Books – There are three types of poetry books published for children:

Picture-book versions of single poems – In these books, each line or stanza is presented and illustrated on a page.
Specialized Collections – A special collection of poems either written by a single poet or related to a single theme.
Comprehensive Anthologies – These books feature 50 to 500 or more poems arranged by category

There are also Verse Novels as well. These are stories that are told through poems rather than prose. Some are one long poem and others are a collection of shorter poems. These novels are unique in that they’re musical and create powerful visual images.

Poetic Forms: There are a wide variety of poetic forms with rhymed verse being the most common while others, such as narrative poems, tell a story.

Here is a list of the many different types of poetic forms.

Rhymed Verse – A rhymed verse poem is a work of poetry that contains rhyming sounds at particular moments or at the end of each verse.

Narrative Poems – Poems that tell a story.

Haiku – A Japanese poetic from that contains just 17 syllables, arranged in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables.

Free Verse – Unrhymed poetry in which word choice and visual images are what’s important.

Odes – Odes Celebrate everyday objects, especially those things that aren’t usually appreciated. Unrhymed poems that are written directly to that object and tell us what’s good about the thing and why it’s valued.

Concrete Poems – These are poems whose words and lines are arranged on the page to help convey meaning. When the words and lines form a picture or outline they describe, it is called a shape poem. They help convey the meaning of the poem.

Poetic Devices – There are also a few poetic devices that are especially important tools because poets express their ideas very concisely.

Assonance: the type of alliteration where vowel sounds are repeated in nearby words.
Consonance: the type of alliteration where consonant sounds are repeated in nearby words.
Imagery: words and phrases that appeal to the sense an evoke mental pictures.
Metaphor: a comparison between two unlikely things, without using like or as.
Onomatopoeia: words that imitate sounds
Repetition: words phrases or lines that are repeated for special effect.
Rhyme: words that end with similar sounds used at the end of the lines
Rhythm: the internal beat in a poem that’s felt when poetry is read aloud.
Simile: a comparison incorporating the word like or as.

Comprehension Strategies – It is noted that it is not enough for students to simply name the characteristics of a myth, identify cue words, or define what a metaphor or simile is because the goal is for them to actually use what they’ve learned when they’re reading and writing. One comprehension strategy students use when they are applying what they’ve learned is called noticing text factors. This involves considering genre, recognizing text structure, and attending to literary devices. The last step teachers do is to help students internalize the information and apply it when they’re reading and writing. One way they do this is by demonstrating how they apply the strategy as they read books aloud using think-alouds. Teachers use think-alouds to demonstrate this strategy as they modeled and shared writing.

Assessing Knowledge of Text Factors: – Although there aren’t formal tests to assess students’ knowledge of text factors, students demonstrate what they’re learning as they participate in reading and writing activities and develop oral and written projects. Teachers also use this instruction-assessment cycle detailed below:

Step 1: Planning – As they plan for instruction, teachers determine which text factors they’ll teach and how they’ll monitor students’ progress and assess students’ learning.
Step 2: Monitoring – Teachers monitor students’ progress as they observe and conference with them about their reading and writing activities. They also take note of students’ understanding of text structures as they make graphic organizers and their awareness of structural elements and literary devices in their reading log entries.
Step 3: Evaluating – Teachers encourage students to apply their knowledge of genres, structural elements, and literary devices as they respond to literature, develop projects, and write stories and other compositions. One way to do this is to include items on rubrics and checklists that pertain to text factors.
Step 4: Reflecting – Teachers ask students during conferences to reflect on how they’re growing in their ability to use text factors to comprehend complex texts, and students also write reading log entries, letters, and essays to reflect on their learning. Teachers also consider the effectiveness of their instruction and think about ways they can adapt instruction to emphasize text factors to enhance students’ comprehension abilities.

Video Notes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9S1kNcoHm4&t=37s – This short video beautifully describes many of our key vocabulary terms with books or stories that fit into their corresponding categories.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_cqszvdTqk – This video starts of loads of humor. Just listening to this man say, ”GENRE,” 5 times made me smile. He then goes on to describe in both simplistic terms and with detail more of our vocabulary words for us to understand them better. This video had amazing examples and kept my attention the entire time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf20ymch-ZU – This brief animated video quickly describes the genre of realistic fiction. She describes great examples of modern realistic writing and what it does and doesn’t look like. She even went over the definition at the very end again for a quick reminder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mAl9QMJJTo – This video describes and details many of the important details of nonfiction text features. Many young students may not have learned or been introduced to some of these terms while others are a refresher. Easy watching and loaded with terms and definitions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mAl9QMJJTo – This is a story time video of the book My Parents Think I’m Sleeping. This is a fantastic book for students to read. Every few pages in this book is a new poem and it is full of both rhyming and descriptive words.

Classroom Application

My goal for this chapter’s classroom application would be to get more students interested in reading books and poetry. In our very diverse world today, students within our classrooms may come from many different places, have many different backgrounds, and are interested in many different things. One of the good things to this is that what ever you are interested in, there is most likely a book or poem just for you. If a student is into video games, show them some poems about video games they like or show them a few biographies about video game designers. If a student likes sports, there are hundreds of biographies and autobiographies handy. Recently I have had to explain to students that reading can be, and should be, fun. While reading their textbook might not be exciting, it still is packed with valuable information and if they don’t like it, there is probably a more entertaining book full of useful information on the same topics. Getting students interested in reading is more important now than ever with the help of the internet and the ease of information at students’ fingertips.

CHAPTER 8 – PROMOTING COMPREHENSION: READER FACTORS

Comprehension – The process of constructing meaning using both the authors text and the reader’s background knowledge for a specific purpose. Comprehension is the main goal of reading and is a creative and multifaceted thinking process in which students engage with text.

Text Complexity – Simply stated, text complexity refers to how well a reader can complete an assigned task with a particular text. Text complexity is also a way to determine the comprehension demands of a book or other text using reader and text factors.

What Readers Think About When Reading – When students are reading, they are actively engaged with the text, and they think about many things as they comprehend the text. Here are some of the things readers do:

Active prior knowledge
Examine text to uncover its organization
Make predictions
Connect to their own experiences
Create mental images
Draw inferences
Notice symbols and other literacy devices
Monitor their understanding

Comprehension Factors And Roles In Comprehension – There are also many factors and roles that affect comprehension and are placed into Reader Factors and Text Factors. Below is a table detailing these different factors:
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Prerequisites for Comprehension – In order for students to comprehend a text, they must have adequate background knowledge, understand most words in a text (vocabulary), and be able to read fluently. If any of these are lacking, students aren’t likely to understand what they’re reading.

Background Knowledge – Having both world knowledge and literary knowledge is a prerequisite because they provide a bridge to new text. When students don’t have adequate background knowledge, they’re likely to find the text challenging, and it’s doubtful they’ll be successful. However, teachers can do things to build this useful background knowledge. By doing things like using visual representations and talk to build knowledge, involving students in authentic experiences such as field trips and examining artifacts, using photos/pictures, picture books, websites, videos, and simply talking and explaining concepts.

Vocabulary – Because it is difficult to comprehend a test that’s loaded with unknown words, it is recommended that teachers create a word-rich environment in their classrooms and teach word-learning strategies. They can also preteach key words when they’re building background knowledge using KWL Charts, anticipation guides, and other prereading activities.

Fluency – Students need to be able to read and recognize words automatically so their cognitive resources aren’t depleted by decoding unfamiliar words and they can devote their attention to comprehension. Basically, they can’t comprehend text when their brains are trying to decode words and read. Teachers can do things like repeated readings, having students read at their independent/instructional level, and use sight word flashcards.

Comprehension Strategies and What Readers Do – Students use many comprehension strategies to help their understanding as they read. Some are cognitive, meaning they involve thinking, and others are metacognitive, meaning they involve reflecting on their thinking. These strategies are also explicitly taught to your students throughout the school year. Here are 12 strategies readers use for comprehension and how readers use them, how it aids comprehension, and some activities to help students.

Activating Background Knowledge – Students think about a topic before they start reading and think about relevant information and vocabulary to use while reading. Readers think about what they already know about the topic. It aids comprehension because readers use their background knowledge to fill in gaps in the text and enhance their comprehension. Activities to help students include anticipation guides, exclusion brainstorming, graphic organizers, KWL charts and rereading plans.
Connecting – Readers make text-to-self, text-to-world, and text-to-text connections. Readers personalize their reading by relating what they’re reading to their background knowledge. Activities include making charts and using sticky notes to list the connections, discussions, and reading logs.
Determining Importance – Readers identify the big ideas in the text and notice the relationship among them. It aids comprehension because readers focus on the big ideas, so they don’t become overwhelmed with details. Activities include making graphic organizers.
Drawing Inferences – Readers use background knowledge and clues in the text to “read between the lines”. It aids comprehension because readers move beyond literal thinking to grasp meaning that isn’t explicitly stated in the text. There are four steps to drawing inferences:
- Activate background knowledge about topics related to the text
- Look for the author’s clues as you read
- Ask questions tying together background knowledge and the author’s clues
- Draw inferences by answering questions
Evaluating – Readers reflect on their reading experience and evaluate the text and what they’re learning. This strategy is used throughout the reading process. It aids comprehension because readers assume responsibility for their own strategy use. Activities include reading log, journal entry, thumbs-up, and thumbs-down.
Monitoring – Readers supervise their reading experience, checking that they’re understanding the text. This inner conversation that happens while you’re reading. It aids comprehension because readers expect the text to make sense, and they recognize when it doesn’t so, they can take action. Activities include think-alouds, discussions, and mini lessons.
Predicting – Readers make thoughtful guesses or predictions about what will happen or what they’ll learn in the book they’re reading. It aids comprehension because readers become more engaged in the reading experience and want to continue reading. Activities include a KWL chart, discussions, shared reading, think-clouds.
Questioning – readers ask themselves questions about the text as they read. These questions often lead to predictions and drawing inferences. It aids comprehension because readers use questions to direct their reading, clarify confusions, and make inferences. Students must be taught how to and what questions to ask themselves as they’re reading. This is done through modeling and teacher think-alouds.
Repairing – Readers use repairing to fix comprehension problems that arise during reading. It aids comprehension because readers solve problems to regain comprehension and continue reading.
Setting a Purpose – Readers identify a broad focus to direct their reading through the text. It aids comprehension because readers focus their attention as they read according to the purpose they’ve set. Answering the question “Why are you reading?” assists students in knowing what they need to get out of the text.
Summarizing – Readers pick out the most important ideas and the relationship among them and briefly restate them, so they can be remembered. It aids comprehension because readers have better recall of the big ideas when they summarize. Activities include graphic organizers and orally telling the teacher what they have read.
Visualizing – Readers create mental images of what they’re reading. It aids comprehension because readers use the mental images to make the text more memorable.

Comprehension Skills – These are the skills that involve literal thinking and are like questions to which there’s one correct answer. Students use the determining importance strategy to identify main ideas, and they use these related skills:

recognizing details
noticing similarities and differences
identifying topic sentence
comparing and contrasting main ideas and details
matching cause and effects
sequencing details
paraphrasing ideas
choosing a good title for a text

Another group of comprehension skills is related to the evaluating strategy: Recognizing the author’s purpose, detecting propaganda, and distinguishing between fact and opinion.

The table below explains how comprehension strategies fit into the reading process:
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How To Create An Expectation Of Comprehension – Comprehension involves teaching students how to understand what they’re reading. To do this, teachers use explicit instruction, reading, and writing to develop students’ understanding of fiction and nonfiction texts. Teachers create an expectation of comprehension in these ways:

Involving student in authentic reading activities each day.
Providing access to well-stocked classroom libraries.
Teaching students to use comprehension strategies.
Ensuring that students are fluent readers.
Providing opportunities for students to talk about the books they’re reading.
Linking vocabulary instruction to underlying concepts

Ways To Teach Comprehension – Teachers teach individual comprehension strategies and then show students how to integrate several strategies simultaneously. They do this by introducing each strategy in a series of minilessons where they describe the strategy, model it for students as they read a text aloud, use it collaboratively with students, and they provide opportunities for guided and then independent practice. The Figure below suggests several activities for each strategy:

Reciprocal Teaching – Reciprocal Teaching is an instructional activity where the students become the teacher in small group readings. The teacher models and helps the students to guide the small group activity. The students then learn to guide group discussions using summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting. This is a reading technique that is thought to promote students’ reading comprehension.

Assessing Comprehension – Teachers use the integrated instruction-assessment cycle to ensure that students are developing their abilities to understand complex texts and to use increasingly more sophisticated strategies to deepen their understandings of texts. They do this in four steps:

Step 1: Planning – Teachers make decisions about how they’ll teach comprehension strategies, and they decide how to monitor students’ progress during instruction and evaluate it afterward.

Step 2: Monitoring – Teachers monitor and assess students’ comprehension informally every day. They use several informal assessment procedures to do this. Here are two examples:

Cloze Procedures – During cloze procedures, teachers examine students’ understanding of a text using a fill-in-the-blank like activity where students supply a deleted word from a passage taken from a text they just read.
Story Retelling – Teachers will often have young children retell stories they’ve read or listened to to assess their literal comprehension. These should include all of the big ideas and important details from the text and teachers will often use rubrics or checklists to score the students retelling.
Teachers also uses running records and think-alouds to monitor and assess their students as well.

Step 3: Evaluating – Teachers assess students’ knowledge about reading strategies and other reader factors using many of the same ways they monitor students’ progress during instruction. Students can also create projects like a double-entry journal, hot seat, sketch-to-sketch, and open-mind portraits.

Step 4: Reflecting – Students will meet with their teacher for a conference to reflect on what they have learned about reading factors. Teachers can also reflect on the effectiveness of their instruction and how they might improve it.

Factors Affecting Student Motivation – Motivation is intrinsic, social, and a network of interacting factors. There are many factors that contribute to the engagement or involvement in reading and writing with some focusing on the teachers’ role and others focus on the students. Here is a table showing many of the factors affecting students’ motivation:
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Classroom Application – One of the best tidbits I found from this chapter was in regard to the factors affecting students’ motivation. The last two years have been tremendously stressful for both teachers and students with motivation towards schoolwork and challenging tasks at all time lows. The 6 pages detailing motivation and the chart labeled “Figure 8-6 has some fantastic ideas and great reminders for teachers. One of the bests bits of information talked about how to engage the students and much of it doesn’t take much effort to do. The passage mentions things like expressing their own ideas and opinions, letting the students choose topics for writing and books for reading, and to have students share some of their writings with the class. Knowing which factors affect students’ motivation and how to address concerns is a great thing to practice so it becomes automatic.

Chapter 7: Expanding Academic Vocabulary

Academic Vocabulary – These are words that are frequently used in language arts, social studies, and math. These words are found textbooks and books students read and teachers use them in minilessons and discussions. Students use them in classroom assignments and are expected to understand them for high-stakes tests.

Three Tiers of Words: Basic Words – These words are used socially, in informal conversation and rarely require instruction about the meaning of these words.

Academic Vocabulary – These words have wide applications in school and are used more frequently in written than in oral language. Teaching these words expands students’ knowledge and has a powerful impact on learning.

Specialized Terms – These are content-specific technical words and are often abstract. They aren’t used frequently enough to devote time to teaching them when they come up during language arts, but they’re the words that teachers explicitly teach during thematic unit and in content area classes.

Levels of Word knowledge – Students develop knowledge about a word gradually and through repeating oral and written exposure to it. This word knowledge happens in levels where students move from not knowing the word at all to recognizing that they’ve seen it before and then to a level of partial knowledge before fully recognizing and knowing the meaning of the word in different ways.

Unknown Word – Students don’t recognize the word
Initial Recognition – Students have seen or heard the word or can pronounce it, but they don’t know the meaning
Partial Word Knowledge – Students know one meaning of the word and can use it in a sentence
Full Word Knowledge – Students know more than one meaning of the word sand can use it in several ways

* Students are described as flexible word users when they reach the fourth level, but students do not reach the fourth level with every word they learn. In this level they understand the core meaning of a word and how it changes in different contexts.

Word consciousness – This is a student’s interest in learning and using words. Word consciousness increases students’ word knowledge and their interest in learning academic vocabular. The goal is for students to become more aware of words, manipulate them playfully, and appreciate their power. Students who have word consciousness exemplify these characteristics:

Students use words skillfully, understanding the nuances of word meanings
Students gain a deep appreciation of words and value them
Students are aware of difference between social and academic language
Students understand the power of word choice
Students are motivated to learn of unfamiliar words

Word Study Concepts – Students need to learn about the word, not just memorize it.

Multiple Word Meanings – Words have a variety of meanings and for some words these multiple meanings develop from the noun or verb forms while others develop through wordplay and figurative language.

Synonyms – Synonyms are words that have nearly the same meaning as other words or simply are words with similar meanings. For English this is because we have borrowed so many words from other languages.

Antonyms – Words that express opposite meanings are called antonyms.

Homonyms – These are words that are pronounced the same but have different meanings. Homophones are words that sound alike but are spelled differently. Similarly, Homographs are words with identical spellings but different meanings and pronunciations. ***These are very important because they are very confusing for many students when they are writing.

Root Words and Affixes – Teaching students about root word and affixes shows them how words work. Many words come from a single root word in which many words and their definitions are pulled from. Latin is the most common source of English root words while Greek and English is another important source. Some root words are also whole words while others are only word parts. When root words are whole words, they are called free morphemes.

Affixes are bound morphemes that are added to words at the beginning or at the end of a words. A Bound Morpheme is a morpheme that cannot be uttered alone with meaning, or, in other words, it cannot be said by itself to make an actual word. Prefixes are placed at the beginning (of the root/base word) and suffixes are located at the end (of the root/base word).

Etymologies – The history of words and their meanings. The history of the languages, particularly English in our case, offer fascinating information about word meanings and spellings. The English language in particular used to be a very phonetic language, but over time we adopted and developed related words from Greek, Latin, and English languages as well. When students understand English, Latin, and Greek root words, they appreciate the relationships among words and their meanings. This appreciation and fascination can also foster a passion for learning and understanding as well.

Vocabulary Instruction – Vocabulary instruction plays an important role in balanced literacy classrooms because of the crucial role it plays in both reading and writing achievement. These are the components of vocabulary instruction:

Immerse students in words through listening, talking, reading, and writing
Teach specific words through active involvement and multiple encounters with words
Teach word-learning strategies so students can figure out the meanings of unfamiliar words
Develop students’ word consciousness, their awareness of an interest in words

Vocabulary – The meaning of words students are reading. Knowing the meaning of words helps students comprehend better because it is difficult to understand the text when the words don’t make sense.

Explicit Instruction – Teachers explicitly teach students about academic language and vocabulary which usually involve Tier 2 words. In this explicit instruction, teachers provide multiple encounters with words; present a variety of information, including definition, contexts, examples, and related words; and involve students in word-study activities so they have multiple opportunities to interact with words. Teachers also consider what students already know about a word and that learning a new unfamiliar word takes the most time to teach. They often use minilessons to provide information about words and engage their students in activities to get them to think about using these words in their daily writing and in conversation.

Mini Lessons – These are short lessons in which concepts, procedures, strategies, and skills are taught. They shouldn’t be more than 10 minutes long. They are to introduce a topic and make connections between the topic and previous selections or ideas.

Word–Study Activities – Students examine new words and think more deeply about them as they participate in word-study activities. Some create visualizations of words while others categorize words or related words. Teachers use these word-study activities to teach new academic vocabulary:

Word Posters – Students choose a word and write it on a small poster: then they draw a picture to illustrate it. They also write a sentence using the word on the poster.
Word Maps – Students create a diagram to examine a word they’re learning. They write the word, make a box around it, draw several lines from the box, and add information about the word in additional boxes they make at the end of teach line. Three kinds of information are typically included in a word map: category for the word, examples, and characteristics or associations.
Possible Sentences – To activate background knowledge about a topic and increase their curiosity before reading a book or a chapter in a content area textbook, students write possible sentences using vocabulary words. After reviewing the definitions of set of words, students work with classmates to crat sentences suing the words an afterward share them. Then later on, the students review and revise those that aren’t accurate.
Dramatizing Words – Students each choose a word and dramatize it for classmates, who then try to guess it. This is much like charades; except they are simple acting out a word. Dramatization is an especially effective activity for English learners.
Word Sorts – Students sort a collection of words taken from the word wall into two or more categories.
Word Chains – Students choose a word and then identify three or four words to sequence before or after it to make a chain.
Semantic Feature Analysis – Students learn the meanings of conceptually related words by examining their characteristics in a semantic feature analysis. Teachers select a group of related words, and then make a grid to classify them according to their characteristics.

Word–Learning Strategies – Students can do a variety of things when they’ve come across an unfamiliar word while reading. Some techniques work better than others, but there are three key effective word-learning strategies: Using context clues, analyzing word parts, and checking a dictionary.

How To Figure Out Unfamiliar Words – Students must also know what to do when they encounter an unfamiliar word as they read. They must decide how important it is to know the meaning of the word or if they can simply skip it and continue reading. Teachers should teach students these steps for figuring out the meaning of an unfamiliar word:

Students reread the sentence containing the word.
Students use context clues to figure out the meaning of the word, and if that doesn’t work, they continue to the next step.
Students examine the word parts, looking for familiar root words and affixes to aid in figuring out the meaning, if they’re still not successful, they continue to the next step.
Students pronounce the word to see if they recognize it when they say it. If they still can’t figure it out, they continue to the next step.
Students will check the word in a dictionary or ask the teacher for help.

How To Assess Vocabulary Knowledge – Teachers follow the four-step instruction-assessment cycle as they teach vocabulary and particularly during literature focus units and thematic units. They identify academic vocabulary words, plan minilessons and instructional activities, monitor students’ progress, and evaluate their achievement. Teachers also reflect on their teaching effectiveness at the end of the unit. There are four key steps to assessing vocabulary knowledge:

Planning – Teachers plan ways to build students’ current vocabulary knowledge related to the unit and build upon their prior knowledge as well
Monitoring – Teachers use informal assessment tools to monitor students’ progress like observations and conferences
1. Observations – Teachers watch how students use new words during word-study activities, minilessons, and discussions. They also notice how students apply word-learning strategies during guided reading and when they’re reading aloud.
1. Conferences – Teachers talk with students about the words they’ve used in word-study activities and in their writing. They also ask what students do when they come across an unfamiliar word and talk about word-learning strategies.

***Teachers also use these monitoring tools to check that their instruction is effective and them make modifications when necessary.

Evaluating – Teachers use more authentic and formal assessments such as rubrics, quick writes, word sorts, and visual representations to evaluate students’ vocabulary knowledge.
- Rubrics – Teachers include items about vocabulary on rubrics to emphasize the importance of academic vocabulary. For oral-presentation rubrics, teachers emphasize the use of technical words related to the topic, and for writing they emphasize precise vocabulary.
- Quickwrites – Students quickwrite about a word listed on the word wall, explaining what they know about the word.
- Word Sorts – Students complete a word sort activity to demonstrate that they can identify the connections among words related to a book they’ve read or a thematic unit.
- Visual Representations – Students create a word map about a word, draw a picture to present a word’s meaning or create some other visual representation of a word or a group of related words.

***These evaluations require students to go beyond simply providing information

Reflecting – Teachers take time at the end of a unit to reflect on their teaching, including the effectiveness of their instruction. They can also ask students to reflect on their growing word knowledge. If students self-assessed their word knowledge using the levels of word knowledge at the beginning of the unit or they can complete the assessment again to gain insight on their learning.

Classroom Application

One of the best parts of the chapter was learning about the various ways to teach new vocabulary to students. The idea of students making a poster to represent a new word or making word maps are great ideas. These word-study activities could be used in a variety of subjects and grade levels as well. I also liked the part about teaching students how to figure out the meaning of unfamiliar words. When our students get to high school, and possibly middle school these days, they can just simply google whatever the unfamiliar word is to learn everything there is to know about it. But for other students, they need to be able to try to decode it on their own and figure it out. Teaching students to reread, use context clues, and using a dictionary are crucial skills that all students should be able to attempt before a teacher needs to intervene. With the help of word walls too, teachers should have to spend as much time defining words for their students when the students have the tools to figure it out themselves.

Chapter 6: Developing Fluent Readers and Writers

Reading Fluency – Fluency is the ability to read and write effortlessly and efficiently. Reading fluency is the ability to read quickly, accurately, and with expression. To read fluently, students must recognize most words automatically and be able to identify unfamiliar words easily. Most students will become fluent readers by 4^th grade. This also involves three components: automaticity (recognizing words auto), speed (reading at least 100 words per minute), and prosody (reading sentences expressively, with appropriate phrasing and intonation):

Automaticity – Recognizing words automatically. In order to be a fluent reader, students must be able to identify unfamiliar words quickly or they will have to stop and decode them. Conventional wisdom says that students must know at least 95% of words while others challenge this and say they need to know 98-99% or they will be stopping too often to figure out unfamiliar words.
Speed – Fluent readers read at least 100 words per minute, and they usually reach this speed by 3^rd grade while increasing the rate each year. Fluent readers also vary their speed depending on the selection like its topic or genre and their purpose for reading.
Prosody – Reading sentences expressively, with appropriate phrasing and intonation. Others describe prosody as the ability to read in expressive rhythmic and melodic patterns. Beginning readers with read word by word with no expression before gaining experience and reading with emphasis. They will then chuck words into phrases, read smoothly with only a few pauses and breakdowns, read with expression, and their reading pace approximates speech.

High Frequency Words – These are the most common words that readers use again and again. Often times teachers will create word words at the beginning of the year to help students be able to spell these words correctly without interrupting the class. Most of the time there are also in alphabetical order for ease of use instead of how frequently they are used. Teachers will also add more and more words to their word walls as they learn new words or introduce new topics in their classrooms.

Here is a list of 300 High-Frequency Words:

Word Identification Strategies – Students use four word-identification strategies to decode unfamiliar words: Phonics analysis, decoding by analogy, syllabic analysis, and morphemic analysis.

Phonic Analysis – Students apply what they’ve already learned about phoneme-grapheme correspondences and phonics rules to decode words. This means they apply their letter sound-symbol correspondences, phonics rules, and spelling patterns to read or write words.
Decoding by Analogy – Students use the decoding by analogy strategy to identify words by associating them with words they already know. They their knowledge of phonograms and word families to deduce the pronunciation or spelling of an unfamiliar word. This is a big step for students to use this strategy moving on from a more structured one.
Syllabic Analysis – Students break multisyllabic words into syllables and then apply their knowledge of phonics to decode the words. This strategy is often used by more experienced readings as there is many rules which can and should be used.
Morphemic Analysis – Students use their knowledge of root words and affixes to read or write an unfamiliar word. They locate the rot word by taking off prefixes or suffixes to find the meaningful part of the word. Prefixes are added to the beginning of a root while, and suffixes are added to the end of a root word.

Reading Speed – Students must develop an adequate speed or rate to have the cognitive resources available to focus on the meaning of whatever they are reading. Some factors that affect this speed include:

Students who have a background knowledge about a topic can read more quickly and connect the ideas they’re reading to what they already know
Students who are knowledgeable about the genre, text structure, and text layout can anticipate what they’re reading.
Students who speak English fluently have an advantage in developing reading speed because they know more words, are familiar with English sentence structure, and recognize metaphors and other literacy features.

Activities to Increase Reading Practice – Teachers also provide daily practice opportunities to increase fluency and speed by offering a combination of teacher-guided and independent reading practices like:

Choral Reading – Students work in small groups or together as a lass for choral reading. They experiment with different ways to read poems and other short texts aloud. More fluent classmates serve as models and set the reading speed.
Readers Theatre – Students practice reading a story script to develop speed and expressiveness before performing it for classmates. Researchers have found that readers theatre significantly improves students’ reading fluency.
Listening Centers – Students read along in a book at their instructional reading level while listening to it being read aloud at a listening center.
Partner Reading – Classmates read or reread books together. They choose a book that interests them and decide how they’ll read it; they may read aloud in unison or take turns reading aloud while the partner follows along.

*Once students become fluent readers, the next goal is working on their stamina, or how many minutes can they sit and read.

Prosody Continued – When students read expressively, they use their voices to add meaning to the words. Some of the components of prosody include:

Expression – Students read with enthusiasm and vary their expression to match their interpretation of the text.
Phrasing – Students chunk words into phrases as they read and apply stress and intonation appropriately.
Volume – Students vary the loudness of their voices to add meaning to the text.
Smoothness – Students read with a smooth rhythm and quickly self-correct any breakdowns.
Pacing – Students read at a conversational speed.

While these components mainly affect oral reading, prosody also plays an important role during silent reading, too, because students’ internal voice affects comprehension. Teachers emphasize prosody by modeling expressive reading by reading aloud and using their think-aloud procedures.

Assessing Reading Fluency – Teachers typically assess and monitor reading fluency informally by listening to them read aloud during guided reading lessons, reading workshops, or during other reading activities. Teachers collect data at the beginning of the year and at the end of each month or quarter to document progress. They assess and collect data regarding students’ accuracy, speed, and prosody. Teachers will check students’ knowledge of high-frequency words and their ability to use word-identification strategies to decode other words, they will time students as they read an instructional-level passage aloud and determine how many words they read correctly per minute, and they will choose excerpts for students to read from both familiar and unfamiliar instructional-level texts. As they listen, teachers will judge whether students read with expression and will use rubrics during their assessments.

Here is a list of several assessment tools teachers will use to assess oral reading fluency in grades K-3:

Writing Fluency – Fluent writers spell words automatically and write quickly so that they can focus on developing their ideas. Fluent writing sounds like talking and it has voice. Fluency is as crucial for writers as it is for readers and the components of automaticity, speed, and writers voice are similar.

Automaticity – Students spell most high-frequency words correctly, students apply spelling patterns and rules to spell words correctly, and students’ spelling becomes increasingly more conventional.
Speed – Students write quickly, students write easily and without discomfort, students write legibly, and students develop keyboarding skills to words process quickly.
Writer’s Voice – Students us alliteration, onomatopoeia, repetition, and other literacy devices and students make their writing distinctive.

Writer’s Voice – The writer’s voice reflects the person doing the writing. This is also the tone or emotional feeling of a piece of writing. Students who gain experience as readers and writers will learn to vary their tone, entertain, inform, and persuade. Doing lots of reading and writing helps students develop their voices.

Assessing Writing Fluency – Teachers assess writing fluency as they observe students writing and examine their compositions. They consider these questions when assessing their students:

Do students spell most words automatically or do they stop to figure out how to spell many words?
Do students write quickly enough to complete the assignment, or do they write slowly or try to avoid writing?
Is students’ writing legible?
Do students write easily, or do they write laboriously, complaining that their hands hurt?

Dysfluent Readers and Writers – A dysfluent reader and/or writer is one that is not fluent in reading and/or writing by 4^th grade. Estimates state that 10-15% of these “older” students have difficulty recognizing words and their achievement is slowed. In other classrooms, these dysfluent readings and writers have difficulties decoding words, reading at an appropriate speed, or reading expressively. This in turn leads to a struggle getting ideas down on paper, forming letters legibly, and spelling common words correctly.

Dysfluent readers read hesitantly, slowly, and/or without expression. Some questions teachers consider when assessing or screening these students:

Do students read most words automatically, or do they stop to decode may common words?
Are students able to identify most grade-appropriate multisyllabic words?
Do students read quickly enough to udne3rstand what they’re reading, or do they read too slowly or too fast?
Do students chunk words into phrases when they’re reading, or do they read word by word?
Do students read grade-level texts expressively, or do they read in a monotone?

Here are some assessment tools teachers use for oral reading fluency in grades 4-8:

Similarly, teachers consider these questions when assessing and screening for fluency in writing:

Do students spell most words automatically, or do they stop to sound out spellings of many words?
Do students write quickly enough to complete assignments, or do they write slowly or try to avoid writing?
Is students’ writing legible?
Do students write laboriously, complaining that their hands hurt?

These questions help teachers quickly identify older students who may not be fluent readers and writers.

Here are some effective interventions to help students with their fluency:

Explicit instruction on diagnosed fluency problems
Increasing the time for students to read books at their independent level
Modeling fluent reading and writing
Clarifying connections between reading fluency and comprehension
Expanding opportunities for writing

Here are the components and characteristics of dysfluent readers and writers:

Obstacles to Fluency – There are six main obstacles to fluency in readers and writers:

Lack of Automaticity – To help with this obstacle, teachers use explicit instruction to teach students to read and write high-frequency words. Each week they focus on five words and involve students in these activities to practice them:
- Locate examples of the words in books they are reading
- Practice reading flash cards with words to a partner
- Play games using words
- Write the words and sentences they compose with them on whiteboards
- Spell the words with letter cards or magnet letters
- Write the words during interactive writing activities
Unfamiliarity With Word-Identification Strategies – Teachers include these components in their intervention programs to develop students’ ability to tread and spell words:
- Develop students’ background knowledge and introduce new vocabulary words before reading
- Teach word-identification strategies
- Provide more time for reading and writing practice
Slow Reading Speed – The most important way that teachers intervene with slow reading speed is by providing daily practice opportunities to develop students’ reading speed and stamina. Some activities to assist students in increasing their reading speed are to provide a combination of teacher-guided and independent reading practice, including choral reading, guided reading, readers theatre, listening centers, and partner reading. Books must also be level appropriate and involve a topic they’re interested in. Another way to improve reading speed is with the repeated readings procedure. During this procedure, students reread the same text 3 to 5 times striving to improve their speed and reduce their errors.
Slow Writing Speed – The best way to improve students’ writing speed is through lots of writing. Dysfluent writers often have trouble sustaining a writing project through the writing process. However, these informal writing activities are productive ways to increase writing speed:
- Quickwriting – Students choose a topic for quickwriting and write without stopping for 5 to 10 minutes to explore the topic and deepen their understanding. The writing is informal, and students are encouraged to pour out ideas without stopping to organize them.
- Reading Logs – Students write entries in reading logs as they read a story or listen to the teacher read a novel aloud. In their entries, students share their predictions, write summaries, ask questions, collect quotes, and reflect on the reading experience.
- Simulate Journals – Students assume the role of a book character and write entries from that character’s viewpoint in simulated journals. They delve into the character’s thoughts and actions to deepen their understanding of the novel they’re reading or that the teacher is reading aloud.
- Learning Logs – Students write entries in learning logs as part of thematic units. They’re using writing as a tool for learning as they take notes, draw and label graphic organizers, summarize big ideas, and write answers to questions.
Lack of Prosody – Teachers emphasize prosody by modeling expressive reading every time they read aloud and using the think-aloud procedure to reflect on expression, loudness, and varied pacing. Some activities to help with expression when reading is:
- Having the teacher work with students to phrase or chunk words together to read with expression
- Having the teacher work with students to break sentences into phrases and read the sentences expressively
- Having students participate in choral reading
- Having students participate in echo reading
- Having students participate in readers theatre
Voiceless Writing – Doing lots of reading and writing helps dysfluent writers develop their voices. As they read books and listen to the teacher read others aloud, students also develop an awareness of the writer’s voice. Some activities to help students develop voice in their writing:
- Doing lots and lots of reading and writing
- Practicing their voice during informal writing
- Modeling their writing off of other types of writing
- Writing every day for 15-20 minutes

Classroom Application – We must get our students to READ! READ! READ! That is what I got out of this chapter. Our authors even stated multiple times throughout the chapter that the best thing to improve reading speed or to improve writing speed is simply through lots of reading and writing. Whether the students are emerging readers, fluent readers, or older dysfluent readers, having the students participate and giving them daily practice opportunities to read will improve their abilities. And of course, we have to remember things like reading books and passages at their ability levels and using word walls throughout the year. But the biggest classroom application for me from this chapter would be to provide the students opportunities throughout the day to have the students read both silently and aloud.

One of the other great tid bits from the chapter involved remember that students who are either dysfluent or below grade level have a comprehension rate much lower than their fluent classmates. This will cause these students to take more time when reading passages and they may need to reread passages to comprehend them. I will need to remember this when allotting time for taking tests or having students work on worksheets for lab activities. Not every student will fully comprehend questions the first time reading them and not every student will be able to finish things in a timely manner so I must be prepared to work with them and not punish them.

Chapter 5: Cracking the Alphabetic Code

Phonemes, Graphemes, and Phonemic Awareness

Phonemes – Sounds – Phonemes are smallest units of speech and are marked in our textbook using diagonal lines (e.g., /d/).

Phonemes can either be consonants or vowels; phonemes can also include consonant blends of 2 or 3 consonants which appear next to each other in words and their individual sounds blend together as in grass or spring and they can also be consonant digraphs of two letters that come together to make one sound as in chair or shell.

Graphemes – Letters – Graphemes are the letters of the alphabet. In our textbook, they are marked and shown using italics (ck).

Graphophonemic – Letter-sound relationships – The alphabetic principle suggests that there should be a one-to-one correspondence between phonemes and graphemes, so that each sound in consistently represented by one letter. However, the English language isn’t a perfect phonetic language, and there are over 500 ways to represent 44 phonemes using single letters or combination of letters.

Phonemic Awareness – Children’s basic understanding that speech is composed of series of individual sounds, and it provides the foundation for phonics and spelling. This simply describes the awareness and the ability to understand and manipulate the sounds of words orally. It can detail manipulating sounds in words orally, understanding that spoken words are made up of sounds, and that they can segment, and blend sounds in spoken words. Teaching Phonemic Awareness is important because it is a prerequisite for learning to read. It has also been found to be the most powerful predictor of later reading achievement.

Phonemic Awareness Strategies – Children learn to manipulate spoken language in these ways:

Identify sounds in a word – don’t see the word in writing, but an object or word is given orally
Categorizing sounds in a word – what word doesn’t belong
Substituting sounds to make new words – examples: tar to car, tip to top
Blending sounds to form words – blends sounds to make a word, example: /b/ /i/ /g/
Segmenting a word into sounds-break word apart, you have feet, break into sounds /f/ /e/ /t/

*Children also use these strategies to decode and spell words

Teaching Phonemic Awareness – Teachers nurture children’s phonemic awareness through language-rich environments they create in the classroom. Teachers sing songs, chant rhymes, read aloud wordplay books, and play games in which children have many opportunities to orally match, isolate, blend, and substitute sounds and to segment words into sounds. This instruction should meet 3 key criteria:

Activities appropriate for 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds
Instruction should be planned and purposeful, not just incidental
Phonemic awareness activities should be integrated with out components of balanced literacy program.

Some of these phonemic awareness activities include:

Sound making activities – initial sound or rhyming activities
Sound-isolation activities – teacher says a word and the student identifies sounds at the beginning, middle, and end of the word
Sound-blending activities – “I’m thinking of an animal and its called a /d/ /o/ /g/. What is it?”

Here are some other great activities and videos:

Sound-Addition and Substitution Activities

Willoughby Wallabee Woo
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pdpBEatep0
Apples and Bananas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNNMknj0PyE
Sound-Segmentation Activities
- more difficult activity
- children identify all the sounds in a given word orally
- Elkonin boxes
  - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIhurqhIk0c
  - whole class https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihUNBB0eCU8

Elkonin Boxes – Elkonin boxes are an instructional method to build phonological awareness skills by segmenting and blending the sounds in words where teachers draw or use drawn boxes which represent each of the phonemes in a word. Students will be shown an object or given a word and then the teacher or the student moves a marker into each box as the sound is pronounced. This could also be done at the student’s desk by placing markers onto cards or on a chalk/white board. Teachers can also use Elkonin Boxes for spelling activities too. If a student is trying to spell a word, the teacher can draw the correct number of phoneme boxes and have the student write the letters representing each phoneme within them. Below is a figure representing many of the ways effective teachers use Elkonin Boxes:

Phonics – the relationship between phonology (which is the sounds in speech) and orthography (the spelling patterns of written language). Its emphasis is on spelling patterns and not individual letters because their isn’t a one-to-one correspondence between phonemes and graphemes in English. Some also describe phonics as the predictable relationships between phonemes and graphemes. The relationship between a sound and the letter(s) representing it is also called the phoneme-grapheme correspondence. Etymology, which is the study of the origin of words, also influences the pronunciation of letters and words.

Digraphs – Digraphs are two letters that come together and make one sound. There are consonant digraphs and there are vowel digraphs. Consonant digraphs represent single sounds that aren’t represented by either letter. The four most common consonant digraphs are ch as in chair and each, sh as in shell and wish, th as in father and both, and wh as in whale while another consonant digraph is ph as in photo and graph. Vowel digraphs involve two vowels making one sound as in nail, saw, soap, and snow.

Diphthongs – Diphthongs are two vowels where their sound begins as one sound and then moves towards the other. Two vowel combinations that are consistently diphthongs are oi and oy. Other combinations include ou as in house (but not through) and ow as in now (but not snow) because they represent a glided sound.

R-controlled Vowels – R-controlled vowels are vowels whose pronunciation is decided by the letter r and its influence. Words like start, award, nerve, squirt, horse, surf and square are all r-controlled vowel words. Some words have a single vowel plus r, others have two vowels plus r, and sometimes the r is in between two vowels. Some can be taught and learned easily through predictability and others are much more difficult.

Phonograms – One-syllable words and syllables in longer words can be divided into two parts: the onset and the rime.The onset is the consonant sound that precedes the vowel while the rime is the vowel and any consonant sounds that follow it. Research has shown that children make more errors decoding the rime and more errors on vowels than on consonants. However, knowing common rimes and recognizing words made from them are very helpful for beginning readers because they can use this knowledge to decode other words. Many teachers also refer to rimes as phonograms or word families when they teach them. For example, one day/week the teacher might focus the lesson on the “ain” family as in brain and stain, and they might focus on the “ing” family in another lesson. Teachers will also use their word walls to incorporate these word families for a variety of phonics activities and more effective student learning.

Teaching Phonics – First off, teaching phonics is no easy task. However, years of research has concluded that the best way to teacher phonics is through a combination of explicit instruction and authentic application activities. They have also concluded that the most effective phonics programs are taught in a systematic and predetermined sequence. The typical sequence for teaching phonics involves beginning with consonants; introducing short vowels (so children can read and spell CVC pattern words); then learning about consonant blends, digraphs, and long vowels; before finally learning about vowel digraphs and diphthongs. Children also learn several strategies for identifying unfamiliar words like sounding out words, decoding by analogy, and applying phonics rules. Below is the most useful phonics rules and the sequence of phonics instruction:

Teachers also present minilessons on phonics to the whole class or small groups of students depending on their needs. These are some of the activities teachers use to provide students more guided practice:

Sort objects, pictures, and word cards according to phonics concepts
Write letters or words on small whiteboards
Arrange magnetic letters or letter cards to spell words
Make class charts of words representing phonics concepts, such as two sounds of g or the –ore phonogram
Make a poster or book of words representing a phonics concept
Locate other words exemplifying the spelling pattern in books students are reading

Stages of Spelling Development – Students need to learn to spell words conventionally so that they can communicate effectively through writing. Learning phonics in primary grades is only part of spelling instruction, but students also need to learn other strategies and information about English orthography. There are five stages students move through on their way to becoming conventional spellers: emergent spelling, letter name-alphabetic spelling, within-word pattern spelling, syllables and affixes spelling, and derivational relations spelling. At each stage students use different strategies and focus on particular aspects of spelling.

Stage 1: Emergent Spelling – In this stage, 3 to 5 year old students string scribbles, letters, and letterlike forms together, but they don’t associate the marks with specific phonemes. They use both upper and lowercase letters but prefer uppercase ones. During this stage children learn the distinction between drawing and writing, how to make letters, the direction of writing on a page, and some letter-sound matches

Stage 2: Letter Name-Alphabetic Spelling – Stage 2 involves 5 to 7 year old children learning to represent phonemes in words with letters. They develop an understanding of the alphabetic principle and the link between letters and sounds. They start representing words with just a couple of consonants before beginning to add vowels. By the end of this stage, they are using consonant blend and digraphs and they are learning the alphabetic principle, consonant sounds, short vowel sounds, and consonant blends and digraphs.

Stage 3: Within-Word Pattern Spelling – Stage 3 involves 7 to 9 year olds beginning to spell most one-syllable short vowel words. They also learn to spell long-vowel patterns and learn there are some words that don’t fit the vowel patter. Students will also confuse spelling patterns and spell words wrong after they reverse the order of letters. In this stage, students learn the concepts regarding long-vowel spelling patterns, r-controlled vowels, more complex consonant patterns, diphthongs and other less common vowel patterns, and homophones.

Stage 4: Syllables and Affixes Spelling – This stage involves 9 to 11 year olds focusing on syllables and applying what they’ve learned about one-syllable words to long, multisyllabic words. They also learn how to break words into syllables, inflectional endings, rules for adding inflectional endings, syllabication, compound words, contractions, and homophones.

Stage 5: Derivational Relations Spelling – The last stage involves 11 to 14 year olds where they explore the relationship between spelling and meaning during the derivational relations stage. They also learn that words with related meanings are often related in spelling despite changes in consonant and vowel sounds. Students in this stage learn the concepts of consonant alternations, vowel altercations, Greek and Latin affixes and root words, and etymologies.

Teaching Spelling – While most people think that teaching spelling simply includes giving students weekly spelling tests, it actually involves much more work than that. A complete spelling program involves teaching spelling strategies, matching instruction to students’ stage of spelling development, providing daily reading and writing opportunities, and teaching students to learn to spell high-frequency words. Some important spelling strategies teaching should be focusing on include segmenting the words and spelling each sound, often called “sound it out”, spelling unknown words by analogy to familiar words, applying affixes to root words, proofreading to locate spelling errors in a rough draft, and location the spelling of unfamiliar words in a dictionary. Teaching spelling also involves many different activities like creating word walls, making words or word lists, word sorts, interactive writing, proofreading, dictionary use, and spelling options such as letter positions in such as “oi” is at the beginning and middle, “oy” is at the end of a word.

Video of the Week – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DptnGoIeuUA

This weeks video on the alphabetic principle breaks down the definitions of the most important words of the chapter and has some incredible real world examples. It breaks down the phonological awareness levels into word level, syllable level, onset-rime level, and phoneme level with great examples. The video also included detailed definitions with pictures of examples and exercises for things like onset and rime as well as phonemes and phonics too. This is probably one of the most useful videos for me personally because it explained each of our key concept words and their definitions with visuals and examples. I have already book marked this video along with the flashcards for the FORT. It even contained a typo towards the end where the video misspelled diphthong as dipthong too.

Classroom Application – For me personally, as the father of a 3 year old and 6 year old, this entire chapter was a lot to consider. I feel like I should start going over the 37 rimes and their common words using them. I also feel like that would also make a great addition to a word wall as well. There are clearly some word families and phonograms that are easier or more difficult to learn and practice. So by having those rimes up on a word wall ready to go would be an easy to accomplish and practical addition to any classroom. I also liked the booklist of wordplay books for invented words, repetitive lines, rhyming words, songs and verse, and sounds too. There were many great books in the list and some of them I had never even heard of. If we are talking about classroom application, first I need to read some of those books to develop my skills a bit more when it comes to phonemic awareness and phonics.

Chapter 3: Assessing Literacy Development

4 Steps of Assessment

Classroom and student assessment is one of the most important aspects of teaching. Classroom assessment drives instruction and ensures that students are making adequate progress, determines the effectiveness of the teacher’s instruction, and documents students’ achievement. These assessments involve four steps:

Step 1: Planning for Assessment

Teachers plan for assessments at the same time they are planning their instruction. Planning for assessment before they begin teaching helps them be prepared to use assessment tool more wisely and because if they don’t their assessments often turn out to be haphazard, impromptu, and ineffective. Some questions for this stage are:

Are any students struggling to understand?
Are students completing assignments?
Have students learned the concepts that have been taught?
Can students apply what they’ve learned in authentic literacy projects?

Step 2: Monitoring Students’ Progress

Teachers monitor students’ progress to both learn about students’ strengths and weakness as well as to make informative instructional decisions. They do this by using observations, anecdotal notes, conferences, and checklists.

Observation – These observations teachers use to monitor students is more about what the students are doing as they read and write and not about behavior. They often observe a specific group each day so they can observe the whole class over the course of the week.
Anecdotal Notes – These are notes teachers write on sticky notes or in notebooks as they observe students. They usually describe specific events, and they report rather than evaluate the information. They also record the questions students ask, the strategies and skills they use fluently and those they don’t understand, and reading and writing activities. The notes document growth and pinpoint problem areas to address in future lessons.
Conferences – Many times throughout the day, teachers will meet and talk with students. These conferences are to monitor their progress, set goals, and help them solve problems. On-the-spot conferences are when a teacher will briefly meet at students’ desks to check on their work or progress. There are also planning conferences where the student and teacher meet and make plans, revising conferences where a group of students meet with the teacher to go over their rough drafts to seek advice, book discussion conferences to discuss a book they’ve read, editing conferences to review and correct their works, and evaluation conferences to reflect on their accomplishments and goals.
Checklists – These simplify assessment and enhance students’ learning. Teachers will identify evaluation criteria in advance to make it easier and fairer for themselves and the students. One example of a checklist for assessment is with a Book Talk. During a Book Talk, a student gives a short presentation to the other students about a book they’ve read and often times the purpose is to try to convince them to read it. These are a great way for teachers to monitor students in many different categories.

Step 3: Evaluating Students’ Learning

At this step, teachers evaluate students’ learning to make judgements about their achievement. Teachers will evaluate student’s learning by administering tests, looking at work samples, using rubrics, and other ways that students demonstrate learning. One way they evaluate students’ learning is by looking at students’ work samples like audio files of them reading, pictures of projects they’ve completed, reading logs, and portfolios of their best work. Teachers also use rubrics or scoring guides to evaluate student performance. Rubrics are scoring guides that are used to evaluate student performance according to specific criteria and levels of achievement. These rubrics specify what students are expected to do and describe specific criteria the students are expected to learn and do. Students can also use rubrics to self-assess their own work and work with classmates to assess each other’s works. There are also multimodal assessments teachers are encouraged to use to broaden their evaluations. Teachers should also consider the literacy strategies the students employs, the variety of print and digital text students read, the digital resources students use, students’ ability to collaborate with classmates, and the multiple ways students orally, verbally, and in their writings demonstrate their learning.

Step 4: Reflecting on students’ Learning

In step 4, teachers reflect on their own instruction, and they analyze students’ achievements to improve their teaching effectiveness. They ask themselves questions about lessons that were either successful or unsuccessful to see if any adaptations may be needed to meet their students’ needs. Another way effective teachers reflect on their students’ learning is by student evaluations. These evaluations are done after the lessons or units have been taught and tests have been taken. Students will answer upon and reflect upon questions like: What did you learn during this lesson? How could your teacher have improved your learning? How did you contribute to the classroom community of learners? And what would you like to get better at? These evaluations are not graded, help students create goals for the next unit, and help teachers provide more effective lessons in the future.

Diagnostic Tests and Determining Students’ Reading Levels

Teachers use diagnostic tests to inform their instruction by using them to determine students’ reading levels and identify struggling readers’ strengths and weaknesses. Teachers then differentiate instruction based on their findings and match students with books at appropriate levels of difficulty. If books are too easy students won’t be challenged and if books are too hard students get frustrated. There are three reading levels that consider students’ ability to recognize words automatically, read fluently, and comprehend the message.

Independent Reading Level – At this level students read books comfortably on their own. They recognize almost all words, read accurately with a 95-100% rate, read fluently, and comprehend what they’re reading. These books are slightly easier than instructional leveled books and they still engage the students’ interest.
Instructional Reading Level – At this level students read books with support, but not on their own. They recognize most words with an accuracy rate of 90-94% and may be fluent but sometimes isn’t. Students comprehend what they’re reading with other students and the teachers help but not independently.
Frustration Reading Level – Books at this level are too difficult for students to read successfully even with assistance. Students don’t recognize enough words automatically and their accuracy is less that 90%. Their reading is also choppy, word by word, and often doesn’t make sense to them.

Students must also be assessed regularly to determine their reading levels and monitor their progress as well as informing teacher instruction. Teachers also consider students current levels and provide developmentally appropriate instruction too. This is one reason teachers teach guided reading groups while conducting literature focus units. During these guided readings, everyone is exposed to grade level texts while also reading at their instructional level. The children sit near the teacher in a group while they provide explicit instruction and support for reading hard texts.

Leveled Books – To match students to books in grades K-8, a text gradient or classification system was developed that arranged books along a 26-level continuum from easiest to hardest. Some of the variables considered that influence reading difficulty are:

Genre and format of the book
Organization and use of text structures
Familiarity and interest level of the content
Complexity of ideas and theme
Language and literacy features
Sophistications of the vocabulary
World length and ease of decoding
Relationship of illustrations relationship of illustrations to the text
The length of the book, its layout, and another picture features

Lexile Framework – The lexile framework is another approach to matching books to readers. This approach is different because it is used to measure both reading levels and the difficulty of the book. Word familiarity and sentence complexity are the two factors used to determine the difficulty of books. There are also websites available to use to check out some of the 200,000 books available to you by skill level.

Diagnosing Students’ Strengths and Weaknesses

Teachers use diagnostic assessments and tools to identify students’ strengths and weaknesses, examine areas of difficulty, and decide how to modify instruction to meet students’ needs. They often use diagnostic tests to determine a student’s achievement level for phonics, fluency, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, comprehension and other literacy components.

Running Records – These are authentic assessment tools that demonstrate how students read using their regular reading materials as teachers make a detailed account. They check their word identification and reading fluency, as well as students’ ability to read words correctly.

Informal Reading Inventories – Informal Reading Inventories are commercial tests to evaluate students’ reading performance. They can be used from first through eighth grade. The reading tests are very popular because they are often used to tell us whether a student is or isn’t reading at grade level. Teachers can also use informal reading inventories to identify struggling students’ instructional needs, oral reading fluency, and comprehension. The tests usually consist of two parts: graded word lists and passages.

SOLOM – SOLOM stands for the Student Oral Language Observation Matrix. This assessment tool is a rating scale that teachers use to assess students command of English as they observe them talking and listening in real, day to day classroom activities. The SOLOM address five components of oral language: listening, fluency, vocabulary, pronunciations, and grammar.

Listening – Teachers score students along a continuum from unable to comprehend simple statements to understanding everyday conversations
Fluency – Teachers score students along a continuum from halting, fragmentary speech to fluent speech, approximating that of native speakers
Vocabulary -Teachers sore students along a continuum from extremely limited word knowledge to using words and idioms skillfully
Pronunciation – Teachers score students along a continuum from virtually unintelligible speech to using pronunciation and intonation proficiently similar to native speakers
Grammar – Teacher score students along a continuum from excessive errors that make speech unintelligible to applying word order, grammar, and usage rules effectively

K-W-L Charts – Because English learners have less background knowledge about topics in books they’re reading, it’s important for teachers to have students background knowledge so they can modify their teaching to meet the students’ needs. One way to do this is with a KWL chart. A KWL chart is chart where the students, and sometimes the teacher, write down things they know about a subject, things they want to learn about a subject, and then things they learned about a subject. When going over the KWL chart, teachers learn what students know about a topic and they have an opportunity to learn, build additional background knowledge, and introduce related vocabulary.

High–Stakes Testing – In America, high-stakes testing is emphasized with the goal of improving the quality of reading instruction. These tests are designed to measure students’ knowledge according to grade level standards and to help identify problem areas for important educational decisions. However, students feel pressured by these tests, they don’t try harder to succeed, they become stressed and pressured which effects motivation and achievement, and these tests can lead teachers to abandon their balanced approach to learning while focusing just on test related subjects and strategies.

When students are preparing for test taking, there are a few strategies that will help them. Students should:

Read the entire question first
Look for key words in the question
Read all answer choices before choosing the correct answer
Answer easier questions first
Make smart guesses
Stick with your first answer
Pace yourself
Check your work carefully

Students should use these test taking strategies along with other reading strategies like determining importance, questioning and rereading when they’re taking standardized tests.

Portfolio Assessment – Portfolios are a great way to students to evaluate their progress and showcase their best work. They can also be used at conferences with parents and to supplement the information provided by report cards as well. These help students, teachers, and parents see patterns of growth from on literacy milestone to another in many different ways that aren’t possible through other types of assessments. Other benefits of portfolio assessments are that students feel ownership of their work, they become more responsible about their work, they set goals and are motivated to work toward accomplishing them, and students make connections between learning and assessing.

Classroom Application –

Two bits of information that stuck with me this week were the parts about assessment, observations, and evaluations and about the different diagnostic tests for reading evaluations. We have all had to take many different assessments, tests, and quizzes in our life, but we may not have had or had to do many evaluations. I especially want to learn more about these evaluations and how they can be used to produce a more effective future lesson. I really like the idea of asking the students what they learned, if they think it went well and how it could have gone better, some of the things they didn’t like, etc… I think these evaluations will have a great impact on whether or not parts of the lesson need to be retaught or adjustments to be made for future lessons. Another part I found interesting regards all the different tests for reading evaluations. One thing I am not familiar with just yet is how to administer reading evaluations, how to score them, and what the different levels mean. There are also many different programs for reading evaluations and I am truly excited to learn more about these both for myself as a teacher and a father.