small groups of students form “idea circles,” in which students meet to discuss the same idea (e.g., a particu-lar adaptation for animal survival) as explored through different texts, each at the appropriate reading level of only one member or a subset of members of the group
Leveled reading systems as well as Reading A-Z often provide books on the same topics at different reading levels which can help facilitate this.
For these reasons, we suggest that much comprehension instruc-tion be conducted in small groups or individually based on students’ needs
This is why individual student conferences or conferring is so important. It also provides an opportunity to provide students with an individualized reading goal as well as monitor progress.
Working with eighth-grade students, she evaluated an integrated social studies and language arts unit designed to promote his-torical understanding and argumentative writing skills.
This is fabulous and necessary. However could be harder to do in the older grades as they are taught by multiple teachers and collaborative planning time is often hard to come by.
This insight suggests that instruction may be more effective when teachers integrate reading and writing experi-ences in the classroom.
This integration could also further integrated with science as students read to research, write to record and learn new science concepts.
Table 3.5. Questions to Guide the Discussion in Questioning the Author
These are nice because they can be used at any reading level. They can be used in a kindergarten classroom asked to students during a read aloud, or given to high school students to work on collaboratively or independently about a book they read independently.
Another important tool to support text structure instruction is the use of graphic organizers, such as story maps, Venn diagrams for com-pare/contrast, and flowcharts for problem/solution.
I still use these when I read to help me keep track and make meaning of new texts.
(a) that students learn that text is structured and (b) that they develop the ability to take advantage of any particular text’s structure in learning and remembering its key informa-tion.
Understand different text structures can also help students prepare before they read, so they know what they are looking for. For example if a student knows they are reading a comparison they will know to look for different views or similarities and differences.
A key find-ing of research on highly effective teachers serving high-poverty students is that they spend a good deal more time coaching (i.e., providing guided practice for) students—that is, being the “guide on the side” as students try out their developing facility to apply strategies in actual reading and writing tasks
Guided practice is so important. It helps us to ensure our readers are appropriately applying a skill and mold their way of thinking before they go off and do it independently. I wish classrooms were smaller so we could more effectively spend time with individuals throughout this practice.
When stu-dents read on the topic of reported interest to them, whether working animals or robotics, they employed a greater number and range of com-prehension processes. This tells us that if our goal is to stretch students’ comprehension muscles, we should provide them with texts of interest.
This also speaks to the importance of allowing students choice in their reading materials. Even if we allow students to choose between books of the same topic, they will feel greater motivation and ownership over their learning as they would have chosen their own book.
found that increas-ing the volume of texts in child-care centers led to increased engagement with texts and improvements in children’s early literacy measures
This has been known to educators for a long time now. The problem lies in accumulating these texts within student's homes as well as school libraries. Students with low socioeconomic backgrounds traditionally have fewer books at home, and even in their classrooms. Programs such as new haven reads provide books for students to build their home libraries, however these books are often old and unengaging to students. We need to find a way to put more texts in their hands at home and prior to coming to school.
Words are not the point of words; ideas are.
This is beautiful.
This means that the inquiry component of science and the strategy component of reading are mutually reinforcing and synergistic, in that what one learns in the one improves the other.
This shows that good reading skills can be related to life skills. Inquiry and prediction are not solely academic skills, we do this everyday in our lives.
IDEAS (in-depth expanded applications of sci-ence) model replaces literacy instruction with a two-hour block of inte-grated science–literacy instruction. Students receiving this instruction have consistently outpaced students receiving regular language arts and science programs on national norm-referenced assessments
This speaks to the importance of integrating content areas and not simply teaching core subjects in isolation. Students would also benefit from literacy instruction during math and history/social studies.
Skilled readers are also more motivated and engaged readers, reading more actively and more voluminously, thus further developing their knowledge and skill
This is why the gap continues to widen for some students
This cycle has a down side, in that some readers do not come to the task with a knowledge base, inferential capacities, motiva-tions, or dispositions sufficient to enable comprehension
This is often the case with our struggling readers
we use our knowledge along with our perceptions of what we think the text says to literally build, or construct, mental representations of what the text means.
This makes a lot of sense. It also shows why it is so important for our readers to think about the text and visualize it as they are reading, not just decode.
The evidence for this role is impressive. In one study, some teachers of first-grade students in a high-poverty school district got 80% of their students to grade level in reading comprehension by the end of the year, while others in the same school district got only 20% of their students to grade level
How? If we knew the differences, perhaps we could employ them more widely and more effectively close the gap.
Here the report mentions the now well-known and much studied issue that from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, the Black-White gap in IQ test scores and other sorts of test scores, including reading tests, was fast closing (Neisser 1998; Jencks and Phillips 1998). This heartening progress ceased in the 1980s. Clearly, these factors were, whatever else they were, powerful “reading interventions,” since they significantly increased the reading scores of “at risk” children. Though the matter is controversial (Neisser 1998; Jencks and Phillips 1998), these factors may have been closely connected to the sorts of social programs (stemming originally from Johnson’s “War on Poverty”) that were dismantled in the 1980s and 90s (Grissmer et al. 1998: pp. 221–3). However that may be, the test scores were going up at a time that integration was also increasing. By the mid-1980s integration increases ceased and the society became more segregated instead, a trend that continues today.
I never knew that, it is interesting to see how integration efforts closed the gap. I wonder what that looked like, and if there is anything we could take from that to close the gap today.
The teacher heard her as rambling.
While this is a beautiful and well written story by a little girl, I can understand where her teacher is coming from. The story should be appreciated for what it brings culturally and symbolically, however when this teacher is evaluated, or this child takes a standardized test, it wont be seen this way. This child can not write academically like this. Perhaps the teacher was trying to emphasize this and could have done a better job guiding her student. While I understand the plight of the teacher in this situation, I do sympathize with the child as well. This is a beautiful story, one I could see being made into a children's book. Society might need to adapt the way evaluates young writers for that to happen though.
Brian’s father had repeatedly encouraged this sort of talking and thinking about the design of the game.
This again shows how important a parent is to their child's literacy. Not all learning is done in school.
What is happening is that Jennie is learning to identify certain sorts of school-related identities with her primary home-based identity by forming an association between these two identities.
It is important that school is accepted in the home and children feel comfortable and supported while playing school, reading or even doing their homework. I think too many families have lost this and don't encourage their children to be excited about it.
Of course Jennie is no master of this sort of language.
She may not be a master, but she is showing a good understanding of the elements of a story!
can make a noun (like “growth”) out of a verb (like “grow”)
Word families
“syntax” means the internal structure of sentences
Should we consider a students prediction skills when considering syntax?Word prediction is often used by more fluent readers, if students are struggling with syntax, it could effect their fluency.
The “fourth-grade slump” (Chall et al. 1990) is the phenomenon where some children seem to acquire reading (i.e. pass reading tests) fine in the early grades, but fail to be able to use reading to learn school content in the later grades, when the language demands of that content (e.g. science) get more and more complex
The reading coach at my school says this constantly. She feels a lot has to do with the availability and interest of informational texts.
Learners observe masters at work. Masters model behavior (e.g. cooking a particular type of meal) accompanied by talk that helps learners know what to pay attention to. Learners collaborate in their initial efforts with the masters, who do most of the work and scaffold the learners’ efforts. Texts or other artifacts (e.g. recipes, cookbooks) that carry useful information, though usually of the sort supplied “on demand” or “just in time” when needed, are often made available.
This reminds me of guided reading and anchor charts
Whole Language advocates argue that this is how children should acquire literacy as well.
With so many drastically different approaches, it is no wonder students struggle as they are emersed in different programs each year.
phonemic awareness” (the conscious awareness that oral words are composed of individual sounds), then on phonics (matching letters to sounds), then practice with fluent oral reading (reading out loud), then work on comprehension skills.
That is, the child needs to learn with which of 44 sounds each of 26 letters can be associated. This system is pitifully smaller than the Pokémon system. That system is 150 (Pokémon) coupled with 16 (types) coupled with 2 (evolutions) coupled with 8 (skills) Yet, in the case of learning to read at school,
Perhaps if we embedded literacy instruction into some of these games and media, we would have an edge up.
Controversies over reading should have less to do with debates about methods of instruction and more to do with understanding the links between poverty and (not) learning to read.
Amen!
But the majority are poor or come from minority groups whose members have faced a history of prejudice and oppression
Perhaps it is because many of these children's early exposures to sounds and literacy come from generations of oppressed learners. If the parent doesn't have a strong skill set, how can they teach their child to have one.
Most children learn to read, regardless of what instructional approach a school adopts,
If it doesn't particularly matter which curriculum we use, schools might want to focus on one curriculum, rather than changing every year.
geology textbook
I took geology years ago, and struggled to understand even the most basic of information. However, I still remember the term "taconic orogeny" because someone used a physical representation and described the term in a context I could understand.
Two promising pieces of national legislation to advance knowledge in this area are the Children and Media Research Advancement (CAMRA) Act and the National Center for Learning Science and Technology Trust Fund. The currently pending CAMRA Act would authorize long-term funding to establish a coherent research program on the many forms of electronic media and the myriad ways they affect children, from their developing brains to their developing bodies.
This is great, but if it is only in the research phase, how will it help all of the children currently struggling.
In school we often value words more than images and action. We often want to put a good deal of reading ahead of a learner’s opportunity to get images and actions (
good point
With the enormous growth in English Language Learners in the United States, how do we teach English academic language in the larger context of English language and multilingual language development?
Especially when our learners come to us from various backgrounds, speaking various languages we are not familiar with.
In carrying out quests like these in various units,
These Quests sound similar to units taught in some of our magnet schools.
DIBELS
They should make the program adaptable to different reading leveling systems. My school does not use DIBELS any more, however with things such as these coming up, I can see parents demanding it.
JUMP into reading for meaning (JUMP) program
We need more programs like this!
the ages 6 to 11 — is absolutely crucial. It is during this time that children are making the transition from learning to read to reading to learn and, we now hope, reading to discover
The reading coach at my school says this constantly. I can't wait to share this with her.
Not only are we failing to educate millions of young people in basic literacy and numeracy, but we are also failing to educate them in important 21st-century skills. “21st-century skills”
The constant push for students to acquire more information, rather than more pertinent information often means time is taken from activities which would have instilled other necessary life skills.
Create “a place in every community”: New literacies technology centers
This is a great idea for families without computers or internet access. I think libraries have such outdated technology, and offer little computer literacy guidance. It would be nice to see a multitude of technology such as ipads and ereaders incorporated. I wonder how they will finance it though.
The most accurate predictor of school success is the size of a child’s vocabulary at age five of “book” words (words more likely to appear in written texts than in spoken language). This breadth of vocabulary is created by parents talking to children, answering their questions, reading to them, modeling their own pleasure in reading, and offering their children a wide variety of experiences in the world.
If this is the most accurate predictor, which occurs before a child even enters school sometimes, why are we still blaming teachers? We should place more importance in preschools as well
“How can emerging media help children learn?”
We should really be capitalizing on this more as a nation.
By providing linguistical-ly rich programs in which both the content andthe form of language are examined we are sup-porting literacy development in the fullest sense.
teachers should avoidrigid adherence to a sequence. It is not the casethat teachers should engage exclusively in rhymeactivities for weeks before they engage in sylla-ble activities. Likewise, we do not believe thatchildren must “pass” one type of operation (e.g.,matching) before having experiences with an-other (e.g., blending). Phonemic awareness de-velopment is not a lockstep process
More teachers should know this!
Yo u m a y a l s o c r e a t e a c e n t e r w i t h p l a s t i cfoods and lunchbags. Children will play withthese items, retelling the story and creatingrhymes as they have their peers guess what theyhave in their bags. A copy of the book should beavailable at the center.
I love this! i read this book all of the time but I have never used this activity. jackpot! I just got a whole unit of ideas that I can develop in my learning centers.
p h o n e m i c a w a r e n e s s c a n b estimulated in many students in large part by pro-viding them with linguistically rich environ-ments—ones in which they are exposed to richvocabulary, syntactic complexity, and decontextu-alized language as well as ones in which languageitself is explored and experimented with deliber-ately.
We b e l i e v e t h a t p h o n e m i c a w a r e n e s s c a n b estimulated in many students in large part by pro-viding them with linguistically rich environ-ments—ones in which they are exposed to richvocabulary, syntactic complexity, and decontextu-alized language as well as ones in which languageitself is explored and experimented with deliber-ately.
activities that arechild appropriate (International Reading Assoc-iation & the National Association for the Edu-cation of Young Children, 1998). Adams andBruck (1995), for instance, submitted that songs,chants, and word-sound games are ideally suit-ed toward developing young children’s sensitiv-ity to the sound structure of language. Beck andJuel (1995) posited that time spent on word play,nursery or Dr. Seuss rhymes, and general expo-sure to storybooks contribute to phonemicawareness. Mattingly (1984) encouraged class-room teachers to provide their students with lin-guistic stimulation in the form of storytelling,word games, rhymes, and riddles in order to fa-cilitate phonemic awareness. Yopp (1992), de-scribing developmentally appropriate activitie
Young children love music and movement. I can expose my children to the same lesson spoken or chanted with music and they respond more positively to music.
phonemic awareness instructionshould be deliberate and purposeful. Althoughsome teachers have engaged their students inplayful language activities for years, they mayhave done so without knowing the full value ofthese activities.
Therefore, it is much too simplistic toidentify a hard-and-fast order in which opera-tions should be presented. Nevertheless, we pro-vide a possible order of what appears to be easierto more difficult operations for many children,given that the same types of sounds, the samenumber, and the same location are the focus ofattention. This information is offered only tosupport the teacher in making thoughtful deci-sions about potential sound manipulation activi-ties and is not intended to be prescriptiv
eachers played the essential role of facilitator or guide (Rogoff &Gauvain, 1986; Vygotsky, 1934/1986), with the scaffolding provided by theteacher diminishing in proportion to the students’ increasing knowledge, interest,and strategic abilities in a particular area (e.g., Alexander, 1997b; Brown &Palincsar, 1989), so that students could develop self-direction and autonomy(Deci & Ryan, 1991
One of our main goals as an early childhood educator.
A further consequence of this view of the learner as actively engaged in theprocess of learning has been a rekindled interest in strategic processing. In con-trast to the habituated skills of earlier eras, the effective use of strategies is un-derstood to require reflection, choice, and deliberate execution on the part of thelearner (Alexander, Graham, & Harris, 1998). Strategy use by its nature callsfor engaged learners who are willing to put forth effort, and who can knowl-edgeably respond to the demands of a particular situation. The body of literatureon learning strategies, particularly reading comprehension, has grown in recentyears in response to this new view of the engaged learner (P
Students who are interested in what they are learning will be more engaged in their learning and retain more information.
Mothers cook without written recipes most of the time; if ( \ they use a recipe from a written source, they do so usually only after confirma!lon and alteration by friends who have tried the recipe,
I understand the author is referencing the absence of literate sources used by adults, but I am not sure this is very relevant.
authority which books and bookrelated activities have in the lives of both the preschoolers
authority? I prefer reverance