Response to Intervention

(http://www.rainbowreaders.com/carols-research/reading-buddy-program)

A Child’s Response to Intervention Requires a Responsive Teacher of Reading by Mary K. Lose details the importance and requirements for successful Response to Intervention, or RTI, programs.  These programs are designed to give early intervention to students who are struggling with reading, before they are labelled as having learning disabilities.  It sounds like a great way to catch and take care of a problem early on, before it becomes a more serious problem.  While it does sound very proactive, Lose explains how important it is to tackle an RTI program correctly.

To me three main points stand out from Lose's argument.  The first point is that RTI programs need to work with children very early on to be the most effective.  Young students, usually those around first grade, are the best for the program.  If the reading difficulty is caught early it can be taken care of much easier.  The second point that stood out to me was student individuality.  Lose gives considerable evidence to how important it is to craft RTI programs for individual students.  All students are different and learn differently, meaning that a one-size-fits-all approach will not work in dealing with struggling readers, especially those at which the RTI programs are aimed.  The third point that stood out to me in the reading is the need for the best and most qualified teachers in RTI programs.  Lose explains the need for training and educating teachers so that they can work better with their students, and learn better strategies for identifying and helping struggling readers.

From my experience with children I have never really been around any struggling readers young enough for the RTI approach explained in this article, so it is a little foreign to me.  I have worked with older struggling readers however and I do see some parallels, especially for the need of individually crafted plans and highly skilled teachers.

Have you ever had experience with a young struggling reader who would benefit from an individually crafted plan to help him or her?  Do you see any ways in which a one-size-fits-all approach would work just as well?

Real Life Reading Inquiry

For my real life reading inquiry project I chose to go back to home town and observe a third grade classroom.  Early on in the semester I had asked a friend of mine, Mrs. Penman, if I could come to her classroom for an hour or so and observe.  In this particular school they have recently departmentalized the third and fourth grades, and she is teaching third grade reading and language arts.  She gets three different groups of students for almost two hours each.  I was in her classroom during most of the time that her last class of the day was in there.

I had a very positive experience in the classroom during this observation.  Although I had planned out my observation in advance, most of the instruction that I witnessed that day was unfortunately more focused on Language Arts than it was on Reading.  Even though I did not get to see a specific reading lesson I was able to study the classroom environment while I was there and I was able to discuss a couple of reading topics with the teacher while there.

As far as the classroom environment was concerned it looked as though the teacher was doing many of the things that our readings have suggested.  The classroom was filled with different reading materials, and had several places that looked as though they would be good to set down and read a book at.  There was a nice reading nook that she had created by turning a bookcase on its side and creating a space separate from the classroom.  She had several other bookshelves with all kinds of books on them.  She had everything from picture books to medium-sized chapter books.  I saw this as a huge positive considering how often our readings have specifically stated how important it is to have a large selection of books available to students in the classroom.  I also noticed that the word wall that the teacher had created on an extra bulletin board on one side of the classroom.  She adds words and important concepts to it when the students come across a new word or a new concept that they are not familiar with.  While I was in the classroom she taught them about cause and effect and then put those words up onto the word wall.

Another thing I noticed during my visit was that many of the students were not confident enough in their reading to read things that they had written aloud.  Pryor to my arrival they had been working on madlibs and about the time I walked into the classroom the teacher started to go over them by having the students read them aloud.  Out of the seven or eight students that volunteered to share their madlib with the class only one of them wanted to read it themselves.  The rest of the students wanted the teacher to read it for them.  I suppose this is because they are in a phase where they have noticed that they their reading needs improvement.  I also wondered if having a stranger observing may have made some of them a little nervous about reading theirs aloud.  Either way it still reminded me of our discussions of the phases that young readers go through.

After my observation I was able to talk with the teacher about fluency and her use of fluency tests and other assessments with her students.  She uses fluency tests quite a bit to test her children, and relies on them to see if they are progressing in their reading.  From our readings about fluency I can see how this differs from some of the opinions and things that we have been taught.  We have learned that relying on fluency tests too much can be really bad because they do not really take comprehension into account.  Fortunately Mrs. Penman also uses other types of assessments with her students that do test for comprehension.  She puts a lot of emphasis on both fluency and comprehension, two important players in building a successful independent reader.

From my in class experience and subsequent discussion with the teacher, I feel as though I learned some things that I want to duplicate in my classroom.  I also saw a few things that I want to shy away from doing in my future classroom.  I want to make sure and create a classroom environment similar to this one that includes many books and a good place to read.  I also want to make sure and have a word wall that lists difficult words and concepts.  I want to be able to encourage my students to choose books and to read them alone.  I want to encourage the students to never be afraid to read in public, and that practice only improves their abilities.  I see a need for fluency tests, but I feel as though this teacher may be relying on them a little too much.  In my classroom I want to focus more on comprehension, and maybe not as much on fluency.  In my opinion there needs to be a better balance of both to get the most out of students.

Guided Reading

 (http://heartofateacher.blogspot.com/2012/07/guided-reading-or-not.html)

For this weeks topic we instructed to find an article on guided reading and blog about it.  I found an article title "But I only have a basal: Implementing guided reading in the early grades."  I found this article quite interesting and helpful because it had some good information about guided reading in general, and some ideas of how to incorporate it into ones class.

According to the article, guided reading is designed to help students become more independent and fluent readers by teaching them reading strategies.  The approach is that the whole class, or a group from the class, reads the same book at the same time in class.  The teacher guides them along and instructs them.  By doing this she is able to show them strategies at work that will improve their reading when they are reading alone.  Usually it is best to divide the students into groups by reading ability for guided reading.  This way they are able to read on their level and work with other students that are on their level.  This requires teachers to have lots of different books across different levels, and that there are multiple copies of these books.  This is not always accessible or practical in a public school classroom.

The authors of the article suggests that there is another way to do this.  They say that guided reading can be taught through the use of Basal Readers that school already has.  They have multiple copies and the readers do have different levels of stories in them.  This way the teacher does not have to buy multiple copies of multiple books on multiple levels, which would get rather expensive.  The authors give examples of teachers that have used this approach successfully.  Both examples agree that it is a good way to get into guided reading and have found good use of basal readers for guided reading.

The authors close their argument by saying that guided reading is most important in lower elementary grades, and that guided reading with older students is sometimes inappropriate and not very helpful.

When I was in school I do not remember doing a lot of guided reading.  I was in a couple of classes in middle and high school where we all read the same book at the same time it what seemed liked guided reading, but as the author points out this may not have been very helpful.  While younger we did do some guided reading from our textbooks or basals as this article calls them, but it seems most of our reading in our Reading textbooks were assigned to be done at home with our parents.

Do any of my readers remember having a teacher that focuses a lot on guided reading?  Do you think it was helpful?

Concerning large collections of books with multiple copies, not many of my teachers had this luxury.  I few of my teachers had class sets of maybe three titles, but they did not have variety.  Our library also had a few class sets, but again they did not have very many of them.  Did anyone go to a school that had a large selection of classroom sets of books?

The Importance of Vocabulary

This week we are focusing on vocabulary!  Vocabulary is something that I have always found somewhat interesting.  Adding to my vocabulary is something that I enjoy now, and something that I have enjoyed all throughout school.  It never seems to hurt to know the meanings of a few more words.  Besides the fact that vocabulary can help you understand what someone is saying, it is also really helpful when writing papers and giving speeches.  Having a rich vocabulary can really set one apart from someone that has a smaller vocabulary.

One of the articles assigned this week was "Vocabulary Lessons" by Camille Blachowicz and Peter Fisher.  This article explained how important vocabulary was, and gave some interesting statistics on vocabulary.  It also detailed the role that vocabulary plays in comprehension.  An interesting fact that I garnered from the article was that fifth graders engaging in independent reading for ten minutes a day read 622,000 more words a year than a child that does no independent reading.  Ten minutes is very short, but the amount of text interaction and vocabulary building that students can gain from that is astounding!  The article gave four ways to that educators can use to develop vocabulary in their classrooms.  These included using activities that encourage word play among students, using explicit vocabulary instruction, showing students how to develop their vocabulary independently, and by exposing children to a variety of books and readings.  

More than any topic that we have covered thus far in class, I feel as though vocabulary is something that my teachers did teach to me correctly.  Glancing at the four steps in the reading I can instantly think of instances in which my teachers used these methods.  I can remember playing word games all throughout elementary and middle school.  I remember explicit vocabulary instruction in upper elementary school and middle school.  From the time I started reading my teachers showed me how to find the meanings of words and develop my vocabulary.  My classrooms always had lots of books and my teachers always encouraged me to read.

I feel as though vocabulary building is something that most of us have had positive experiences with, but I may be wrong.  In closing I leave my readers with a couple questions:

• What were some ways that your teachers taught vocabulary?  Do you remember any specific games or styles that they used?
• Did anyone go through schools where vocabulary wasn't addressed often?  If so, do you feel as though this hindered you as you got older?

The Comprehension Matrix

http://www.gmatpill.com/practice-questions-explanations-gmat-prep/gmatpill-releases-reading-comprehension-pill-video-guide-rc/

If any of my readers have ever had a hard time comprehending what they are reading, they can sympathize with me!  Often when I read I look like the reader in the above image.  It can be very frustrating to spend time reading something, and then not fully understand what it is saying.  Teachers spend a lot of time trying to get their students to understand what they are reading.  The Comprehension Matrix is a tool that educators can use to help them understand and plan comprehension instruction with their students.  The Comprehension Matrix is a chart that helps to divided up reading activities into prereading, during-reading, and postreading.  By dividing these activities up it better enables the students to comprehend and learn from what they are reading.  The Matrix can be used with different comprehension teaching strategies, and can help to give children multiple ways to comprehend and understand what they read.

The first part of the Comprehension Matrix is the portion that details what to do before the students read the text, also called prereading.  During this the teacher can talk with the students and get the prepared for the reading by introducing them to the text, getting them excited about it, and giving them any background knowledge that they need for the reading.  It is also important the teacher shows the children the structure of the text during this phase and should let them know the purpose of their reading.

The next part of the Matrix is the during-reading step.  The teacher should give the students time to read the text and understand what it is saying.  It is possible that in some classrooms it is more helpful if the teacher gives the students a specific thing to be looking for, or if they are told to underline important actions in the story.  Some teachers also have great success with structuring this reading time so that the students read one paragraph at a time and then ask the students questions.

Postreading, the last step in the Comprehension Matrix, is when the teacher checks for understanding and comprehension.  A discussion on the reading could be really beneficial to bring some of the students ideas to the whole classroom.  Asking the students specific questions is also important to see whether or not they understood the key points in the reading.  This can also be done by having the students write a quick summary or to draw a snapshot from a scene in the story.  The Postreading step does not have to be formal or difficult for the students, it can be fun for them!

Just by looking at the simply steps of the Comprehension Matrix I believe one can understand how helpful it may be for students.  As good as it sounds, the matrix does not work well if the teacher does not prepare well for the activity.  The teacher must first of all know her students, know how well they stay on task, and know what interests them.  Through this she can pick the reading for them and then design the activities around her students.  It is also important the teacher has previewed the text and is really familiar with it.  This way she is able to bring up questions to the students throughout the process that will help them better understand the reading.  The teacher is also able to better design postreading activities if he or she has actually studied the reading.

I really like the idea of the Comprehension Matrix and can already see how it could be beneficial in a classroom.  I am also wondering if using similar techniques would help me to better understand by readings for my history courses that are sometimes very difficult to follow.  It sounds as though the Comprehension Matrix is really universal and could be useful across all grade levels and disciplines.  I hope I am able to implement similar activities into my classroom.

Has anyone ever used anything similar to this when completing a reading?  I remember doing it very little when I was in Elementary School, and it seemed even more rare in higher grades.  Do you think it would be beneficial for students to get in a pattern of doing this with all of their readings while they are young?

Are one-minute fluency assessments really that helpful?

This week our readings focuses on fluency.  I was really interested in the article that focused on one-minute fluency tests because I am somewhat familiar with them.  As part of my job this last summer assisting with a summer school I was involved in giving fluency tests to several children.  I was not that familiar with the process before working with the summer school program, and at the time had my doubts on how accurate the assessments were.  This reading sort of echoed some of my own thoughts, and strengthened some of my thoughts on these fluency tests.

According to "One-Minute Fluency Measures: Mixed Messages in Assessment and Instruction," fluency tests usually only test for accuracy and rate, forgetting the fact that comprehension is also really important.  Fluency tests do not give a reason for why or why not a student is fluent, or a way to correct it.  It also does not give an accurate view of how a child may read a larger portion of material on their own.  A child may be able to focus for one minute with his or her teacher, but reading a book during 30 minutes of free reading time may be different for the child.  The article ends with some suggestions for making these fluency assessments more relevant and some improve ways to use them in the classroom.

From my own experience I could see that some children reacted much differently to one-minute fluency tests.  Some of them did really well and seemed to understand what they were reading during the time.  Others would rush through it just to get their word count high.  Others would do decent that could barely read anything on their own.  We did employ some of the suggestions that the article had for improving fluency.  We did not rely on the tests a lot for comprehension measures.  We also let the children reread the text for a few days and retested them after they were more familiar with it as part of the process.  I expected that most of the children would do better after seeing the readings that much, but some of them barely improved or even went down a little.

In my future classroom I think I can use my experience to my advantage.  I already somewhat understand the process of doing these fluency assessments and understand that they can be abused, and can yield results that really do not tell us much.  By using some of the tips from the reading I think I can make it a useful tool.  I need to remember to combine it with other activities and be more open with what the assessment is about, and then choose more interesting readings, reread them with the students, and to engage parents of the students into the process.

Are any of my blog readers familiar with giving fluency assessments?  Have any of you ever noticed how some children rush through them, or how others put on a really good front while doing them?

Making Words

Making Words describes an activity in which a teacher gives each of her students the same magnetic letters and then shows them all of the words that they can create from six or seven letters, or how ever many he/she gives the students.  This can be especially helpful for children in Kindergarten, First, and Second grade.  Around this age children are still learning how to spell and read words.  They can really benefit from an activity that shows them specific patterns between words that use the same letters.  To start the activity the teacher tells them to make words with two letters, then with three letters, then with four letters, until eventually all of the letters are used to make a big word.  By showing them all of the different words that they can make with four letters for example, they begin to understand that those four letters can make even more words if they move them around, and then add more letters.

I really like the sound of this activity.  I can picture students enjoying the activity, but more importantly it would be really helpful for them.  It is important that children practice invented spelling, but by using this structured spelling activity it helps them understand how words are created from letters by showing them the patterns that letters make.  This in turn makes their invented spelling better and better until eventually their invented spelling is correct spelling.  As basic as this sounds it is really important.

When I was in school I do not remember practicing spelling that much in the classroom.  The teacher would go over the weekly words for us, but the majority of our spelling learning was done at home and was just repetition   I would have really enjoyed an activity such as this.  Does anyone else remember being able to do this type of activity when they were in school?  Did you enjoy it?  I am wondering if some kids may get frustrated or embarrassed by it if their peers can see that they are struggling with it.