Week Eight Assignment One

• How did the kindergarten teachers, Sheila Owens and John Sinnett, incorporate elements of emergent literacy in their lessons? Which elements were the primary focus of the lessons? 

            The two kindergarten teachers in the video both made excellent use of a Word Wall. The Word Wall was designed as a wall full of letters from the alphabet with words attached underneath specific letters. These words were challenging for the students to remember or understand and would get replaced with new words once the students have mastered the word on the Word Wall.

            Sheila Owens had her students make sentences using the Word Wall. It was great to see her students forming sentences and having the students recite the sentence one student would try to make. This enabled full class participation on the students part and helped ensure that the sentences that the student was forming made sense. John Sinnett on the other hand used his Word Wall indirectly. He had his students read off of a poster that he created with missing word and letters. This is a great idea towards having students learn from contextual clues on missing words or the meaning of difficult words that they might not understand. The students were encouraged to go up to the poster to write the correct answer. This type of activity encouraged the use of all the students.

• What part did oral language play in both classrooms? 

            Oral language plays a huge part in reading development. If a child cannot verbally express what they are reading we cannot accurately test their reading skills. The English language is a very complex language to learn and we need to ensure that our students comprehend each word. Sometimes the words on paper look nothing like how they are pronounced. It is therefore necessary for students to verbally express the language to ensure they are learning the tricks and complicated words properly.

• How did each teacher use the Word Wall to support word study? 

            The Word Wall was used to have students reflect upon words they are currently learning. Students can look at the Word Wall during any activity, if need be, and can remember what letter the word begins with. In John Sinnett’s class, he holds a small ceremony for taking a word off of the Word Wall once his students have mastered that word.

• What were examples of planned, explicit instruction in these excerpts? What were examples of opportunistic instruction? 

            In Sheila Owen’s class she was able to have her students form sentences using the Word Wall. One student would grab the “pointer” and make his or her own sentence on using the Word Wall. The other students were encouraged to read this child’s sentence to ensure that it was accurate and followed all of the guidelines of the English language.

            Sheila Owen’s also encouraged her students to create sentences during independent reading time. It would be a great way for her students to practice on how to form mature sentences and it is great use of the Word Wall while they have it right there in front of them.

• Both kindergarten teachers used whole-class instruction for their word study lessons. How did it meet the needs of all students? 

            All of the students in both of the kindergarten teachers’ classrooms participated I the activities. In order to ensure that everyone was participating the teachers’ would ask their students to please say out loud the sentences being read or the word that is used in the text. In order to meet the needs of all students I think the teachers observed the students participation and guided those who did not know the correct answer into a way that encourages them to try again and reward them when they succeed.

Week Seven Assignment Five

I tested a child who is in preschool on three out of the four assessments. I was unable to get material at the time that I was meeting with her for the fourth assessment but the results I gained from the three assessments performed helped me learn a lot about who she was as a reader. The first assessment that I gave her was called “Same or Different”. I would read two words to her and she would tell me if they were the same word or if they were different words. This young child excelled on this type of assessment as she scored 100% or 13/13 correct. Some of the tougher words that I read where she needed to tell me they were different were, “Shirt, Skirt”, “Glass, Grass”, and “Pants, Plants”. There were a few times in which she sat and stared at me seemingly confused but after I repeated the words a second or third time she felt confident.

The second assessment I used on this young girl was called “Oral Blending”. She seemed to have little experience with this type of instruction because she only scored 4/6 on the first part and 1/6 on the second part. The two that she got incorrect on the first part was “/l/…ock means ______” and “/b/…ox means _______” There were a few times that she got silly on me and I believe she knew the words but was trying to be funny. (This was my best friend’s daughter who I see all the time so she gets very silly when I visit them.) As for the second part of this assessment she was asked to tell me the entire word when I sounded out all of the phonemes. The ones that she got wrong were, “/m/ /e/ means ______, /s/ /a/ means _______, /s/ /u/ /n/ means ________, /m/ /a/ /k/ means _______, and /l/ /a/ /z/ /e/ means _______.” She was extremely close when she said that make means ake and lazy means zee.

            The third assessments that she tried was the “Show me…” part of a book. She was able to tell me 12/13 questions that I asked such as “Front of the book, back of the book, first word of a sentence, last word of a sentence…” The one question she struggled with was where to begin reading as she showed me the title page.

            I would like to work with her on listening to the different phonemes that there are and trying to blend them into a sound. Her father can work with her on using phonemes when she wants something such as, “Do you want your /c/ /u/ /p/?” and having her say “cup!” I also believe that her preschool teachers could set some time aside to practice the different sounds of words to get her more familiar with out the sounds work and how she can use these sounds everyday. She would also benefit from learning more about books and how they work. It is simply one thing to read to a child but it is another thing to show her the finer things of a book such as where you begin reading, show me the last word of this sentence, how should I begin reading and so on. It is only beneficial for the child to get as much experience with books and sound as she can at such a young age.

There are a ton of different websites that children can use to practice their reading skills. http://www.primarygames.com/reading.php has a variety of different games to help children put words together, guess a letter that belongs in a word and so forth.

http://www.funbrain.com/brain/ReadingBrain/ReadingBrain.html is also another website that helps students with their reading skills. There are fun games that let the child choose different levels so that they can push themselves to try harder words and increase their reading skills.

http://www.funenglishgames.com/readinggames.html is a lot of fun for children because the games are elementary and useful for reading. One of the games is like a giant parkway with different side roads to choose. Children like games that allows them to act like adults so a game like this would really help the students have fun while still learning at the same time. 

Week Seven Assignment Four

Phonics

Pretest: 8/10                Post test: 8/10

            The alphabetic principle is an important part of any reading program. It clearly defines the understanding that there are clear, logical and predictable relationships between written letters and spoken sounds. During phonics instruction students are able to recognize familiar words and are able to learn how to decode unfamiliar words. Children learn the relationships between letter and sounds and apple this type of knowledge into their daily reading activities. When students are breaking down sounds for specific letters the actual display of the letter is known as a grapheme. This is especially important when students reach words that are awkward to read because the letters in the word do not correspond to a specific sound that they are familiar with. One example of this is when students learn to read the word “phone”. To any child reading for the first time without any instruction on unfamiliar words they would write “phone” as “foan”. To a child using their phonemes and graphemes, it is easy to use the phonemes /f/ /o/ /a/ /n/ to write word “phone”. However this needs to be addressed to all children so they are able to move forward in their reading.

            Phonics is most effective when taught in the primary grades such as kindergarten and first grade. It is only part of a reading program and cannot be responsible for teaching children the other finer things of the English language. The English language itself is extremely complex and requires a lot of different components put together to help students understand the complications they may arise while attempting to read higher level material.

            I have a lot of concerns when it comes to the idea of phonics. As I have stated in my other posts my main concern is how to apply this newfound knowledge I have just gained into practice. For some learners reading can be stressful and boring especially if the child is struggling. There are many homes where both parents work or even single-parent homes that cannot keep up with the child’s homework. It is ideal to believe that every child goes home to a responsible and tireless parent that is able to help their children with their homework but this is not always the case. How as a teacher can we help reach out to every student outside of the classroom? How do we help those children who cannot come early to school or stay late for extra help?

Week Seven Assignment Three

Phonemic Awareness

Pretest: 7/10                Post test: 10/10

            Phonemic Awareness is another important part of a reading program. It is the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in the spoken word. This gives students the opportunity to change words by changing one phoneme. Phonemic awareness also allows students to understand that the sounds of spoken language work together to form new words. There are a variety of different terms that are used in reading programs to help break down the idea behind phonemic awareness.

            One of the important parts of phonemic awareness is phoneme isolation. Students should be able to recognize the individual sound within a specific word. Another term used in reading programs is the idea of phoneme identity. In this part of reading students are able to see that the same sounds are present in different words. For example, students are able to recognize that big, /b/ has the same sound has bun, /b/. Phoneme blending is the ability to recognize an “odd” sound in a set of three or four words. When students are able to recognize that big and bun have the same /b/ sounds, they are also able to recognize that “run, rat, and bus” are not all the same beginning phonemes. Students will be able to pick out that bus is not the same sound as the /r/ in run and rat.

            There are also terms used to recognize when to blend phonemes together to make different words. This term is called phoneme blending. For example, students can understand that by combining the sounds /b/ /i/ /g/ that they can form the word big. On the other side of that argument, phoneme segmentation is when students are able to break down a word into different phonemes. This is an example of when students are giving the word big and asked to break it down into /b/ i/ /g/. The two final terms discussed in the workshop is called phoneme deletion and phoneme substitution. The idea of these two terms is that they are similar yet different. Phoneme deletion is when a child is able to remove a phoneme in a word to make an entirely different word. One example of this is when students are given the word “smile”, asked to remove the /s/ and come up with the word “mile”. Phoneme substitution on the other hand is when students add a specific phoneme to a word to create an entirely different word by substituting a specific phoneme. An example of this is when a student is given the word “bug” and asked to replace the /g/ sound with the /n/ sound to create the word bun.

            This workshop was very well organized and I learned a lot from what I was given. I do not think I have any questions other than the idea of being able to put this into practice. I would love to make learning fun for the children and I believe it is best when the children do not even realize that they are learning because they are having so much fun within the activity. If I were to address any concerns it would be only to seek help for how to make this type of instruction fun and educational for the children.

Week Seven Assignment Two

The Sounds of Speech

Pretest: 7/10                Post test: 10/10

            My nephew has speech therapy once or twice a week. It was great to learn about how much affects our ability to produce and interpret sounds. There are approximately 42-44 speech sounds in the English language. I think the scientists in this case should exclude the accents because if we took the accents of different backgrounds we would probably have over 60 speech sounds. The sounds of speech are known as phonemes. They are represented by a separation like “/   /” This helps educators enforce the strict sound to help students learn to listen to the language. It was interesting to know that phonemes are the smallest part of speech language.

            I would like to know how teachers, mainly speech teachers, help improve students’ speech. With the idea of accents and different ways of saying things I find it hard to understand how speech can be assessed. How can we tell a child from a Russian background that he is mispronouncing words when it is just the way he talks? Do we have just reason to believe that there is one way to pronounce words? How can teachers assess speech in a multicultural classroom?

Week Seven Assignment One

Print Awareness

Pretest: 10/10              Posttest: 8/10

            As an experienced reader I have never really taken the time to think about how people learn to read. From my point of view it is common sense that we read from top to bottom and from left to right. Children and adults that are learning to read for the first time need to learn the way in which we read. They also need to understand that oral language can be translated into the written language. The text that we read is organized in a specific way. For example, the beginning of a story is in the first page of a book and the end of the story is at the back of the book. The sentences flow from one sentence to the next to ensure that the reader can comprehend what is going on. It is also extremely important for young learners to become aware of how to handle books. We need to be teaching our children how to turn the page without ripping off the entire page or crinkling the edges so the book looks like it is 6 years old when in fact it is brand new.

            I found it extremely interesting that books with predictable and patterned text helps expand print awareness. As a future educator I would want my students to become excellent readers and understand the structures of the written word. It would be helpful to understand different ways to communicate this to my children. I would like to know how to help a struggling reader with little motivation to do well. One question I have for this subtopic is how do teachers assess print awareness? Does it have its own category or is it classified under a handful of reading strategies?

Week Six Assignment One

            As a teacher I would want Mary to feel confident in her ability to answer questions. To begin my instruction, I would give the students material that they are all familiar with prior to learning about in class. This would help boost my students’ level of confidence in their word identification and reading comprehension. If I gave my students’ a topic that they are all familiar with, they will most likely be interested in the material and be able to derive details to support the main idea of the text. As stated in Dr. Hsu’s explanation, students that score above a 55% on the prior knowledge part of the assessment generally score above 70% on the comprehension part of the assessment.

            This type of intervention would typically take anywhere from 2-3 weeks. I want to incorporate this type of instruction in my daily routine and boost my students’ level of confidence up as much as I can. It is important for my students to feel safe and secure while learning new things and exploring new ideas. I would give my students alternate assignments that involve group work and collaborate while I intervene in Mary’s assignment. This lesson would not take longer than 10-15 minutes so that I do not disregard the needs of my other students.

            I would want Mary to be able to look back in the text to find her answers. As a beginning towards this intervention I would highlight key words in the question and key words in the passage to show Mary that she can find her answers quickly if she just matches the words together. This way, Mary can feel safe to look back at the text whenever she feels the need to without being prompt by the teacher to do so. I also want Mary to be able to decode important phrases by searching the surrounding words in the sentence. One of the parts of the intervention with Mary would be to give her sentences with unfamiliar words and tangle them in a sentence with words she is familiar with. This way, Mary can feel confident that her contextual clues will help guide her through unfamiliar words.

Mini-Lesson

Description of Lesson: Mary will be asked to locate key words in the question to key words in the passage. She will identify words and underline possible answers to the question.

Standards Addressed:

• Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.

Step-by-Step Procedure:

1)      Ask Mary the questions she will be required to answer.

2)      Determine if Mary is able to answer the questions with accuracy.

3)      Have Mary read expository text.

4)      Show Mary the same questions and highlight key words.

5)      Have Mary go back in the text to find those same key words.

6)      Have Mary underline possible answers that surround that key word.

7)      Ask Mary to answer the question verbally with as much detail as possible.

8)      Have Mary write her answer down on the paper.

Adaptations:

Provide Mary with a highlighter and a pencil to use in underlining and highlighting key words and answers.

Homework/Extended Learning:

Mary will be asked to go home and read for 20 minutes that night. She will need to “retell” the story to her parent/guardian and write her answers down with the assistance of the parent/guardian.

EXAMPLE

Why do birds fly south for the winter?

HIGHLIGHT key words. BIRDS SOUTH WINTER

LOCATE key words in text.

Birds fly south for the winter in order to reach warmer land.

HIGHLIGHT key words. Birds fly south for the winter in order to reach warmer land.

UNDERLINE possible answers. Birds fly south for the winter in order to reach warmer land.