Scott article

This article caught my attention because it is something that I have noticed in the different schools I have been in. It is proven that students from urban under privileged areas tend to have a smaller vocabulary than other children their age who are in wealthier areas. I was really surprised when i read that the average three year old from professional parents has a higher vocabulary that the parents of three year olds on welfare. I found this to be mind boggling. How is it possible that a three year old just learning language had a higher vocabulary than  an adult parent of a three year old. This really made the point of the article real to me. there is a gap in the schooling and something needs to be done to help close that gap and raise the vocabulary of these underprivileged students. The article mentioned that to close this gap more time is needed working with vocabulary. It needs to be introduced at a younger age and this can be done through simply things such as reading aloud to students. Also blending content knowledge with learning vocabulary. Another surprise I found while reading was that the article mentions that Dictionaries are a poor tool for learning new vocabulary. It says that the average adult may know hundreds of thousands of words, they will be unable to define them or use them in context.
As a teacher, no matter where I work it is important that I introduce vocabulary as early and often as possible in order to give my students as many academic advantages as possible.

Readings for 4/4

The Kymes article was really interesting to me because I feel like it is such a step in to the new age of education and is introducing new ways to keep learning fun and updated. I think the idea of introducing the idea of skimming or scanning text to students could actually be beneficial. I think that students will become "trained" to target key information in a shorter amount of time as opposed to reading the text word for word, but still getting the same level of information. I just think this whole idea is somewhat ironic because I feel that there have been so many classes where we were discouraged from skimming or scanning text because every word was so incredibly important, but now it is actually being suggested as a way to read text, along with placing all of the important information in either a direct heading or all towards the beginning of the text. I could see how this would be beneficial to readers because I feel that most people tend to just look for the "important stuff" to begin with and now it will be much easier for them to access it with the new set-up. It makes me question how models such as this could effect things such as teaching students how to write good stories. We have always been taught that you save your solid point for the end and that you need to intertwine your details throughout the story. With this new approach, students might be confused as to why teachers are enforcing a "different" writing style than what they are used to seeing. They see no use for the way teachers want them to write because if they do not see it in the real world, then why should they learn how to perform that way? This blog post has taken a turn towards technology, but could technology have such a large effect on students lives and eventually schooling that it completely alters what we as future teachers have learned all through our own schooling?

Readings for 4/25

The Scott article made me immediately think of the different schools that I have been placed at for Student Teaching throughout the past few years. I had noticed that in some "economically advantaged" school districts, students who were in lower grades were higher achievers than some of the upper grades at schools that were "economically disadvantaged". The article also mentions that the home life can play a part in why students might struggle with vocabulary and ultimately comprehension in school. I could apply this to the same schools that I had mentioned above, in that the "economically advantaged" districts tended to have parents who used the same, if not very similar, language that was used by the professionals at the school. I have also observed the opposite of the "economically disadvantaged" districts where the students speak in a language that educators might not find "correct", but it is apparent that it is spoken around the home because they continue to talk that way. The article mentions that use of child-adult communication early on can increase the literacy and vocabulary development, however, I wonder how hard it is to break children of the habit of speaking that way or using certain vocabulary when they have grown up around it and at the end of the day when they leave school, they go home to it. I have seen similar situations in my current CT's classroom. My CT has tried numerous approaches to correct some students' vocabulary, yet they still come back to school everyday using it incorrectly. I have also let some students read to me and sometimes if they are unsure how to say a sentence, they will make it in to their own sentence while using the incorrect vocabulary or language. I think this could potentially effect the students comprehension because if this problem goes unnoticed, it might just solidify their use of incorrect language.

Mini Lessons

First Grade Classroom

Mini Lesson 1: For my first mini lesson, I wanted to to focus on the students' comprehension on books they were reading because I had noticed in the past that they do not have a problem reading the text, but tend to not remember exactly what happened or any big themes that were present throughout the story. I selected a few students that ranged from higher level to lower level readers to see if this would alter any feedback I received about their comprehension. I had the student's select one book from their browsing box (so I knew it was a book that was at their level) and asked them to take a "picture walk" through the story without looking at any of the words. After they completed this I asked them, "Based on the pictures you saw, what do you think this book will be about?" They all replied answers that could have easily matched the pictures they observed. I then asked the students to read their books to me. *These were done individually. When the student was done reading their book to me, I would ask, "Based on what you just read, can you tell me what this book was about?" I noticed that the students tended to start with what happened towards the end of the book and I would have to push their thinking by saying things such as, "that's true, but did anything happen before that?" Some students focused more on one or two details in the book, but one student was able to do a decent job at showing me he comprehended what he read with my prompting questions.

Mini Lesson 2: For my second mini lesson, I wanted to shift the focus to writing and having the students include more detail in their stories. This is an issue that my CT has been trying to overcome with the students for the past few weeks, but I wanted to give it a shot to see how difficult it was. I presented them with the "5 Finger Story", where the students were supposed to begin writing a story on whatever topic they wanted, but they had to include 5 different details, which they can count on their 5 fingers. I began by showing my selected students an example of what a "5 Finger Story" might look like. I had them go through the mini story I had written and point out the 5 details that I included. After we quickly discussed the importance of adding detail to our stories, I had the students attempt to write their own stories. I informed them that if they were unable to think of the whole story, that they could make a list of all of the things that happened or that they would want to include. One student made a good attempt at trying to make 5 solid detailed sentences, however the sentences all had the same beginning and just a new detail at the end. Another student was getting really upset that he could not think of a topic to write about, so he did not end up completing the task. This showed me that having students incorporate details in to their stories is not as easy as I thought it was. I thought that the younger students would have had an easier time because I assumed it was easy for them to use their imagination and just list off different details, but I now know that it is apparently not that simple.

Reading for Micro Teaching

I gathered from this article that when students are presented with informational text, it is harder for them to comprehend because it seems to be so cut and dry. Subjects such as history and science might be harder to understand because of the text structure. There are some other approaches that can be used such as brief lectures, films, role play, etc. These techniques have received positive feedback. Although these are good techniques, students still need to higher level reading skills to read informational texts. If students use prior knowledge, think about the text before they begin to read, use the text to support their ideas, etc it will help them become better at comprehending. Students are also encouraged to rely on each other for trying to comprehend text instead of constantly relying on the teacher so they do not become passive learners. Another beneficial technique can be having peer led discussions, which allow for a more “natural” feel when discussing. The teacher can observe this for assessing how well the students are grasping the material. When doing this, the teacher can also have them quote and site text as another way to verify comprehension. In any of these approaches, it is important to make sure that you are modeling the technique so the students know what is expected and are aware of what to look for. Keep in mind that this will not happen overnight and you need to take baby steps to form good comprehension.

4/4/11

Readings 4/4/11

This week while reading the Kymes article on “Compression Strategies” it really made me question what type of teacher I am going to be. I say this because the article focuses on online environments. I know that using new technology and the Internet is a new and great source for learners I also feel old school in its teachings. Using technology is increasing and I see it used in my classroom everyday. Currently my students are using glogster (online resource) to do their book reports. Doing this has been a great idea but it has also come with its problems. First my teacher had never used it before so it was hard for her to answer the student’s questions. Luckily she had the technology assistant and me in the room to assist. Other problems she ran into was making sure the students did not use www.youtube.com because of the possible bad things they could come across (they were however allowed to use www.schooltube.com). This leads to the article talking about having students know what a good source is. This I agree with being very important because there are a lot of sources on the Internet that are not reliable. The problem I see comes with time. I already see in my classroom how little time she has to do the things she needs to get done in all subject areas. Is teaching them what is a good and bad source another things that teachers have to get done. With the growing in technology there is the growing in what has to be taught. That is what raised my question “Am I going to be the older teacher who still does everything the old school ways?”

4/10/11

Readings 4/10/11

This week the article looked at Vocabulary Learning. Immediately when I read the title I thought of my placement and the new program they are using in the Okemos Schools to help improve the vocabulary level in the system. This system used visuals and previous knowledge to build an understanding of new terms. The article however was dealing with urban setting classrooms, which is not what Okemos is. So once I read the article I realized that this is what the article is talking about what is missing from the urban schools. Students in the urban setting are behind by two to three years and they say it is this way for many reasons. One talks about their lives at home. What they hear and do in their households reflects what they hear and do in the classroom. If they are not constantly surrounded by new or correct vocabularies it does not challenge them. Also how Okemos has a new system that is helping them to improve the student’s vocabulary urban schools do not have good ro updated resources to help improve. Overall it is a lot of lack of in Urban School and more involvement is needed in helping improve students understanding and comprehension of vocabulary development and learning.

4/24

Readings 4/24/11

In our last week I read the Tompkins Chapter 10 on Organizing Instruction. In this chapter it started by talking about Miss Paniccias teaching of mini-lessons throughout the year, particularly with writing strategies. I particularly enjoyed this because for my minilesson I did on on applying a students own knowledge in their writing. For my second minilesson I did a editing activity with the whole class which is just as Miss. Paniccias did. I learned new ways that I could have improved my minilesson. For one Miss.Paniccias used posters to help show each students plot of their story, which is really helpful in seeing that students understand parts of a story. She also used the writing process box which if I were to be doing my minilesson in the future to a entire class would be something that would really improve and me able to help apply to an entire class of different learners. The Basal Reading Programs was an interesting program to read about because I have never seen a classroom use one. I thought it was interesting that they are organized by topics, challenges, folktales and friends. Enjoyed this new approach to connecting textbooks to application. This is something I can see using in my classroom as well as literature focus units.

Mini Lessons

Mini Lesson 1:

The first student I worked with is one who is behind in her reading level. While she is not a bad reader she is behind the other students and it is greatly affecting her writing. I had her do a writing piece for me to she how she puts together a story and after giving her a topic so I could see how she relates sounds to letters to words. In her writing she struggled to complete her thoughts in writing and when looking at her spelling she continues to spell as she hears the letters in a word. She also has had a hard time with her handwriting and other people being able to understand her writing. All of this is connected in her frustration with every lesson she does. This reflected when I did the lesson with her because as we started to go over her writing so I could get an understanding of how and why she isn’t making the progressions she needs to she began to cry. This is something that is fragrant with her when we try to help her. I believe that because all of this has a connection to one another she feels a heavy sense of failure. With her frustration she decided she did not want to work with me anymore and wanted to get back to doing what everyone else in the class was doing so we did not get to finish my lesson. My teacher however continues to have her practice her writing and spelling my providing her workbooks to help.

Mini Lesson 2:

For my second mini lesson I worked with the whole class on editing. I was going to use it on just a couple students but after my CT saw it she wanted me to use with the whole class because she believed it was something that every was behind in. What I did was make sets of one to two sentences that had different grammatical errors they learned about earlier in the year. I let them know the number of errors in each one. They then were given time to work individually on finding the errors. Then as a class we went over each type of error and had them as a class inform each grammar error. Having them do this as a class is where I realized was possibly a flaw in what I was doing to seeing where they struggled. This however was because I thought I would be using this with one to two students not 27. However it was still a great help in the development of the students editing skills.

Mini Lessons

Mini Lesson 1: For my first lesson I worked with one of the first grade girls in my class. The students are all doing Reading Street and this particular student really struggles with comprehension. For the lesson I sat with the student and had her first read a book to herself and then read it aloud to me. After the student had finished reading I asked her if she could tell me in her own words what the book was about. She gave me a very brief summary saying the book was about a girl and a garden. I then gave the student a worksheet my CT had made that required her to answer questions about the text. Upon reading the first question the student said she couldn’t remember the answer but I explained that she could look back through the book to find the answer. The student did this and as she found the first answer I asked her question such as “without looking do you remember what happened next?” as the student flipped back through the book and talked out her answers she seemed to gain a better grasp on what the book was actually about. However I am not sure that she will be motivated to do that again when she is working on her own.

Mini Lesson 2: For my second Mini Lesson I worked with three first grade students on sentence structure. These students have been struggling to remember that they need to start a sentence with an upper-case letter, end with a period, have spacing between letters, have proper letter formation, and correct spelling. As of right now the important three my CT really want them to focus on are capitalization, punctuation, and spacing. To help them work on this I did an activity with them where they were each given a star, on each arm of the star we wrote one of the aspects of a star sentence. I then worked with the students and we made an example that highlighted each aspect. When we were finished I laminated their stars and gave them to the students as reminders for when they are writing. I think this activity did help the students, it gave them practice working on each of the parts of a star sentence, and they enjoyed making the stars and getting to keep them. 

Last Post

Scott article:
Something that struck me as odd was that the article says that dictionaries are poor tools for helping students learn the meaning of words. It basically says that student will read a words definition and apply it to a sentence incorrectly. The article also states that 50% of the time, students are generating sentences that are incorrect as far as vocabulary usage goes. I always assumed that dictionaries were helpful. And I still think they are. This article takes a bold chance by saying that it's a poor tool. I think it can be a useful aid in learning vocabulary but no one should only use a dictionary when learning words. I often see my students looking in dictionaries to help them understand a word. I can remember looking up words in the dictionary when I was young and then asked to write a sentence of my own using the word. It seemed to work for me. I don't know...just my opinion I guess.

Tompkins Chap 10
The Basel reading program seemed great until I read that all students would read selections at their grade level, the students wouldn't have much time to explore on their own, and that there were many work book assignment instead of hands on activities. I think this goes to show that no program is completely perfect. As Nate had mentioned in his post, one way might work for one student and for another, it might be a complete disaster. There might be many students in my class that the Basel reading program would work for but we're trying to do what's best for every body. I also don't see much of a point to reading this section if we're trying to steer away from programs where there are teacher directed activities or the students are reading at the same level regardless of what they are capable of.

Chap 11
Again, we're presented with the many ways of teaching literature such as Basel Readers, Literature Focus Units, Literature circles, Reading workshop and Writing Workshop. All have their pros and cons. However, I think i like the literature circles the best. I've seen them work in my placement this year and it's always good to give each student their own role to fulfill. I also like the idea of rotating roles so every student gets a chance to get some experience in a different area.
What I love about this chapter is that it gives some ideas for teachers when they come across the many different types of writing problems. I plan on referring back to this book many times throughout my career because it's got some great ideas as to how to approach students with difficulties.

Mini-Lesson Blog

Mini-Lesson 1

I have been working in Mrs. Beasley’s kindergarten class since late September 2010. For this mini-lesson I decided to work with a student one-on-one who struggles in many subjects, but I worked with him specifically on sound letter recognition. I have worked with Tristan many times throughout the semester because he is behind the other students in class in all subjects, including reading, writing, and mathematics. Tristan is still having trouble writing his name because he can’t remember what sound goes with what letter. He also struggles with identifying his letters, which may be one of the main reasons why he cannot remember which sounds go with what letters. I decided for this mini lesson I would only focus on the letters that are in his name, since I only had two weeks to work with him. The first week I worked with Tristan for 30 minutes out in the hallway. I started the mini-lesson by asking Tristan if he could use the letter blocks to spell out his name. I only gave Tristan the block letters that he would need to spell out his name. With the letters he spelled out Tisartn. I asked him why he spelled out his name like this and he said because he didn’t really know how to spell his name. For the next 15 minutes we worked on identifying the letters and their sounds. I would hold up the letters in the order that they appeared and asked him to identify the letter and what sound it made. For example, when I held up t he would say that is a t and makes the sound ttt. When I thought he had mastered this skill I set up the letter blocks in order, like this Tristan. I then had him study it and then I scrambled up the letters and had him put the letters back together. As he was moving the letters I had him say what letter it was and then what sound it made. He was able to identify T, i, and r consistently. With some scaffolding he was able to arrange the letters in the correct order. The next week I went back out into the hallway to see if Tristan had retained any information from the week before. For the first activity I asked him to identify the letters and what sound they made. He again, like the week before, was able to identify T, I, and r consistently. I then arranged his name and scrambled up the letters. When I asked him to rearrange the letters he was unable to do so. I think Tristan struggles so much with spelling his name because he cannot recall the letters or their sounds. I have also noticed from working with Tristan a lot of the semester that he has trouble retaining information. This can be seen even throughout this mini-lesson because he did not retain a lot of the information he learned in week 1 into week 2. Overall, I think Tristan needs to work on identifying the letters and retaining information in order for him to be able to identify his letters and what sounds they make.

Mini-Lesson 2

For my second mini-lesson I worked with Larry, who is a low to middle achieving student in my class. Larry sometimes struggles with identifying what letter an object begins with. For example, if I showed him a book he may struggle identifying that book starts with b. I wanted to work with Larry on looking at an object and identifying their beginning sound and what letter that is. For this mini-lesson I used a game that my coordinating teacher had in her classroom that I thought would be affective for teaching letter-sound awareness. This game was set up much like a candy land board game, except it had the letters w, x, y, and z scattered throughout the board. Each player chose a card and had to identify the object and what letter they started with. For example, if I chose a zoo and I identified that zoo started with z then I would move to the closest z spot on the board. Before we started the game I had Larry identify the letters that were on the board. Larry had a hard time identifying x and y, but identified w and z with no problem. We played the game and Larry was able to identify all of the objects on the card without any problem. He struggled, however, to identify what letter the object started with. I helped Larry by emphasizing the first sound of every word. By the end of the game Larry was better identifying what letter the objects started with.

Easter Weekend Post

So,

My final blog post for 402. I could possibly cry.

My favorite quote from either of the three readings came from Tompkins in Chapter 10 when it is said that: "There's no one best way to teach reading and writing." (pg. 324) While it seems pithy to the point of overkill, I really like that! After spending last semester in 401 in which the science TA forced me to not only stymie my own teaching style but only to use materials, choices and stylings that only she would use, I started to get a bit disheartened about the program in general. I thought that the purpose of the TE department was to get us moving in our own direction, to allow us to flourish our own ideas (with some mediation of course) and to find our own strengths and weaknesses as a teacher.

What I like about the quote from Tompkins this week is that it is hopeful in its ambiguity. There really IS no right way to be teaching almost any content area, let alone reading and writing. One way might work perfectly well for me but might be stifling and/or ambiguous at best for someone else (and vice versa). And, since reading and writing is so pervasive in almost every single aspect about school (although I'm not sure how much it has to do with lunch or gym) as a teacher we have to become REALLY comfortable with how we feel we know how to teach it.

I feel like 401 (at least the science portion) was kind of a waste for me. I loved the social studies section of the class. But in science, I feel like I had something taken away from me. I feel like - yes it was important to learn the steps we learned to write the outrageously myopic lesson plan (epic at 43 pages, seriously what was my TA thinking?) - but I can't help but escape the feeling that it was all done at the whim of what my TA wanted to see and not necessarily what would have been beneficial to myself, my CT or our students.

"There's no one best way to teach reading and writing." I couldn't agree more.

Mini Lessons

Every Wednesday at 9:30 I work with a small group of strategic intervention (S.I) leveled 4th graders. They are given a small narrative or informative text to read. Usually they are about 15-20 pages. All the books are educational in some way, usually related to science or social studies. In these small groups, I have each student take turns reading out loud and as we go through the book, I stop and ask comprehensive questions to make sure the students are intaking what they are reading.

Mini Lesson one: Vocabulary.
At the beginning of the book, there is a list of vocabulary words. I have each student explain in their own words what they think the word means. We discuss prefixes, and suffixes to help us to define the word. The biggest challenge for the kids is to not use the vocab word when defining it. I then have them use it in a sentence.
As we begin to read, when we get to one of the vocabulary words, I have the student re read the sentence and we discuss if our definition was correct or in correct. One of the words was present. The students initially defined it as a gift. But as we read on, we found that the word meant that someone was in attendance. When we read the sentence, I asked the students if their definition was right. They replied no. I asked them what they thought the definition was based on context clues and they told me that it meant the character was at the scene. Many of the other vocab words were similar to this one. There was a lot of discussion on how we know that words can look and sound the same but have different meaning and that's why it's important to read the context clues. At the end of the reading, we go back through the definitions and redefine the words. The students write down their definitions in their writing journals.

Lesson 2: Fluency Lesson with one focus student
One of the students I work with the most is probably the lowest reader in 4th grade. I believe he is at a 2nd grade reading level which, believe it or not, is a great improvement from when he started at the beginning of the school year. Together, we worked on his Fluency. The focus of my lesson was for him to stop and put inflictions at the proper times for punctuation such as periods, question marks, exclamation points, commas and dashes. To start the lesson, I had him read two sentences that I made up. The first sentence was a regular sentence without any commas, just a period. The second sentence had a list of items which has commas to separate them and an exclamation point on the end. I had him read both sentences. I then demonstrated how to read it with the proper stops and inflictions and had him read it once more. I then explained to him that as we read our book, he would need to focus on these things. If he started running two distinct sentences together, he would need to re read it. If he had to be stopped many times on that page, I would ask him if he understood what he just read and if he didn't, we'd read it again. The second time always went much more smooth than the first. Since the book was short, after we finish it, I have him read it again; still focusing on reading fluently.

I'm not sure if what I'm doing it benefiting these students all that much since I'm only meeting with them once a week for 30 minutes or so but it seems to help them at the time. Hopefully this is helping them improve their skills.

Readings for April 25

Both Scott readings for this week I have already read however the article “Effective Literacy Instruction for Urban Children” is still extremely relevant to me. The ideas in this article are evident in my placement classroom and the needs of children in the urban learning environment discussed continue to interest me. These needs include emotional support, exposure, and changes in attitude toward education. For the past few weeks I have been sitting at the lunch table in the cafeteria with my students just to hang out with them, get to know them even more, and spend as much possible time with them before the year comes to an end. This article says that certain students in these settings often “enter school with a defeated spirit” and that these students need “support by being compassionate enough to look at each child individually and realistically, to communicate genuine care and concern for the student, and to help the students move past emotional issues being dealt with at home”. I have seen this to be true even by the conversations at the lunch table. I have tried very hard to be someone the students can come to if they have a problem and to show them I care about them. This is so important. You cannot hope to get content through to students if they do not think you care about them whatsoever. Some of these kids are dealing with things at home that make content learning seem unimportant. The article discussed how it is easy to assume these students are lazy and do not want to do their work, when in reality there could be so much more behind their behavior in school and things going on in their home life you do not know about. It is so important to remember this and to actually listen to your students. I cannot begin to tell you how much I have learned this semester from my placement. It was such an eye opening experience and I am so grateful for this experience, even though it was very tough at times.

Week of April 18: Reading Mini Lessons and Reflections

For one of my mini lessons in my placement classroom I worked with a group of 4 students during their reading time. I read a book with them about bridges. It was a short informational chapter book with several real photos and facts about specific bridges. I used the comprehension strategy of KWL with this small group of students. This specific group of students was the higher-level reading group. These students were in my Watson’s Go to Birmingham group also so I was very familiar with their abilities and therefore used a lot of the adaptations from my literacy lesson plan. We completed a group KWL chart instead of individually because the students had never been exposed to this chart before. Before we read, the students struggled a little to think of fact for the K column, things they already knew on the topic (bridges). They had a few comments about bridges that they wanted to put in this column such as “there are many different kinds, there is a bridge called the Mackinaw Bridge in Michigan, and there are bridges all around us”. They briefly flipped through the book a little and looked at the pictures. Some things they said they wanted to know included a lot about the construction of bridges such as, “how do they make bridges over water, how long does it take to build a big bridge, what different kinds are there, and what is the biggest/longest bridge in the world”. After reading the book we then filled in the L column, what they learned. They all had a lot to add to this column and were excited to share the facts they had learned and each student contributed at least 2 facts in this column. They even included the vocabulary words from the book such as “truss, aqueduct, suspension bridge, arch bridge, and beam bridge”. I think this technique was very beneficial for these students and it helped to organize their thoughts on the topic and made the reading more meaningful. Because bridges are not a topic the students thought they needed to necessarily know, by completing this chart it allowed students to see that you can practice reading and comprehension with any book. I would definitely use this technique with these students again. Reading this book was supposed to help them with fluency and decoding, however by using KWL it encompassed another reading strategy that students can use in years to come.

For my second mini lesson I worked with one student on scaffolding vocabulary learning. I decided to do this after my Watson’s Go to Birmingham book club because I had read about it in the Scott article (called Scaffolding Vocabulary Learning). Right after I had read this article I had wished I used some of these techniques with my group. I decided to chose one of my students from the group and revisit some vocabulary and use the solution the article suggests of “building links”. I really loved the idea of using a concept map to make these links and I know that concept maps are very helpful for me personally to organize ideas and make connections. I decided to use the vocabulary word “racism” (just like the example in the article) because we had discussed similar terms briefly before reading the book and never revisited them. The student struggled a little to get started and said he had never done a concept map before. As we talked through it he ended up really enjoying it. The first thing he wrote was “church bombing” because it was what we had discussed recently in regards to this topic from our book club book. He then went on to add, “Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, boycotts, hate, blacks and whites, marches, because of color you don’t like someone, protests, civil rights movement, segregation, separate schools for blacks and whites, and 1963”. I helped him and scaffolding him to get him to remember some of these from our previous discussion before we read the book, however I was shocked with how well he did. He included a lot of ideas from the book, but also included other things he has learned this year that are related. He said he really liked this activity and I think it really helped him to see these connections directly made, and to see how it all fit together. Because I personally see great benefits from concept maps I think I will definitely use this technique in the future whether it is as a whole class, small groups, or individually. I think by building these links students are able to grasp the meaning of vocabulary words much more than they would if you simply read, wrote, and memorized the definition.

April 11

The reading I chose to focus on this week was the Scott reading called Scaffolding Vocabulary Learning: Ideas for Equity in Urban Settings. I was drawn to this article because of the fact that it deals with urban settings. Because of my placement classroom and because I have heard a lot of stories from other educators in urban settings, I found this material to be relevant and interesting. Scott points out that in urban reform efforts the achievement gap in reading has received much attention and less attention has been given to the gap in knowledge of word meanings. Because word meaning is so closely related to reading and reading comprehension relies on vocabulary knowledge I think this is very important to address. I found it interesting that low-income 4th grade students were one year behind grade level norms and by 7th grade they were two years behind. Because my placement is in a 4th grade low-income classroom this really stood out to me. I think it is safe to say this is evident in my classroom and in my school, Wainwright Elementary, overall. There was one sentence in particular in this article that was really astounding to me and I still cannot stop thinking about. In a study mentioned in this article it was found that “on average 3 year old children of professional parents had a recorded vocabulary size greater than the parents of children on welfare” (Scott). This is such a shocking fact and it truly shows how large the gap is. The article points out that in order to change this; first and foremost, in these schools the type of informal vocabulary coaching in advantaged households must not only be mirrored but also intensified. In my placement class I have barely seen any vocabulary practice or instruction. The amount that I have seen is limited to writing words down and copying the definitions from the glossary of their textbooks. This is hardly sufficient and it is clear there needs to be much more vocabulary instruction in this classroom. The article then goes on to suggest many solutions such as building links, blending content learning and word learning, scaffolding writing with a focus on word choice, and using word play. One solution that stood out to me was the concept map with a specific word. This allows students to build links and connect this word to other things they know. The article used the word ‘racism’ as an example and in my literacy lesson I also addressed similar words such as ‘segregation’, ‘racism’, and ‘discrimination’. The students we able as a whole (group of 5 students) to make these connects and mentioned Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, boycotts, etc. I think it would have been beneficial to draw a concept map either individually or as a group so that students could visually see these connections and realize they all were related. Overall this article was insightful and I found the solutions and arguments to be interesting and relevant.

Scaffolding Vocabulary Learning

For this week’s readings I want to talk about the reading by Scott that is titled Scaffolding Vocabulary Learning. I think this article is important for teachers to read and understand because in order to comprehend a text the reader needs to know and understand vocabulary that will be seen throughout the reading. The Scott reading looks at best practices for teaching vocabulary and how vocabulary develops in children. The part of the reading that I thought was most interesting was how students learn vocabulary. The reading states that vocabulary learning is multidimensional, which means that in order for a student to really understand a word they should be able to define the word and all of its meanings and now how they could vary in speech. The reading also says that word learning is incremental and takes place in many steps over time. This means that it may take a student many exposures, with the word to know the definition and be able to use it and comprehend it. The next step in vocabulary use is that different types of words require different types of instruction. I know this from experience because vocabulary for language arts is easier for my third grade class to learn than vocabulary for science. The last suggestion for vocabulary teaching is that traditional dictionaries are not good tools for learning the meaning of words. This is because the dictionaries give the implicit meaning and does not include different ways that the word could be use. This reminds me of when I was in school and my fourth grade discouraged us from looking up the meaning of words in the dictionary and I imagine that it was for this reason. I will think about these teaching hints when I am teaching vocabulary because they are very valid points.

Lit. Reference Project

I'm not sure about other people but while I was reading all of the readings for this week I could not help but think about my lit. reference project almost then entire time while I was reading. Article after article and chapter after chapter all dealt with how the different stages of the literacy learning process interconnect with each other. In my 301 class we were encouraged to focus a lot in our projects about how the different areas were all intertwined together with each other. My 301 prof met with me on several occasions to go over my specific project and one thing he stressed over and over again was that these topics are very hard to teach disconnectedly because it is very hard to view them disconnectedly and that children do not learn them disconnectedly either.

Specifically this week I think the readings really tried to connect comprehension to a few of the other aspects of literacy and here are a few quotes that I pulled from them that I think speak nicely to that effect:

From Tompkins:

“Students’ knowledge of words plays a tremendous role in comprehension because it’s difficult to comprehend a text that’s loaded with unknown words.” (pg. 260)

“Comprehension instruction involves teaching students about comprehension and the strategies they use to understand what they’re reading. The three components are explicit instruction, reading, and writing…teachers create an expectation of comprehension in these ways: involving students in authentic reading and writing activities every 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 read, linking vocabulary instruction to underlying concepts.” (pg. 270)

“Motivation isn’t something that teachers or parents can force students; rather it’s an innate, intrinsic desire that students must develop themselves.” (pg. 278)

Gibbons - Chapter 5

“Language is learned through reading; it is not simply a prerequisite for it. Given appropriate texts, learners develop their language skills in the course of reading itself, perhaps because the patterns of language are ‘open to notice’ in written language in a way that they are not in spoken language.” (pg. 97)

Scott - Scaffolding Vocabulary Learning

“As a word is encountered repeatedly over time, information about the word builds up, and it moves up the continuum toward ‘known’” (pg. 279)

“We need to increase exposure to sophisticated and academic language with instruction that helps students become conscious of words as tools for powerful communication.” (pg. 289)

While these quotes do not encompass all of the readings assigned for this week I feel they do give a decent look into how information that we have learned in our previous classes can cross over into what it is and have a very immediate impact on the information we are learning now in 402.