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November 27

Title: 

Rasinski (2012), “Why Reading Fluency Should Be Hot!” 

Applegate, Applegate & Modla (2011), “She's My Best Reader; She Just Can't Comprehend’: Studying the Relationship Between Fluency and Comprehension”

Takeaway of Author: 

Applegate, Applegate & Modla: The biggest takeaway of the authors and the research is to call out to teachers when assessing students' reading skills. Just because a student is fluent in reading does not mean they don’t struggle with high level comprehension. As teachers we need to be careful and consider the consequences of developing sets of reading skills in our students with diligence in assessing. 

Rasinski: The biggest takeaway of the author is that reading fluency is a hot topic and in order for our readers have both automaticity and prosody and fluency and comprehension. We need to instruct them to read wide and deep reading. 

Nugget: 

The study was to see if readers that are very fluent and seen as amazing readers actually have good, on level, and higher level comprehension of what they have read. This would help show if fluency and comprehension goes together. The study found that 30% of fluent strong readers achieved high level for reading comprehension, but ⅓ of fluent and strong readers struggled mightily with comprehension at their current grade level.

One of my favorite quotes from this article is how fluency is a bridge from word recognition accuracy to text comprehension. Fluency has two components: automaticity and prosody which helps with this. I also liked how he discussed cognitive energy as being a limited amount of attention of students when they have to constantly decode, they then don’t have time to comprehend what they have just read. 

Activity:  I decided to explore relationships with other people through reading by using texts as a shared experience with another person . I discussed with a family member what I have read and asked if they have also witnessed this or have experienced the same thing. I discussed how fluency and comprehension go together and about how Rasinski brings up the idea of cognitive energy and what they thought of this. 

Reflection: Talking to my family member allowed me to understand the text I was reading on a different level. Due to my family member not being an education major, I had to explain more what I was talking about because if I just come out using academic language she wouldn’t understand it and would be confused. She babysits so she is around school age kids. It was nice to know that others outside of education are realizing the amount of attention it takes for children to read fluently and then comprehend it as well. This helped me gain more insight on the text and realizing that the author is right, it should be a hot topic because even others not in this field realize how fluency should link with comprehension

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November 13

Title: 

Silverman & Crandell (2011),

“Vocabulary Practices in

Prekindergarten and

Kindergarten Classrooms”

Williams, et. al. (2009),

“Word Study Instruction in

the K-2 Classroom”

(Used reading rockets version because it wouldn’t open for me for some reason)

Takeaway of Author: 

Silverman & Crandell: The key takeaway of the authors is that there is a lot of research being done  on pre-kindergarten and kindergarten age vocabulary. But even though there is a lot of research and a lot of good effective strategies and teaching curricula, that there still needs to be more research done. The authors say that it is on the teachers to decide what is best for their students. 

Williams: The key takeaway of the author is that based on the research, educators need to focus on the 9 tips when utilizing word study in their classrooms. This author also believes that educators should use word study other than traditional teaching of spelling  and sight words, instead we should teach the rules for transfer.

Nugget: 

Research on vocabulary has shown that young children learn words from interactions with adults, just talking to them, hearing them talk and explain what words mean, and through being read to. Children also learn words through direct instruction, meaning as a teacher you’re explicitly explaining what words mean and how we use them. They also learn through combining vocab instruction practices, not one size fits all but having multiple opportunities. 

The 9 tips that came out of the study are, assessing students word knowledge using multiple assessments, using homogenous small group instruction and differentiated these, making sure to make time to prepare these lessons especially when differentiating them for different levels of students, teaching word knowledge not just words so that they can transfer, demonstrate how word study can be used in reading and writing, teach strategies that are helpful, make word wall work and accessible, and word work should work and be Hands-on. 

Activity:  The activity I decided to do for this assignment was to take a field trip off campus, specifically to my field placement. Here I utilized one of the strategies mentioned in the Word Study Instruction in the K-2 Classroom. I decided to do this because after reading this I wanted to get more hands on experience and try out  the strategies. One of the tips listed was to demonstrate how word study can be used in reading and writing. In their ELA time, science is sometimes combined in our kindergarten class. I read aloud a non-fiction book about isopods because we had isopods in our classroom for our science unit. After the book, which talked about the isopods body parts, I made a giant sticky of the different parts. To make it more interactive and fun for the students instead of them telling me the part and me writing the words, I allowed them to do it. We spelled it out and each student got to come up and write what sounds they heard and have been working on. This shows that the students were engaging in learning how word study can be used in reading and writing. I said the word, we read the word and then they wrote it out. This was 2  months into kindergarten, when most came in without knowing their letters or sounds. After reading this article I wanted to utilize the strategies, we have a word study walls called trick words that have king of -ing, are, and, I, and is. My mentor teacher teaches these new words during center time in small groups and then as a whole group we learn more about the word and utilize it in kid-writing. I wanted to try out this strategy in my lesson. I haven’t seen my teacher do this strategy of interactive writing, so I wanted to see how it went. I didn’t tell them how to spell anything or  give them any hints other than tapping it out with them. This was their spelling, most of them weren’t far off! 

Reflection: When I was creating my lesson plan at the same time as reading this article, I asked myself ,“How could I utilize one of these strategies in my read-aloud?” I knew we were going to identify the parts together and then it hit me to allow them to sound it out and write it themselves. This helped me to explore the world through reading of the text and helped me generate new questions about this topic. Doing this helped me understand more about the author and more about the topic of word study in the early years. This allowed me to get hands-on experience trying to do the tips that came out from all of the studies. I got to see how studying the alphabetic layer that students then examine the relationship between letters and their sounds; phonemes to graphemes. 

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Readerly Exploration #6

November 5, 2023

Title: Mesmer (2019), Chapter 5,

“First Words Decoding”

Takeaway of Author: The author’s anticipated takeaway is that as teachers we need to teach phonics and 

there  is a specific time-frame to this and science behind it that we need to follow. Students must learn certain

sounds before they learn others. 

Nugget: Throughout the chapter I found the chronological order of teaching decoding to our students very 

helpful. I like the way the Mesmer shows what skills need to come first and what us teachers have to teach 

first when it comes to decoding. I also like the part where she says that how long you have to spend on certain

word families differentiates between classroom to classroom. What may take two weeks in one class, may take

1 week in another or 4 weeks. I like that she allows the teachers to have some flexibility while also having 

structure . 

Activity:  The activity I chose to do for this reading is to before I read, skim the reading for unfamiliar terms 

and then define them. I chose to do this because when it comes to phonics, I sometimes get confused on certain

terms because they are all very similar with some differences. I also sometimes get them mixed up and I wanted

to go into this reading not being confused or having the wrong definitions. These are the words I defined before

doing my assigned reading. 

Decoding - translate word from print to speech

Holistically - children do not learn to break down sounds individually but to take words at face value and 

associate them with prior knowledge

Idiosyncratic - learner centered, you will observe lessons loosely structured in regard to the sequence of a

 lesson.

High-frequency words - words that occur the most across different forms of texts

Phonemic awareness - listeners are able to hear, identify and manipulate phonemes

Phonics - a method of teaching people to read by correlating sounds with letters or groups of letters in an 

alphabetic writing system

Digraphs - a combination of two letters representing one sound

Onset - Beginning sound 

Rime - the part of a word including the vowel and the letters that follows

Reflection: Having these definitions with me before I began my reading of chapter 5 for my phonics

demonstration was extremely helpful for many reasons. This allowed me to engage in the text better because I

Wasn’t confused, I didn’t have to step away from my book to google a definition, instead I was able to identify

what the word meant right away. I was also able to not get words mixed up like phonemic awareness and phonics. 

I was able to understand the text I was reading at a different level because I had the prior knowledge of what the

author was talking about. This helped me to explore the text I was reading with my comprehension. Knowing 

key vocabulary words during pre-reading are beneficial in understanding the text. 

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#4 October 8, 2023

October 8, 2023

Title: 

Fisher, et. al. (2020), Chapter 2, “Whole-Class Reading Instruction: High-Level Support for Learning

Takeaway of Author: The author’s anticipated takeaway is that as teachers we should use whole-class reading instruction to introduce new skills/concepts to address instructional needs for the entire class while being a meaningful experience to your students. 

Nugget: Throughout the chapter I found the difference between shared readings and reading alouds. They both involve careful text selection, include books for knowledge and skills, texts that are complex and interesting, and involve classroom discussions. The difference between these two are in a read aloud, teachers show the pages of the text and the focus is not on students reading along. During shared reading students see the entire text as we read it; sometimes they have a copy of text, or its projected, or its a big book that they can all see. 

Title: Sipe (2002), “Talking Back & Talking Over: Young Children’s Expressive Engagement During  Read-Aloud Storybooks”

Takeaway of Author: The author’s anticipated takeaway is that during read-alouds students literary responses come in many forms and should be recognized and encouraged. These include; dramatizing, talking back, critique/controlling, inserting, and talking over. 

Nugget: I found this entire article very persuasive and interesting. I believe that during read-alouds  students should be able to interact with the text in any way they want. Dramatizing and making the same noises as the characters shows understanding and engagement, talking back shows that they are immersed  in the book and comprehend what is going on, etc. These are ways that children engage, comprehend, and they are showing very advanced skills through this. Instead of being told to be quiet the students should be allowed to interact with the text because that is the way they learn! 

Activity:  The activity I chose to do for this reading is to talk with another student in class about the reading and see their perspective on the text. I chose to do this because communicating about what you have read with another peer can aid in my own understanding and their own understanding. It will also help me see what my peers got out of the reading compared to what I got out of the reading. 

Reflection: Talking with my classmate, Alyssa, I got another look into the Sipe article and the application into the classroom. She asked the questions of how do we balance a class that has students that need quiet during read-alouds and students that need to be actively expressing. This question made me really think deeply of this text because a balanced classroom is hard to accomplish, but it is possible. The article shows that we want to give those opportunities for actively expressing our reading, but we also want the kids that need more quiet comprehension to get that opportunity too. I think that once we know our students and their needs this balance will be made possible through either doing read alouds in more small groups or stopping at certain points to allow students to actively engage with the text. This conversation with my classmate really made me think about how to incorporate this article into the classroom and in creating a balanced literacy classroom.

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Reader Exploration #3

Sept. 4, 2023

Reading with a Crayon: Pre-conventional Marginalia as Reader Response in Early Childhood by Sarah Fischer

Author Take-away: The marks young children make in their books are often dismissed and seen as devaluing but they should be interpreted and seen as the child learning many skills and interacting with the text of the book.

This article is probably one of my favorite articles I have read because it really challenges the way people think about how children interact with books. Working with many young children through nannying and babysitting I have seen and allowed the kids to draw inside of the books, or have another piece of paper with them to draw their own version of the story. I always believed that a child babbling while flipping pages of a book is reading and we should allow it, and young children drawing in their books is another form of communication of literacy by the child. This article made me happy that a study was done on this and the results did find that it is good for them to interact with books and it is not devaluing the book at all! 

The activity I chose to do to deepen my understanding of this article was to take myself on a field trip off campus that connects to the big ideas of the assigned reading. This helped me to explore the world through reading by using texts to answer questions about the world or generating new questions about the world from the texts that are read. My field trip was to one of the families I nanny for during the summer. The kids are now 4 years old and 18 mos old and I have been with them for 2 years. During this past summer both kids became very interested in books and would constantly be reciting the books we would read, would “read” the books by flipping the page and babbling about what was on the page ( at least for the one that can talk!), and they started drawing in the books. 

This past weekend I got to see them and the little boy is obsessed with Pete the Cat: I love my White Shoes. I read that book to him and then he said he wanted to do a craft. While he did that  I put his sister down for a nap and when I came downstairs he was explaining to me what he drew and he likes when we write what he says on the image so others know what he drew so I did that as well. He said “This picture is you, miss. Maddie, on a morning walk wearing your new shoes. They aren’t white because I don’t have a white marker.” I know that this isn’t exactly the same as him writing in the books and not entirely the same thing as the article but it is very similar! It made me reflect on the big picture of young kids and picture books and drawing. Just like the article argues, it is not “graffiti” and it is not being rude. It is instead the way children interact with literature and it is precious and should be valued. This is how they communicate with what they are reading and their first early connections to literacy and what it is all about! 

This field trip helped me connect with the article and understand that children can and do understand the medium on which they are scribbling on, marginalia is evidence of response with text, and this experience with a text is developing many different skills they will need in the near future.

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Reader Exploration #2

August 28, 2023

Cambourne (1995), “Toward an Educationally Relevant Theory of Literacy Learning Britsch & Meier (1999), “Building a Literacy Community: The Role of Literacy and Social Practice in Early Childhood Programs”

Cambourne’s message was that authentic literacy experiences are most impactful. Britsch and Meier's message was how early childhood literacy programs that allow children and parents to have ownership of their literacy and have inclusion and promote thinking processes are good for young children. 

Throughout Cambourne’s article I kept asking myself “what is the best practice for teaching and teaching literacy to students?” I really liked how Cambourne incorporated his original thinking and theories of teaching. He proved himself wrong through his experience and research. His theories on how we should teach based on how children learn to speak was fascinating to me. He looked at how kids learn in their natural environment, through engagement, transformation, discussions and reflections for oneself and with others, and applying what is being taught/learned. 

During Britsch and Meier’s article I found it interesting how in two totally different early childhood centers; the same study was being conducted and the same results were being said. My biggest takeaway from this article was the three critical themes of literacy learning, which are the importance of literacy ownership by the children and adults, seeing literacy as an inclusive process, and the role of thinking processes in the students' evolving literacy. 

I chose to use Cambourne’s article on authentic literacy experiences. In order to read texts deeply in order to interpret and analyze the various layers of this article I decided to learn something about Cambourne and help use that information to draw conclusions of the motivations behind the reading or the credibility/quality of the writing done. 

I used this website https://ed640xa.weebly.com/brian-cambourne.html and found some more information on the author. Cambourne is a principal fellow at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia. Before he became an associate professor he taught for 15 years in mostly one teacher schools. He has become one of Australian’s most eminent researchers of both literacy and learning.  Cambourne’s major interest of research is in professional development for literacy education.

Reading more about Cambourne and where he is from really helped me understand the point behind his research paper. He came up with the 8 conditions of learning that the article talked about; immersion, demonstration, engagement, expectation, responsibility, approximation, use/employment, and response. Seeing that Cambourne was a very smart man with a post doctoral fellow of Harvard Graduate School of Education and all of his other researched he conducted throughout his years of teaching and professional development, it made me see that his article is very authentic. Like Cambourne said in his article how their needs to be a form of respect and expectations when it comes to learning (especially literacy) it made me have respect and expectations of his writing. Knowing all of the background he has, I can see that he is authentic and he knows what he is talking about. What he is saying is truthful and I need to take that with me into the classroom and my own pedagogies. 

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Reader Exploration #1

August 23, 2023

Fisher, et. al. (2020), Chapter 9, “Assessment and Intervention in the Balanced Literacy Classroom: Noticing and Responding to Students’ Needs

The author's anticipated takeaway for her audience is that through different forms of formative evaluations, we as teachers can see the literacy needs of each of our students and implement that into the classroom. 

Throughout this chapter I really liked how the author used voices from the classroom ,whether it was students or teachers or parents, that were implementing these assessments and evaluations. I also really liked how the chapter gave us some resources of how to evaluate students whether its using CORE phonics survey or Dolch sight words for our students, I really liked that I was able to have access to those resources. 

For my activity I decided to focus on engaging in the reading process to increase the likelihood of text comprehension through the activity of after I have read, document an initial response and how the ideas I read about made me feel and what they made me think. I chose this activity because as I was reading I was getting many different thoughts and feelings and opinions that I wanted to be able to reflect upon and connect to the reading.

My initial response to this reading was “Wow this is a lot of good information! And this will be very helpful in my career”. At the beginning of the chapter the author opened up with a saying about looking at assessments in literacy with a race track approach instead of doing assessments twice a year. When schools only assess students learning once or twice a year, tons of kids are falling too far behind and it gets harder to bridge the gap. But if we as teachers bridge the gap through a race track approach and doing it on every “lap” or most “laps”, we can identify and help students reach their full potential. I really liked how the first goal of formative evaluation is to ensure good teaching. Too often the students get put at fault for not learning the content when I feel that most of the time it is on the teacher! Throughout the reading the author brought up different tests like MAZE, CORE phonics survey, etc and each time one was brought up I looked them up if I didn’t remember taking them in elementary school just to get a clearer image of what the author was talking about. In my own opinion, I do not think kids should be constantly tested on every little thing every other week or have to take all of these tests. I do think that kids should be tested regularly because you do want to identify students that need extra help reaching their goals. Just like the author talked about it is a balance. As a teacher we need to balance these assessments and teaching and focus on the student and their goals as well. Another piece of the chapter I really liked that may be more on the down low is that students and teachers have a partnership and the students goals should be discussed as well, not just the teachers goal for the student. In order for the student to put forth the work they need to feel like this is something they want to do not that they have to do.

After doing this activity I realized that it allowed me to actually connect with the text. Too often, especially in college, we read for the information not for the pleasure or for the connections we can make. But doing this activity after reading it instead of moving on and doing other school work or answering questions about what I just read, I was able to instead sit down and reflect and think. I was able to figure out my opinions, look to the future of how I can use all of this information that was discussed in this chapter later on in my classroom. It also helped me understand what I was reading better because afterwards I was able to connect different main ideas of the chapter to one another. I was able to see that there are many different parts of literacy; reading, comprehension, writing, and oral language. Assessments in all of these areas are important and needed. Doing this activity allowed me to sit with the text and not just pull information for a test but pull information for myself and what I thought was important.