Integrating Literacy into Classrooms that Work

This week I read the Cunningham and Allington chapter and the Pinnell article. These articles were very helpful for me to visualize how to integrate all of the wonderful literacy activities I have learned into a classroom full of children with different ability levels and different interests.

The Cunningham and Allington chapter, which goes through how a day at different grade groups may work, gave me wonderful ideas of how to teach reading and writing with every subject. Writing predictions about math lessons is not only helpful for math, but can be useful for practice of writing, spelling and critical thinking as well. Also, integrating literacy activities into science and social studies can help expand vocabulary and spelling with more advanced words that are relevant to young children. This will help them learn and retain the words much easier.

The Pinnell article presented 8 teaching principles for every teacher, whatever type of situation they may be in as far as their independence level. We have all witnessed or heard about how difficult it is to teach creatively when teachers are given strict plans to follow in the classroom. This article given ideas to keep in mind and was to use creative ideas along with prescribed lesson plans. The ways of working with children of different ability levels are also helpful because that is one thing that I am worried about as I am getting closer to possibly having my own classroom. I encourage you to think about what in the classroom you are worried about? What is something you have learned to deal with that situation?
         

Real-Life Reading Inquiry-Word Study

While preparing for our assignment of engaging in a reading activity, I decided it would be interesting to work with my twin eight year old cousins. Knowing they are on slightly different ability levels when it comes to literacy, I thought it would be interesting to administer the elementary spelling inventory we were given in class and work with them on various other word study activities. I then compared their spelling inventories and analyzed their behaviors while doing the activities.

Before doing the lesson with my cousins, I reviewed the Yopp and Yopp (2007) article "Ten Important Words Plus: A Strategy for Building Word Knowledge." From this article I took away the importance of wide reading and word-learning strategies, so after doing the spelling inventory we played Scrabble for some time and afterward went to the library. While playing Scrabble, they both had trouble making words on their own, so I helped them with strategies to build words. By going to the library, I hope to have encouraged reading a variety of reading material, which I think was successful.

I also found an article by Cronnell and Humes (1980) called "Elementary Spelling: What's Really Taught." This article helped me when analyzing the spelling inventories and following activities. Both children did relatively well on the spelling inventory, the more advanced child spelling 20 of 25 words correct and the lower level child spelling 17 of 25 correct. Even the words they spelled incorrectly were very close to the accurate spelling. However, when given letters they were unable to create words, which supported by this article leads me to believe they need more help with organizing and other spelling strategies. Therefore, I worked on that while helping them play Scrabble. While at the library, I noticed that the lower level child chose books that had very little text. This may be one reason adding to his lower reading and spelling achievement compared to his twin sister. I think he would benefit from more text heavy reading about topics that he is interested in. What other ideas would you recommend for these children? Also, what do you think about using games to practice spelling and vocabulary?

          

Guided Reading

The article I found about Guided Reading is a 2007 article titled "Guided Reading: A Research-Based Response to the Challenges of Early Reading Instruction" written by Anita Iaquinta. It is very informative so I encourage you to click here to take a look.

Along with many other details, this article presents some things that need to happen before, during, and after guided reading lessons in order for them to be effective. I think this is helpful for teachers that are interested in adding guided reading to their classroom lessons. A few ideas the author suggests for introducing the text are: Prepare an introduction to the text that will help readers access and use all sources of information,  leave some opportunities for students to independently solve problems while reading, I key words and their meanings, practice using context to understand word meanings, Introduce key ideas and concepts, and help children understand how texts are structured. During the reading, provide prompts to help process the text. After the reading, talk about the text with the students and encourage dialogue among them, invite personal response and assess students’ understanding of what they read. This is what I found very helpful from this article. Something I encourage you to think about is would you use guided reading in your classroom? If so, how can you make sure that it remains interesting for your students?

Increasing Vocabulary Importance

Increasing the amount and complexity of vocabulary in children is important, but can also be something that is a struggle to teach and support. Many teachers, especially of young children, need more information and strategies on how to encourage young children's vocabulary development and how to incorporate that into their current schedules. Dalton and Grisham present 10 very interesting electronic or technological ways to encourage and interest children in learning and using increasingly more and complex vocabulary.

The strategies presented in this article can be helpful and interesting to children of all ages. One strategy that I like for younger children is using visual displays of word relationships within text. A word cloud, as I have added above is a free and useful way to use this strategy. They are easy to create and customize to fit the needs and interests of your students. Other online resources, games and field trips using vocabulary as a focus are also very helpful for increasing the vocabulary of children of all ages. Children also would enjoy using digital text and audio-book type technology for vocabulary study, which is not only fun but helpful as well. I encourage you to consider how you might incorporate technology into vocabulary study in your classroom. Also, do you think the strategies in these articles will continue to be useful in increasing vocabulary development if more research is done? 

They all can Comprehend!

The readings I chose to do on comprehension were the Cunningham and Allington chapter and the Gregory and Cahill article "Kindergartners Can Do It, Too! Comprehension Strategies for Early Readers." These two reading helped me to better understand how to help the young readers I will be teaching to better comprehend the things that they read. They have also shown me how many comprehension strategies for older children are very similar, if not identical, to strategies that work for very young readers. These strategies include making connections, visualizing, questioning and predicting, summarizing and making inferences. While the way these strategies play out in the classroom may look a little different in younger versus older classrooms, the main ideas are still the same and very helpful for children. Questions I encourage you to consider are how do you think you will incorporate these strategies into your classroom? and Do you know of any other specific activities that encourage reading comprehension? Here is a video that I found that supports the importance of teaching reading comprehension to young children.

     

The Art of Studying Words

Making, decoding, and understanding words are very complex tasks, but they can also be a fun process. I believe the readings for this week describe helpful activities for a range of ages and ability levels. The article about the activity involving identifying ten important words in a selection seems to be an activity more for older children (Yopp & Yopp). It does however seem very helpful in further understanding and using more of a variety of words. The article about the Making Words activity (also described in the Classrooms that Work book) thoroughly details how to conduct the activity. It also gives sample letter/word sets and describes how to use the activity with younger and older children. I really think this activity, coupled with invented spelling practice, will be a useful activity to break up the monotony of typical letter and word study in the classroom. Children as young as Kindergarten age (and even some younger) can improve their phonemic awareness as well as begin making the connection between letter sounds and the spelling of words. I have seen an activity very similar to this one done in a Kindergarten classroom and not only did the students greatly enjoy the activity, but they improved their skills tremendously as well. I have also seen teachers plan and allow time for invented spelling practice, which also helps the children. This can initially be frustrating for children who are conscious of the fact that they cannot spell words exactly correct, but once they understand that it is okay to just spell what they hear they are not so frustrated. Here is and example of some invented spelling.

A question I encourage you to consider are when is it important to teach conventional spelling if children have not already began doing so? Also, how do you encourage children who refuse to practice invented spelling?

Supporting the Development of Phonics and Phonemic Awareness

Learning to decode words and increase the automaticity of word recognition is a very complex and difficult process. Children cannot learn phonics and phonemic awareness with the flip of a switch; it takes hard work and appropriate assistance from people such as teachers. There are many ways to teach phonics and coach children's development of phonemic awareness, many of which can be challenging and fun as well. It's important to understand where your students are in their development of these skills, and choose activities and support on their level. Activities that I like for young children include rhyming games and word play in order to get them thinking about the different sounds different words make. More complex and sophisticated activities, such as Guess the covered word and Making words (Cunningham & Allington, 2011), can be used for children who are a little older and further along in their process of learning to decode words. Games like Hangman and story of the day activities can also help children with their phonemic awareness and phonics. Questions I encourage you to consider are how can you figure out where your students are in this developmental process? and What are some specific ways you can coach or teach their continued development?