Unfortunately, Monday, April 2oth was the last day at Glen Alpine!  I have learned a lot from observing and helping assist in Mrs. Smith’s 3rd grade classroom.  The children started the day by reading an informational fiction book called “Cocoa Ice.”  Mrs. Smith used this opportunity to go over ‘character traits’ with the children.  Next, children partnered up by pulling their chairs side by side facing opposite directions to read the chapter book “Stone Fox.”  The children partner read by each reading a page aloud to one another.  Mrs. Smith makes sure to assign partners based on a high level reader and a low level reader.  After finishing Chapter 2 of the book, the children answered discussion questions about the book before having to switch classrooms.

During writing, Mrs. Smith continued her lesson on how to appropriately end a story.  Using the smartboard, the students read two or three examples of endings of stories.  They either raised their thumbs up or thumbs down depending on the choice they think is best on the ending of the story.  Mrs. Smith would ask questions such as, “What does reflecting on events mean?”

Overall, my time at Glen Alpine was meaningful and beneficial.  I experienced being a part of a diverse learning setting.  Witnessing the strict structure and learning arrangements at Glen Alpine was something very new to me.  I am glad I had the opportunity to be a part of this great learning experience!

The week beginning April 12th proved to be especially hard for the students because they had just returned to school from spring break, but I think they pushed through well.  Mrs. Smith began the morning discussing all the parts of a community and town to her 3rd graders.  We then read the story, “Boom Town” and discussed distinct vocabulary words by projecting them on the smart board.  The story was set during the Gold Rush period of America.  Mrs. Smith then continued to read the story out loud, frequently stopping to ask questions about the story.

When the students switched to Guided Reading, many students were switched to another classroom because of the results of the 9 week assessment.  Some stayed and some moved to different classrooms because they were now on different reading levels.  We read the book “Zora Hurston and the Chinaberry Tree,”  which is an African-American story.  Mrs. Smith asked questions such as, “By looking at the pictures, what do you think the setting is?”  This book was on a fourth grade level.  She described what she was doing as a ‘picture walk.”

Next, Mrs. Smith went over how to write the ending of a story.  The students had previously learned how to write the beginning and middle.  To help teach this concept, she read the ending of “How the Relatives Came.”  She went over how the ending related to the beginning of the story.  It was great being back with the children this week after a short break!

March 29^th and 31^st was the end of ‘9-week assessment.’  On Monday, students prepared for the EOGs by using ‘Buckle Down’ booklets.  Buckle Down is similar to STARS because it is another form of EOG test prep.  On Wednesday, students practiced testing for the EOGs.  Reading and writing began with Mrs. Smith separating their desks and handing out test booklets just as she would during the real EOGs.  The students then take the next 30-45 minutes taking a Reading Comprehension test.  In the afternoon, students do the exact same thing with Math.  Mrs. Smith tells the students to “pretend like this is the real thing.”  Also, the students are very excited to meet their ‘AR’ goals.  This is where they read a book on their reading level and then take a test on the computer to rate their comprehension of the book.  The students gain a certain number of points according to the level of book and the score on their test.  This nine weeks was the first time every student in Mrs. Smith’s class met their ‘AR’ goal!

I try to help the students focus during silent reading by reading along with them and asking questions about the book.  This time is difficult for the students because Mrs. Smith pulls students aside individually to discuss the books that they are reading for the ‘AR’ program.  Therefore, students have a hard time focusing silently reading the book they have selected.

During ‘pull-out,’ Mrs. Smith’s class has library time.  I have observed that the library has a significant lack of resources.  There is a small amount of books to choose from.  Many of the books are old and worn-out.  While helping the students select their books to check-out for the week, I have noticed that they have ‘already read that one and checked it out before.”

March 22-24 was full of End-of-Grade Testing Preparations in 3rd grade.  Mrs. Smith and her class worked with the program “STARS.”  This is a test prep course on language arts and reading instruction.  First, the students read a passage in their STARS booklet.  After the class silently read the passage to themselves, Mrs. Smith asked a few questions about the story to check the students’ comprehension.  Then, the students answered questions by filling in bubble sheets in their booklets.  After the class had completed the assignment they went over the answers quickly.  My perception of this assignment was that the students had trouble with the majority of the questions and were bored.  Mrs. Smith teaches the low-performing students for Reading and Writing.  Just by sitting and observing the lesson, I was bored but hopefully it will pay off in the long run for the students. 

Throughout the course of the day, I have assisted with math and reading lessons.  The students have many worksheets that they are instructed to complete on their own since they are preparing for the EOG.  We walk around and assist students with any troubles they might have.  I also read with them during directed reading.

An interesting thing I have noticed is that social studies and science are not taught in the classroom.  The students only have math, reading and writing lessons.  This is because these are the only subjects tested on the EOG.  Also, the results of our QIWK test was severely low in relationship to their grade level.  My partner and I are in a 3^rd grade classroom and the majority of the students tested at a frustration level when given the three lists of words to spell.

“The Late-First- to Second-Grade-Level Reader”

1. Look at the spelling errors that Curt makes. What stage of word knowledge is Curt in?Why do you pick this stage of development? What are the key characteristics? Curt shows characteristics of both the Letter-Name and Within-Word Pattern stages of development.  He is in a late first grade to early second grade word recognition level.  Some of his strengths were that he seemed to know the beginning consonant blends and digraphs and he made few errors on one-syllable short-vowel words.  His weaknesses include reading multi-syllable words and he has not automated certain long-vowel patters and r-controlled vowel patters.  In his spellings, he represented short vowels conventionally and showed good knowledge of consonant clusters which are characteristics of a speller at the Within-Word Pattern stage.  However, he reverted to the Letter-Name stage when he failed to mark long vowels in several words.

2. Describe partner reading. Before reading a selection, the student and tutor “walk through” or scan the first four to six pages, speculating on what is happening in the story through the pictures and guessing what the story line will be about.  Then, the child and the tutor begin the first page of the story by partner reading, alternating reading each page aloud.  The tutor stops to ask comprehension questions every now and then.  With partner reading, the child views his tutor as an equal reading partner, sharing the reading load.

3. Which is harder for a student, partner reading or DRTA? I think  DRTA is harder for a student because the child is led to interact with the story in an active, problem-solving manner.  In partner reading, there is a lack of focus on comprehension.  In DRTA, the reader is forced to think more by hypothesis testing and have active interaction between the individual and the text.

4. In planning a DRTA, what is important about selecting places to stop? The tutor must pre-read the story in order to know how the plot unfolds.  The student must be able to make predictions at the beginning and at one-third and two-thirds of the way through the story so that each of them becomes a reasonable hypothesis.  This way, if the student’s hypothesis is off-the-wall, then the tutor knows that the reading comprehension for the child was unclear.  These stopping points will provide a continual evaluation of the quality of the child’s thinking.  While pre-reading, the tutor must ask, “At what point in the story am I able to anticipate an important upcoming event or plot turn?”

5. In planning a DRTA, what is important about deciding questions to ask? What kind of questions? How many? At each stopping point, one or two specific questions related to the story content will encourage the child to pay close attention to important information as he reads.  Prediction questions will require the child to create incoming information and make thoughtful projections forward into the story.

“Spelling of Words: A Neglected Facilitator of Vocabulary Learning”

1.  What was the hypothesis tested by the researchers?

2^nd graders – The hypothesis tested was that students will learn the pronunciations and meanings of new words better when they see spellings of the words during study periods than when they do not. 

5^th graders – (1) Spellings will help fifth graders learn the pronunciations and meanings of new vocabulary words better than no spellings; (2) Students with stronger orthographic knowledge (higher level readers) will benefit more from spellings than students with weaker orthographic knowledge (lower level readers).

 2. Who were the subjects? In the first experiment, the subjects were 20 second graders, mean age 7 years, 7 months, enrolled in an urban school with a large minority population.  On average, these students were reading at a second grade level, however, there vocabulary was below average.  In the second experiment, the subjects were fifth graders from the same SES school as the second graders. They were divided into two groups: 14 higher level readers and 18 lower level readers.

3. What were the experimental conditions?

2^nd graders – In the spelling present treatment condition, the six words, their spellings, and their meanings were introduced.  For each, a card was displayed with a drawing of the object named by the noun and a spelling printed beneath the picture.  The experimenter pronounced the word and its definition and the students repeated them.  In the spelling absent control condition, the procedures were the same except that the spellings of words were never shown.    

5^th graders- Ten words were taught in each condition.  Students were given a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 8 trials to learn pronunciations and meanings of the words to a criterion of 3 perfect successive trials. 

4. What did the treatment involve?

2^nd graders - Each student was taught the pronunciations and meanings of two sets of six concrete nouns.  Spellings were shown as students learned one set.  Spellings were not shown as students learned the other set.  The particular word set was counterbalanced across all conditions.  The order that students completed the conditions was counterbalanced across students. During learning, the words were not only defined but also embedded in different sentences to clarify meaning and connections to other words.

5^th graders- The same procedures were followed as before but with a few exceptions.  The words were low-frequency nouns that were longer, consisting of two and three syllables.

5. Which group (spelling-present vs. spelling-absent) gained more in vocabulary learning?  The spelling present group benefited most from this experiment.  When they are able to see vocabulary words than not see, then they are able to recall the words more.   How were the groups’ recall of pronunciations affected by the treatment?  Recall of pronunciations were better when words were learned with spelling aids than without spelling aids.

6. Why do you think that fifth graders who were high on a word reading task benefited more from the spelling aids than their peers with less orthographic experience and knowledge, even though the two groups did not differ on receptive vocabulary knowledge?One reason might be that the higher readers had better knowledge not only of grapho-phonemic units but also of larger syllabic spelling units than lower readers. 

7. What general conclusions were derived from the study findings by the authors?  From this study, the researchers learned that second graders learned the pronunciations and meanings of vocabulary words better when they were exposed to spellings of the words than when they only practiced speaking the words.  Fifth graders learned vocabulary better when they saw spellings of the words than when they only spoke the words.  What implications were offered for vocabulary learning and instruction?  When spellings are seen, heard, or repeated by children, grapho-phonemic connections are all of a sudden triggered to lock the pronunciations in the child’s memory.

Emergent (Preliterate): Children may write with scribble, letterlike forms, or random letters.  They may “read” familiar books from memory using the pictures on each page to cue their recitation of the text.  Children begin to learn letters, particularly letters in their own names. Children begin to pay attention to the sounds in words.  Toward the end of this stage, their writing starts to include the most important sounds in a word.  The movement to the next stage, centers on learning the alphabetic principle: Letters represent sounds in a systematic way, and words can be segmented into sequences of sound from left to right. Toward the end of this stage, students start to memorize some words and write them repeatedly, such as cat, Mom, love, and Dad.

Letter Name-Alphabetic (Letter Name):  Students in this stage use the names of the letters as cues to the sound they want to represent.  Students learn to segment the sounds (i.e., phonemes) within words and to match the appropriate letters or letter pairs to those sounds.  In the beginning of this stage, students apply the alphabetic principle mainly to consonants. They often spell the first sound and then the last sound in single-syllable words.  The middle elements of syllables, the vowels, are usually omitted.  Typically only the first sound of a two-letter consonant blend is represented, as in FT for float.  Early letter name-alphabetic writing often lacks spacing between words.  Early letter name-alphabetic spellers find matches between letters and the spoken word by how the sound is made or articulated in the mouth.  Towards the end of this stage, students start to use vowels consistently. Long vowels, which “say their name,” appear in tim for time and hop for hope, but silent letters are not represented.

Within Word Pattern (Within Word): Students can correctly spell most single-syllable, short-vowel words as well as consonant blends, digraphs, and preconsonantal nasals.  They move away from the linear, sound-by-sound approach of the letter name-alphabetic spellers and begin to include patterns or chunks of letter sequences.  Students at this stage study words by sound and pattern simultaneously.  They are transitioning from the alphabetic layer to the meaning layer of English orthography through patterns.  Homophones force students to consider the meaning layer of English orthography when they spell words like bear and bare, deer and dear, hire and higher

Syllables & Affixes (Syllable Juncture): Typically in upper and middle school grades.  Students are expected to spell many words of more than one syllable.  Students consider spelling patterns where syllables meet and meaning units such as affixes (prefixes and suffixes).  Most students spell most one-syllable short- and long-vowel words correctly (went, west, drove, hike). Many of their errors are in two-syllable words and fall at the place where syllables and affixes meet.  Unstressed final syllables give students difficulty, as in spellings of LITTEL for little and MOUNTIN for mountain.

Derivational Relations (Derivational Constancies): Most students found in middle, high or college.  Students examine how words share common derivations and related base words and word roots.  The meaning and spelling of parts of words remain constant across different but derivationally related words.  Errors reflect a lack of knowledge about derivations. For example, favorite is spelled FAVERITE and does not show its relationship to favor, and different is spelled DIFFRENT and lacks a connection to differ.  Frequent errors have to do with the reduced vowel in derivationally related pairs. Vowel sound in the second syllable of the word competition is reduced to a schwa sound, as in com-puhti-tion. Students in the earlier part of the derivational relations stage might spell competition as COMPUTIION or COMPOTITION or even COMPITITION.

Q1. What is the Simple View of Reading? Explain how it works. Simple View of Reading is explained in a simple equation: RC = D x C where D stands for Decoding and C stands for Language Comprehension.  In the equation, a person’s ability to decode words drop towards zero, then reading comprehension will also drop toward zero.  If a person’s language comprehension drops to zero then reading comprehension also drops toward zero.

What part of the Simple View of Reading does storybook reading most likely impact? The effects most likely impact children’s language comprehension, whereas, the effects of story book reading on word comprehension are less clear.

Q2. What are Ehri’s 4 stages of word recognition? Name each and give a short description.

-  Visual Cue Reading – Children recognize words through certain visual cues.  They “read” the parts of pictures instead of the actual letters

-  Phonemic Cue Reading/Partial Alphabet Coding – At this stage, they have developed basic phonemic awareness.  Children identify the most significant letters in a word, usually the first letters in a word but sometimes they use other letters in a word as well.

-  Full Alphabetic Coding – There written vocabulary has increased and they start to examine each letter in a word.  This is called letter-by-letter decoding.

-  Consolidated Word Recognition – This in turn, leads them to use groups or chunks of letters to recognize words right away.

Q3. On page 368, there is a good definition of Phonemic Awareness. What is it? (Remember it.) “Refers to a broad set of skills that involve attending to, thinking about; and intentionally manipulating the phonological aspects of spoken language.”  Phonemic awareness deals with an awareness of syllables which then leads to awareness of initial phonemes, final phonemes, then vowels.

Q4. On page 370, we learn that knowledge of the alphabet is necessary for beginning to learn to read and spell words. There is a developmental sequence to learning about the alphabet: What is it? Knowing the ABC song (the naming of individual letters, the printing of those letters, and the identification of letter sounds.

Q5. What is the value in “reading to” or having children “read” alphabet books? Smolkin, Yaden, Brown, and Hofius (1992) research found that alphabet books elicited significantly more print-related responses from children in one-on-one readings.  This suggests that children focus on the print during these readings.  Print-related responses lead to greater awareness of print.  Another study found that reading alphabet books to children significantly improved their phonemic awareness.  Therefore, increases their development of knowledge of written words.

Q6. What is the value in children’s fingerpointing as they read? When children finger-point to words, they are using letter identification.  Being able to finger-point is evidence of segmenting or breaking down each word in a sentence.  This in turn, leads to being able to identify words by themselves (not in context).

Q7. What is a predictable book and what is its value in helping children learn to read? Also known as a patterned book, these books contain a repeated linguistic pattern that children can use to support their reading.  An examples is, “Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?/I see a redbird looking at me/Red bird, red bird, what do you see?” etc.  The breaks in the patterns at the end require children to concentrate more on print information, leading to development in word recognition.

Q8. So, in the end, what role does storybook reading play in helping children learn to read?

Specifically, what role does storybook reading play in developing vocabulary and comprehension? Any exposure to reading can increase childrens’ ability to recognize words.  Children usually request a favorite storybook, which leads to childrens’ reading of the story book repeatedly.  When trying to read the storybook themselves, they will realize that the words contain the story and will begin to concentrate on the text.

What role does storybook reading play in developing children’s word recognition skills? As children learn about print, they use more and more cues in the text to recognize words.  Ehri’s 4 stages of word recognition is then used.

What other things can help with children’s development of word recognition skills? Learning each letter in the alphabet is a major factor in word recognition.  Taking the words from the story line and using them in flash cards.  Also, finger-pointing the story by choral reading or with a partner can lead to developing children’s word recognition skills.

(Chapter 2)

1. Explain what Morris means by the traditional role of kindergarten is “to level the playing field” in terms of literacy experience.  There was a major gap in reading readiness between children that get read to at home and children that do not.  The kindergarten teachers were overlooking print-related understandings.  All students, whether they get read to at home or not, should be exposed to alphabet and print-related instruction (letters, sounds, vowels) so that they can be ready for a first-grade reading program. 

 2. What literacy activities should be included in a kindergarten reading program?  Reading aloud to children, guided contextual reading, letter-sound study, and writing are the four literacy activities.

 3. Why read aloud to children? (5 things children learn)  Reading aloud helps children “extend their experiences beyond their immediate surroundings, provides them with a vocabulary to name the new experiences, and acquaints them with the characteristic rhythms and structures of written language (10).”  It also helps them to create a mental image and sustain it over time (throughout several pages) in a quest for meaning.  It also allows them to use language symbols to create a mental world beyond the present context.  It helps to make them literate!  Reading aloud to kindergarteners prepares them for the literacy demands of later grades. 

 4. Why is guided contextual reading important in kindergarten? Consistent use will extend children’s experiences and nurture their language development.  “Over time, kindergarteners will learn to read left to right, to match spoken works to printed words as they read, and to use sentence context along with beginning consonant cues to identify words in text (16).”

 5. Describe dictated experience stories (language experience approach—LEA).  “A shared experience is recounted or dictated by a group of children, written down on chart paper by the teacher, and then read and reread by the children with the teacher’s support (12).”

 6. Describe big book approach (shared reading approach).  The teacher reads from an over-sized book so that the children sitting around can follow along visually as the teacher reads.  The language patterns in big books are often rhythmic and repetitive.  Much like dictated experience stories, the big book approach starts by the teacher introducing a new book by reading it aloud to the children and asking them questions about the story line.  On Day 2, the class choral reads while the teacher models finger-pointing.  The teacher may demonstrate how to use sentence context, picture context and a beginning letter sound to help identify an unknown word in the text. 

 7. Why include both LEA and shared reading methods in kindergarten?  They complement one another!   In both methods, the reading process is modeled by the teacher by her finger-point reading of the text.  Both methods emphasize group choral reading of stories.  Both rely on memory and repetition to support children’s initial reading attempts. 

 8. Is there a role for independent reading in kindergarten?  I am conflicted with my response to this question.  A part of me says yes, there is a role for independent reading because it would get them prepared to read individually and explore books without the help of someone.  Another part of me says no, because they are in the very beginning stages of phenome awareness and letter-sound correspondence.  Reading indepently might just make them more frustrated because they are so young and at such an early stage of reading comprehension.

(Chapter 3)

1. What does Fraatz (1987) mean by “paradox of collective instruction?”  There is such a large amount of students in a first grade classroom (usually between 18 to 24 students).  It is difficult for a teacher to provide teaching instruction for everyone and also addressing individual differences among their students. 

 2. What are the three critical components of learning to read? On page 34, the first critical component of learning to read is to “attend to individual sounds within words.”  The second is “decode printed words by matching letters to sounds.”  The third component is “automatize decoding or word-level processing so that the mind can concentrate on the meaning of what is being read.”

 3. List the four tasks that the first-grade teacher can use to assess individual children’s reading ability during the first week of school. Describe what each task is used to assess?

- alphabet (knowledge of lower-case letters in alphabet)

- concept of word in text (ability to finger-point read, matching spoken words to printed words when reading)

- spelling (represent beginning and ending consonants as well as a few vowels in their spellings)

 - word recognition (represent a small number of first grade words)

 4. How does Supported Oral Reading (SOR) differ from round robin reading in guiding children’s contextual reading?  Round robin reading is where a small group of children take turns reading two to three sentences in a circle.  With struggling readers, teacher assistance with word recognition is needed on nearly every line.  Sometimes this leads to self-conscious children when reading aloud and inattention to those that are supposed to be following along.  SOR is much different because the teacher and children start by previewing the first eight to ten pages.  Then six to eight children are paired up with a strong reader and a weak reader, alternating pages with their partners.  SOR offers support to beginning readers who are struggling with word recognition.

 5. Why is appropriate leveling of books important?  It is important, primarily for those children who require careful graded reading materials.  The careful leveling of stories allows a tutor to place the student at the appropriate “instructional level” and to pace him or her gradually but efficiently through the graded reading curriculum.

 6. Describe the developmental sequence of word study instruction. What does the continuum consist of?  The continuum consists of beginning consonants, word families, short-vowel patterns, long-vowel patters, etc. Why is it recommended that teachers follow such a sequence of instruction?  There is developmental logic to a good word-recognition program.  One learning concept leads and overlaps to the next. 

 7. How could you assess where a beginning reader is at on the continuum of word recognition skill?  A good way to begin is by analyzing children’s invented spellings.  Do they represent beginning and ending consonants and the medial vowel?

 8. Describe word sorting activities to teach beginning sound consonants and short-vowel word families.  Children practice sorting picture cards into columns by beginning consonant sound.  Then they attend to the sound-letter pairings.  Then they can proceed to short-vowel word families.  They would study the five short vowels in a rhyme-word format.  Some activities to use could be Memory, Bingo, Go Fish or Spell Checks. 

 9. What skills does word sorting help develop in beginning readers coupled with word games and spell checks?  It helps first grade readers master the high-frequency short- and long- vowel patterns.  They can then begin to make sense of other spelling patterns. 

 10. What is instructional pacing? “It refers to the first-grade teacher’s skill in guiding (or moving) his or her students through a set of graded reading materials (49).”

 11. In what ways can writing help beginning reader’s development? It can help children “develop phoneme awareness: the understanding that words are composed of a sequence of individual sounds that match to letters (52).”  “As the year progresses, writing allows first-grade readers to assume the stance of an author; it affords them continual opportunities to read and reread text; and it provides children a purposeful arena for experimenting with, practicing, and eventually internalizing letter-sounds, spelling patterns, and sight words (52).”

 12. What are three tasks that could be used to assess end-of-year reading achievement? Describe the tasks briefly.  “In the word recognition task, the child attempts to read a list of forty words, graded in difficulty from early first-grade to mid-second grade.  If the child is unable to read a word within three seconds, the examiner moves on to the next word.  In the spelling task, the child attempts to spell a list of fifteen words.  In the passage reading task, the child read aloud up to six passages that progress in difficulty from early first grade to late second grade.

Beck & McKeown (2001)

Unfortunately, there are huge differences among young students in vocabulary and comprehension as they begin school.  This article discusses several key points in how to help children with word comprehension and understanding challenging content of stories that are read aloud to them.  When reading stories aloud, teachers must encourage children to focus on important story ideas and give them opportunities to reflect on what was just read.  Teachers must be analytical.  Background knowledge is also very important when trying to understand text.  Teachers must point out distinctions between students own experiences and the story.   Also, when a vocabulary word arises that might seem unfamiliar to the children, the teacher must stop and take time to explain what that word means. 

Throughout the text, you should stop and ask open-ended questions about what has just occurred in the storyline.  You must also ask thoughtful, follow-up questions “to support students’ construction of meaning (15).”  “In Text Talk the pictures are for the most part shown after children have constructed meaning from what has been read (13).”  A crucial part of Text Talk is the selection of the piece of work read aloud.  The book must not rely too heavily on the pictures for communicating the story and must have some complexity of events.