Week Eleven 3/30/09 M.Clover

This week we are supposed to blog about our New Literacies project and I have to say that I’m very pleased with the way our project (Brad and I) is coming along. We were originally going to create an inventory of podcasts using Google reader and Thewildclassroom.com but we decided that the amount of information we were getting wasn’t enough to really do what we wanted to do SO, we have now decided that we will be using multiple online sources to get podcasts from in order to create a “bank” of information for students and then a separate “bank” for teachers. We’re assuming this would work best for a teacher and for students who are upper elementary or maybe even Middle school. As of right now things are going rather smoothly, we’re getting a bunch of podcasts a day on random science topics and attempting to sort through them. We’re going to try to sort them out so that a teacher could possibly use them in different units, but we’ll just have to see about that! Overall, I think it’s really neat and I like this project!

New Literacies

So I'm not quite sure if this is where I am supposed to be posting this, but I went to the wiki and it said to post on your blog?  Anyways, I am doing a scrapblog, which is basically like making an online scrapbook.  You can put your own pictures and videos and things on the pages and then decorate and display them however you want to.  You can also share you scrapblog with friends/family and even print it off if you want.  I pretty much think of it as a digital scrapbook which can be much more efficient and inexpensive than real scrapbooking.  It is almost in a way like a powerpoint that can be personalized with pictures, backgrounds, images, placement, font, text, color, etc.  There are an endless amount of choices when creating a scrapblog and it allows you to play with the layout and other options before making it permanent whereas in a traditional scrapbook you only get one chance to place everything the way you like.  A scrapblog can be modified as many times as desired and allows the person to edit if they change their mind and want to rearrange things.  I am learning a lot about the scrapblogging world, something I was not familiar with at all before.  It is apparent some people put a lot of time and effort into their scrapblogs and a lot of a person's personality can be seen through what they create.

I have also learned a lot about emotional literacy.  This is a very important concept to be familiar with as future teachers because we can help students deal with their emotions in a more positive and effective way.  Emotional literacy holds students accountable for their emotions as it teaches them how to understand, express, and deal with emotions using words.  It helps students to know which emotions they are feeling and why and express their feelings in a way that they can reflect and monitor their actions and behavior.  Emotional literacy statements should always begin with "I feel" and not "I feel like/that/you"  and be followed by an emotion.   There are also positive and negative words that can describe our emotions and it is important to attempt to use positive words.  It is also important when expressing emotional literacy to be direct about our feelings or they could be miscommunicated.  Emotional literacy stresses the importance of being consistent, clear, and honest in communication to work through conflicts that may arise.  

Week 10 Blog Kelsi Vidal

I thought the Tompkins chapter was beneficial for me to read because I have not been in a classroom that uses a Basal Reading Program and this gave me a better idea of what they are.  I have obviously heard of them and had a little bit of knowledge about what the program was and how it was used in the classroom.  This seems like a good way to take a comprehensive look at a book and discover all of the elements and components.  It definitely seems like you would have to have an entire morning or at least a good portion of the day devoted to literacy to do lessons like Mrs. Ohashi demonstrates in the book.  When I visited my placement classroom for next year, the teacher told me a little bit about what an ordinary day might look like and she mentioned having the entire mornings as uninterupted literacy blocks and it sounded like she implemented similar kinds of lessons and stations focused around stories.  I am interested to see what this actually looks like when I go observe in May.  This chapter stressed the differentiation in the way students learn and strategies we can use to attempt to reach all of our students.  This is a point that is brought up again and again and it reminds me that we need to use different approaches and strategies to help students learn.

The article on centers by Linda Holliman was something I could really relate to because my CT implements centers everywhere in her classroom!  There are countless numbers of centers in the classroom and the students use them all the time.  Many of the areas in the classroom I didn't know could be considered centers, but after reading this article it makes sense why they would be considered centers.  Students have nothing but choices when choosing what centers to use and that was an important aspect in using centers in the classroom.  The article also talked about the teacher not being behind her desk, the classroom not being chaotic, but definitely not quiet.  I think this perfectly describes my CTs classroom because in the beginning I was surprised at how much freedom she gave the students and how she allowed the students to pretty much do what they wanted with minimal interference.  Now I am used to it, but before I wondered how she managed to let students have free range on what activities they wanted to do and do them as they pleased (the classroom definitely seemed like "controlled chaos" even though it may not have seemed like it my CT had complete control the entire time - which is a positive for center use).  I am also continually impressed with my CT as every week she seems to have come up with a new activity for students to engage in.  She will buy little things from all over the place and create new lessons and games for the students.  I'm sure this is a skill that comes in time, but she always seems to be thinking up new ideas and integrating them into her classroom...it's amazing!  

Response 10

I really loved the ‘What is a Center’ article by Linda Holliman. I have always been very interested in centers and as I’m sure you all will agree, have seen them used in a variety of ways throughout my experiences in the classrooms. This article did a wonderful job of laying out all of the elements that make up a great center. While they may look like they are just thrown together, this article went in depth on how to make a successful center that is educational and engaging for the students.
The started off by stating that a center should, “Provide opportunities for children to be actively involved in learning and making choices in a variety of ways” (CP 291). That statement immediately caught my attention as it states that the children will be actively involved while making their own choices; how great as they are not being taught to, they are discovering ways to teach themselves. I really like how they illustrated that centers will allow room for different learning styles and will also give the teacher the opportunity to meet the needs of each student, whichever level they might be on through varying activities and allowing more one on one time with each student individually.
The article also stated that centers are created through careful thought and planning; almost like a lesson plan. They even gave a Center Activity Planning Sheet which I thought was awesome. This provides structure, and a reference to refer back to for future planning and for accountability with the school and/or parents. The structure it provides is also just enough for the teacher to get the most out of the center but allows the students to still have choice. So, it’s structure with room for choice; too great!
I also really liked how they illustrated the use of themed structures and how you can meet GLCE’s (or other state/curriculum goals) through centers. I just never appreciated centers enough I guess, but definitely do after reading this article and am very excited to get started on my own centers. I think it would be great to fill out a few of these center plans to include in a portfolio. Along with all the technology we have been learning about, this would look awesome to a potential future employer. This article was really to the point too which I know we all love at this point in the year. I definitely give this article two thumbs up! What do you guys think!?
As for the other two assigned readings, both Tompkins and Avalos, were beneficial but things I feel we have covered before. More ways to allow for integration and gateways to reach lower level students or ELLs. Not that I didn’t think they were good pieces; I just feel we have touched base on this topic a lot. Of course there is always room to learn of new ways of creating conducive plans/environments for students like these but I just enjoyed the center article so much more as it was something that we really haven’t touched base on yet but is still an important part of the classroom.
The New Literacies project is going well. We have been working on our digital story which will highlight the lifespan of a butterfly through a variety of vibrant images and enthusiastic narratives. While I am anxious to see how it will turn out, I am even more anxious to watch everyone else’s. I really feel that this is a useful activity that we will all be able to use in our future classrooms and portfolios. I’m sure we can all agree that we are learning that there is so much more to the digital world than we once imagined and that we are having fun discovering and playing with it all! As interesting as it as been, I can definitely say that we have a lot more work to do before due date! All in good time I guess!

Response 8

Woops! I totally missed a blog! I was absent that week and didn't think we had to post but after reviewing everyone else's I realized I was mistaken and went right from 7 to 9 on my own so here is my response to Literacy/Fluency in regards to Tompkins and other articles we have read thus far:
Firstly as we have seen throughout all of our readings regarding fluency we have come to understand that fluency isn't just the ability to read a word/sentence with fluidity. It is so much more than that. As teachers we need to make sure that our students not only know how to identify/read words but also know what the words mean, and understand their context. As you all know, I am in a Kindergarten classroom and even they are working on perfecting their fluency with words. My CT has integrated Literacy into nearly everything she does (even using math based journals)! There are star words located around the room (which was in the skit Brittany W. and I presented to the class as a vocab/fluency lesson), color words posted, month/day words, weather words, etc. all over her room. She also has the students read through the morning message as a class and circle certain patterns in words or vocab words they have been working on; she even has them go through and fix words that sound right but are actually spelled wrong. All of this at the Kindergarten level! And you should see their writing journals! One student in particular wrote a whole paragraph about how she went ice skating one weekend; totally amazing at that age. I feel that these examples are great motivating factors for me and to all of us as future teachers. While the idea of teaching fluency and literacy in general appear to be daunting tasks for us inexperienced educators, they really are more than manageable and can be incorporated/integrated into almost anything. If Kindergartners can make stabs at fluency and other literacy elements, I'm sure we can learn to teach it!

Week 9 Response

For the vocab lesson for Roll of Thunder I would have to take a different approach when planning because I am in a Kindergarten classroom. I would likely pick several small passages within the book that were appropriate for the students and read them aloud to the students. Before I read anything aloud I would give them "green light/red light" sticks so they could show me if they were confused on any of the vocabulary. IF they were confused on any word I would have them hold up the red side of the stick and I would make a note to address that word. This would help keep the lesson moving and the students on task as they would be listening for words but addressing their confusion without disrupting the entire lesson. After the passage is complete I would write all of the words on the board and would define them for the students in language that they understand. I would also have the students act out the vocabulary so they could physically express themselves and learn while doing so; ideally making the vocabulary more long lasting! The students could also draw pictures of these words being acted out. Both of these activities would help them know what the word looks like being acted out and help them better understand it; especially since these are Kindergartners who use visual illustrations to help 'read' stories.

Week Nine 3/23/09 M.Clover

This week we were to plan a mini-lesson for vocabulary development for "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" and I've decided to create one that would be fitting for the placement classroom that I'm in right now, however I would never use this book for my first and second graders so I'm going to write this lesson as if I were using a different book then I'll make some adjustments for "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" with more specifics.

My students have a pretty hard time reading and I'm in a 1st/2nd grade class (all students are below the level they should be). So I've decided that if I were to use this book in my classroom, firstly I would only pick out a portion of the selected book I want them to read (and make sure it's an appropriate portion) I would read the selection aloud to the students and then have the students pick out the words that they don't understand. Perhaps I'd give them all a copy of the selection or I'd write it on the board and they'd have to circle the words they didn't understand. From here, we would talk about context clues, picture clues and spelling in order for them to try to create an understanding of the words they don't know. Being the teacher, I could predict which words the students would be unfamiliar with so for part two of the lesson I would write the words they didn't understand in a new sentence, in order for them to be able to draw more conclusions about the "meaning" of the word. Lastly, I would ask students to write their own sentences using the new vocabulary terms and probably ask them to draw a picture to go along with it.

After reading, I'm sure you can easily see how it could be adapted for an older audience using "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry". Simply changing the book and the chosen selection from the book would make the lesson more appropriate for older students. Also I probably would not ask 6th or 7th graders to draw me a picture accompanying their sentences :)

Meryl McLaughlin: Week 9

This week I found the readings to be very interesting and pose a very challenging idea about fluency and comprehension. Fluency seems like a huge challenge to me to teach on its own. When I think of a child reading fluently I think about them understanding the word meaning but that is not really true. Looking at it from a college perspective I see how beginning readers would be able to read a word but have no idea what it means, simply because there are times when I do that now with my homework. Then when you tie in the idea of comprehension I can see where students get slowed down in their reading. What I struggle with is how to do you keep teaching both fluency and comprehension to such a large group. In small groups I feel like it would be very manageable but what happens in the case where it is a teacher and 20 students?

An idea for a fluency lesson for Roll of Thunder would be for the students to be broken up into smaller reading groups that are being facilitated by an adult. There will be a selected passage that the adult reads first. Next the passage will be read by everyone in the group together. Then one by one each of the students reads the passage aloud to the group. Then to work on comprehension there will be a small discussion about the passage.

In my classroom there is something similar that happens with learning letter sounds. Each letter of the alphabet has its own book with 10 sentences or so what have a lot of the initial letter sound. They read the book together and circle words and letters they are familiar with.

Week 9 Blog Kelsi Vidal

While reading for this week I was reminded of how difficult it can be to gain word knowledge and what going through it was like in elementary school.  The eight components of word study (concepts and word meaning, multiple meaning, morphemic analysis, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, etymologies, and figurative meanings...yikes!) were very overwhelming to learn from what I remember.  I think for a student who is just being introduced to these concepts they can be intimidating and confusing especially because there are so many little things to remember for each.  I think it can be difficult to differentiate between the spelling of certain words that may sound similar or to become confused when dealing with words that have more than one meaning.  It is not only a challenge for students to learn these concepts, but also can be complicated for teachers to instruct students in.  There are often not concrete explanations for rules like these and that can be difficult for students to comprehend since it is not tangible.  It was interesting to me that students learn the majority of their vocabulary outside of school and incidentally, not through direct instruction.  Obviously this depends on a child's experiences, social situations, and home, but i found this to be quite surprising.  Although teaching vocabulary strategies at school remains an important part of literacy development, it is not the primary place where word study takes place.  When you think about a figure like, students vocabularies can grow at a rate of 3,000 words per year, it is amazing to think about how many words students really do pick up in their everyday life whether it is through direct instruction or somewhere outside of school.  

A couple of vocabulary minilessons that I liked from the book involved the use of a word wall.  The first one had students make their own word wall out of a piece of paper.  They would divide a piece of paper into squares and label each one with a letter of the alphabet.  As they go through the book or a chapter, they write down words that they think are important or that are confusing to them in whatever box the beginning letter of the word corresponds with.  Then as a class or with a group they can share and discuss the meaning and importance of the words from the book.  The lesson had a word wall that was organized by parts of speech (noun, adjective, verb, adverb) and was one large word wall for the entire class.  The students would then go over the more important words for understanding the story with the teacher and discuss them in context of the story.  These lessons are for older students because of the content and level the book is written.

Week 8 Blog Kelsi Vidal

The readings for this week proved to me that fluency, word identification, and comprehension are all interrelated concepts that are essential for reading and writing.   I think it is also important to remember that reading and writing go hand in hand and that to be fluent in one is essentially to be fluent in the other.  One statistic I found interesting was that for first grade students the 300 high frequency words account for 72% of the words that they read.  This conveys to me how truly important it is for students to develop word recognition and fluency through practice and experience to become successful readers and writers.  I think the book also brought up a good point that many students do not come to school with the experiences and exposure to a literacy rich environment and that is something we need to remember as future teachers.  Also, although students may be able to read words and seem as though they can read fluently, they may not be comprehending what they just read.  I tutor students in literacy twice a week and many of them are able to read fluently, but have difficulty with comprehension.  This is something we are told to address as tutors because students often do not monitor their comprehension while they are reading independently so this is something we try to encourage.  

A mini lesson in fluency for Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry could involve the teacher first reading a passage from the book aloud while the student follows along silently.  Then, after the teacher finishes reading, the teacher and student could read the passage together.  Finally, the student can read the passage aloud independently and hopefully feel confident.  This is a strategy we have been taught to use in tutoring because it takes the pressure off students if there are unknown words and gives them multiple opportunities to follow along and then try reading it on their own.

Week Eight 3/16/09 M. Clover

Ahhh Spring Break has totally messed with my schedule. So, I’m not even sure if I’m addressing the right topic in my blog today but I’ll take a shot at it. Assessing fluency and word identification seems like a pretty general topic in the world of literacy. I say this because I’m aspiring to be a lower elementary teacher and I really think that these are large parts of goals for lower ed teachers. I mean, when you think of a successful reader and writer, you have an image of a student who can read and write with out having to stop every two seconds to sound or spell something out. I think that I usually assume that fluency and word identification come AFTER comprehension, but after the readings, I can understand how that is not always the case. I used to think that comprehension was more important that fluency because as long as you understand the reading then it doesn’t matter how fast or slow you read it. However, I now see that if you are fluent in reading, then you may be better able to comprehend because you’re not stuck on how to sound the word out. So ultimately, if you can read more fluently, you can comprehend quicker. This is not to say that I think you should be fluent before you comprehend, because I really think that both concepts should be worked on together.

As far as a mini-lesson goes for fluency, I would say that you could have student’s role play parts in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. You could have them read and re-read the lines until they are fluent in understanding them and then when they come across those words in the future, they would be able to identify them and read them with ease.

Week 7 Response

In the Gibbons chapter, Reading in a Second Language I found a few very powerful quotes that seemed to link together. The first was on page 78, “When you are unable to bring personal knowledge and understanding of a topic to a test, you are effectively robbed of the ability to make use of a key resource for reading”. The quote is so true. If you cannot tap into a prior knowledge or experience related to the topic you are being deprived of a normally easily accessible resource. For the student who has been immersed in the main culture/language of the classroom, tapping into this resource is easy but if a student isn’t familiar with the dominant cultural forms, they would have a very difficult time using experiences to their benefit. This is yet another edge the English as a main language students have over ELL students; an edge that we as educators need to be aware of and do everything we can do overcome. Another quote, similar to the first is, “As a text participant, the reader connects the text with his or her own background knowledge—including knowledge of the world, cultural knowledge, and knowledge of the generic structure” (81). This quote again emphasizes how important the student’s background is to their education and if that background doesn’t coincide smoothly with the culture of the classroom and/or the material, the student will have a difficult time.
The rest of the chapter went on to give a number of different activities that can be used for all students before, during and after reading. I thought all of these were useful, creative activities that could be applied to any classroom and to any student.
The Tompkins readings made me think of something I just did today with my dad! It’s interesting to me that some people, ELL students especially, are not familiar with certain terms, cultural stories and grammar tricks that I have become so familiar with over the years. From slang terms to the standard fairy tale to tricks like the magic/bossy E, some individuals have not been through experiences with these things. Take my dad for example; he is a terrible speller. He was never taught phonics or tricks like the Bossy E. Today I was talking with him about these readings (random I know!) and he was telling me how he feels like an outsider in his own community/culture sometimes because he was never exposed to these types of LA concepts. When I told him about the Boss E and how it makes the vowel in a word say it’s name he was amazed. You would have thought that I was teaching English to an ELL student! It really was strange to see. What we may see as standard could be the exact opposite for someone who is ELL or who, like my Dad, was simply never exposed to such issues.

Meryl McLaughlin: Week 7

With this weeks comprehension readings and English Language Learners I really began to think more about the figures of speech within the English language. There are so many phrase used everyday by me and my peers that without the cultural and social contexts I understand where people would have no idea what something means. It is also confusing all of the different ways words can be spelled and how their spelling changes their meaning so drastically. Then you also have the words that are spelled the same, but the simple difference of a long or short vowel (like in the word live) or a change in a capital or lowercase letter (Polish, polish); it is really a very confusing language. This would also e a challenge because many times the students do not speak English at home. If you think about how much time they spend at school versus how much time they spend at home with family, the instruction at school becomes vital. They not only need to be immersed in the language but in the social context of the language.

I feel like this approach would also be useful when thinking about mainstreaming students, particularly with autism. See appropriate student to student and student to adult interactions is an important part of their development. Putting them in a separate classroom all day, with others who lack this knowledge does not give them the advantage they need. While I feel that full time mainstreaming is not the right thing for every student, I do feel that some type of mainstreaming is always possible. How are students supposed to grow and relate if they are never put in a situation to experiment?

Week 7 Blog Kelsi Vidal

The comprehension articles this week were informational and again brought up comprehension strategies that we sometimes take for granted.  There are so many factors that go into comprehension while reading and these are connections that students must make to make sense of what they are reading.  The Tompkins text brings up three factors that are crucial to comprehension (text structure, genres or categories, and content of text)  which I completely agree with. For example, if a student is reading a fantasy book and takes everything for face value that he/she reads, what they take away from the story and how they apply their new knowledge will be skewed.  A person must first understand the implications behind each genre before they can comprehend their meaning.  The context of what a person is reading is extremely important in comprehension and if ignored can affect comprehension.  Also, knowing the elements of a story (plot, characters, setting, point of view, and theme) and how they fit together is imperative when approaching comprehension.  I'm sure we have all read the fairy tales (for example The Three Little Pigs) that have many versions of the story and are all told from a different point of view.  I have read Three Little Pigs stories from the points of the pigs, the wolf, a narrator and each one is a little different depending on whose point of view it is told from.  The character can completely change the context of the story and our understanding of the events that have taken place in accordance with their point of view.  

In the Gibbons text I really liked all of the examples they gave of things we can do that ELL students would struggle with.  The sentences written with jumbled letters, missing letters, and misspelled words at the beginning of chapter 5 was easy for me to decipher because I had background knowledge and was able to fill in the information.  This proves to me that having background knowledge is an essential part of reading and another obstacle for ELL because they must acquire and consciously learn things that we have inherently gained through exposure.  I also saw connections to the Tompkins chapter we read when they talked about knowledge of the content or topic and knowledge of the kind of genre.  When we see the headings "Bank Robbers Hold Hostages," "Area Manager required, permanent position," and "The Sly Cat and the Clever Mouse," we are able to predict not only what these titles content will be about but also the nature of the title by the way it is written.  Most of us know that these would be a newspaper article, job ad, and a book title but for people who did not grow up in this culture or are just learning English these titles would hold no meaning. Context clues and the way (format) they are written has no significance for beginning ELL students and I imagine this would be  very frustrating for students to not be able to understand what they were reading because they did not understand the context.  This chapter basically says to me that background knowledge and the context of what something is written is invaluable! 

Week Seven 3/2/09 M.Clover

This weeks readings about comprehension and different types of texts made a lot of sense to me. I feel like all of the points that the author made were more like facts about how children learn rather than his own ideas, like a foundation of where to begin when teaching literacy skills. What I got out of the reading was that students need to know what to expect in order to be able to comprehend the reading and incorporate it into their literacy knowledge. For example, students would having difficulty becoming completely literate if they thought that fairy tales were things that happened in real life. In this case, if they did think this, they'd be looked at as sort of crazy in the real world and not as a knowledgeable/literate person. The Tompkins reading was also a bit of a recap from TE 348 as well, which was good since I'm getting ready to have my own Book Talk with my 1/2 graders and my book is a legend. It was nice to have all of the facts about legends right there in the readings because I now know what exactly to hit on so that students will be able to recognize a legend when they see one (hopefully!).

The Gibbons reading was very interesting to me. I'd never thought of second language readers as being "robbed" like they stated in the text but it makes total sense. Second Language readers are robbed of their background knowledge. When I was reading about the "procedure that is quite simple", I has NO idea what they were talking about because I was "robbed" of the background knowledge and it was really frustrating to me! I found myself rushing into the next paragraph to try to figure out what this paragraph was all about (ending up being laundry,ugh.) I really like how this book puts us in a second language reader's position, it's a unique place and one I've never been in before. Lastly, I really like this text because it always gives ideas of what to do with ESL students. It not only gives the problems that they face and why they face them, but it gives solutions which are SO helpful!