Every Mark on the Page

Sources:
"Every Mark on the Page: Educating Family and Community Members about Young Children's Writing" by Kate Foley Cusumano

This article focuses on the importance of educating family and community members about children's writing. Educating people outside of the school environment about children's writing can allow for a more effective experience for the children when learning how to write. Family members need to learn what techniques and strategies work for their kids and what doesn't work so they can help them as much as possible outside of the classroom. Additionally, parents and teachers need to be consistent about teaching the kids the same materials and techniques; otherwise, they could get very confused.

One idea that the article discussed that I really liked was the writing workshop for family and community members. I had never really thought of this, but I think it could be very effective for both the children and the family and community members. Writing workshops teach everyone the same strategies and allows for everyone to be on the same page. The teacher can teach the family and community members how to effectively and efficiently teach the children how to write, and the teacher can also tell them what not to do to avoid making it more difficult for the children. However, in order for the writing workshop to be successful, the article discussed a few things that need to be incorporated while organizing the workshop. Some of these things include: defining writing, talking about the school's goals for each grade level in regards to writing, showing examples of children's writing, providing rubrics and having the audience participate in grading different pieces of writing, and discussing the risks of too much intervention. I think these are all very beneficial elements to the writing workshop, and I also think this is something that family and community members would really appreciate from the teacher. I want to try this out in my future classroom!

A Fresh Look At Writing

Sources:
Chapter 4: Day One: Help Children to Write and Keep Writing

Getting children to write and keeping writing can be very challenging. Most students say it is boring, time-consuming, or useless, but in the grand scheme of things writing is one of the most important things students should learn how to do. However, in order for students to be motivated to write, the teacher needs to introduce it in a positive way and show them where writing comes from and how to begin to write. Chapter 4 discussed this and talked about several approaches that can be used in the classroom whether it is individually, in small groups, or as a class. One approach that really stood out to me was the writing conference, and I think it stood out to me so much because I can relate to it and I have actually conducted a writing conference with my case study student at University Elementary School. The first writing conference I conducted with Braelyn (my case study student) was random and I did not prompt her at all because I wanted to see how creative she was and what she could do on her own without any assistance. She had some difficulties with this and ended up writing about the first time she learned how to spell her name. Before she started writing she put together an organizational graph and wrote who?, what?, when?, when?, and how?, and then from there she wrote her story. This gave me a good starting point and helped me see where I can help her writing abilities improve in the future. After she finished writing I talked to her about it and she explained her writing to me and why she chose the topic she did. The next week she read a book to me about Clifford and then I gave her a writing prompt based on the book; the book was about Clifford and his friends, so I had her write about her favorite memory with her best friend. She wrote a lot better when I gave her a prompt than she did when I had her randomly write for me the first time. She had clear ideas and had a introduction, body, and conclusion. This showed me that she can write well, she just needs something specific to write about in order to work up to her full potential; she needs some direction. With that being said, throughout these past couple weeks I have been introducing her to new topics and getting her to think and explore different areas that she may not be as familiar with.
Writing conferences really are beneficial, and it helps the teacher track the improvements of the student throughout a specific time period. This is something that I want to carry into my own classroom one day so I can help my students more effectively with their writing.

Phonemic Awareness

Sources:
Teaching Phonemic Awareness by Rasinski and Padak

Recently we have been talking a lot about phonics in E339, and to be honest I didn't realize even realize phonemic awareness was a term until we started learning about it in class. In order for children to learn how to read, they first need to learn phonemic awareness. As the article, Teaching Phonemic Awareness states, "Recent research suggests that phonemic awareness is a very important precondition for learning phonics as well as reading (pg. 43)." A lot of children develop phonemic awareness naturally; however, some students enter school with insufficient awareness of language sounds. I think this puts a huge responsibility on us teachers to teach those that are suffering the correct sounds and spellings because this is something they will use for the rest of their lives, and phonics is the framework for a lot of students' success.
In my classroom I want to assess phonemic awareness more often than not so I can get the struggling students on the right track. The article gave a lot of fun and concrete activities that I want to use in my classroom to teach and nurture phonemic awareness. I think the fun and engaging activities are more appealing to the kids because it allows them to be silly while also learning at the same time. It talked about bringing nursery rhymes, chants, poetry, and songs into the classroom in order to learn sounds, and I think this would be very enjoyable for the kids and motivate them to learn. For example, playing with nursery rhymes will help them grasp the concept of the same sound and then you can alter the nursery rhyme so the students can practice different sounds. This is also an activity that the students can connect with because most students probably have heard most of the nursery rhymes throughout their childhood.
Phonemic awareness was something I developed naturally as a child whether it was while I was playing with friends, singing childhood songs and nursery rhymes), being around family, and even just watching cartoons. Since it is something I developed naturally I didn't really view the idea of phonemic awareness from a teacher's perspective, and I didn't realize that it is something we will most likely need to teach in our classroom. It doesn't come naturally to all children, so it is important for me to be patient with those that need help and teach them in a way that is easy for them to understand.

Catching Readers Before They Fall: Ch. 7

I Thought I Knew How to Teach Reading, but Whoa!
This chapter was all about teaching kids how to read and how to read fluently... reading fluently is key. Classrooms these days are becoming more and more diverse, meaning that some students may have high literacy levels while other students may need a lot of extra assistance from the teacher. Throughout this chapter it discussed a lot of different strategies to use for struggling readers at the emergent levels who need lots of support as they learn to take on the earliest strategic action. This chapter made me a little nervous to have my own classroom because I never really thought of having many different types of learners in the classroom; I always imagined a picture perfect classroom where I can do whatever strategies and lessons I please, but that is not realistic at all. This chapter kind of put things into perspective for me and made me realize that I won't have all highly intelligent students.
I really liked the five different assessment tools that were described at the beginning of the chapter. These different tools would be very beneficial to do at the beginning of the school year so I can get a feel for the different literacy levels in my classroom. This will form a good framework for me to work off of for the rest of the year. I think is is important to know the different individual literacy levels in my classroom so I give them texts and activities that are appropriate for them and will help them grow and learn. I can get frustrated very easily, so as I am working with the struggling readers it is very important that I stay calm and patiently help them work through their difficulties. As the book says, "Know that these students do have strengths; it may just take a bit longer for you to discover them (pg.110)." Every student has their own strengths and weaknesses, but it might just take a little more work and interaction on the teacher's part to bring those strengths out of the struggling readers. Another quote that stood out to me was, "there are no set teaching sequences: there is no prescription to learn this before that (pg. 110)." I always feel like there is a set sequence to teaching and that I have to follow specific lessons, rules, and guidelines, but that is not true! Yes, there is certain curriculum and standards that we have to follow as teachers, but we do not have to follow a set teaching sequence. As the book says, we need to remain responsive to the needs of EACH child, making sure we are linking what they already know to new learning. Before we start teaching the students new information, we need to make sure they have a good grasp on the information they already know. All of the students' knowledge builds on top of each other and if they don't understand something before learning new information it could mess up their whole learning experience. Readers also draw upon their background knowledge along with the pictures to predict a story line, so students need to be clear on their background knowledge so it is easier for them to draw meaning and understand different books.

Webcast Reflection

Making Decisions for Individual Learners Within a Small Group 
Throughout the podcast, the speakers really stressed the importance of small group work and having the students work together. Literacy is a very important component of the learning process and it is important that students learn all the different strategies that go into reading and writing so they can work and learn efficiently and effectively.
The first speaker discussed the sources of information that students use to draw meaning and understand the text that they are reading. The three different sources are meaning, syntactic, and visual information; students use these three sources of information to understand words. However, I learned that is it important to teach the students to balance these sources so they understand the text to their full potential. The speaker gave an example that if the student is mostly using their visual source of information and hardly touching on their syntactic and visual sources, then you, as the teacher, need to encourage them to use all three together. Students need to get in the habit of using all sources together and balancing all three so it is easier for them to read more complex text when the time comes. Additionally, the speaker stressed the importance of using a network of strategies while reading instead of focusing on one specific one; this is something we learned in our cluster as well. The speaker said that the network of strategies should be "interconnected, flexible, overlapping, fluent, and self-initiated." This is something I will remember for my future classroom because I think it is really important for students to use different types of strategies instead of just a few because it will get them to understand the text better and become better readers. A quote by Frank Smith that they mentioned was ,"Reading depends more on what is behind the eyes-- on the non-visual information than the visual information in front of them." This really stood out to me because I never thought of reading in that sense. Elementary students who are first starting to read need to dig deeper than the text on the page in order to understand the true meaning on the book. This will help them develop good comprehension strategies as well, and it will help build a good foundation of literacy skills. Every word in a book has a meaning behind it, so as teachers I think it is really important to teach the students that.
The second speaker talked about making instructional decisions and knowing the strength of the readers in the classroom. I didn't really understand the importance of this until after listening to this podcast. I learned that it is important to know the strengths of each student because you don't want to give students books that are too complex for their literacy level because they won't learn anything; they will be more focused on how to say the words they don't know. In order for teachers to know the strengths of each student they can look at the student's interests, experiential base, language, and the strategies they use. It is also very important to assess student processing by keeping a record of some sort to assess the needs for strategy instruction; it is the teacher's job to help the struggling students and point them in the right direction if need be. A good strategy that the speaker discussed that I will be sure to use in my classroom to assess independent reading is sitting next to individual students while they are in a small group and listen to them read. This is a good strategy because the teacher isn't necessarily singling any student out; they are just discreetly listening to different students read aloud. As the students read the teacher jots down notes and then discusses with the student things that they need to work on and what they are doing a good job at.
Lastly, the third speaker talked about ELL and closing the gap between ELL and their English-speaking peers. This section of the podcast freaked me out a little bit because I have not learned a lot about working with ELL and teaching them English as their second language. I am not fluent in any other language besides English, so I will need to learn how to communicate with and teach ELL in an effective and efficient way without embarrassing them in front of their peers. However, I did learn some strategies in this podcast that I can use in my classroom. The speaker talked about the importance of small group instruction and guided reading lessons and how they are great ways to improve ELL; this is a good way for the students to learn from one another and help each other learn English. In order for this to be effective though, the students need to be placed in groups with students that are have similar literacy levels. There were many other strategies mentioned in the podcast and I can't wait to use them to become a better teacher for the future ELL in my classroom.
This podcast was very useful and I learned a lot of useful strategies and tips to create a classroom full of fluent readers. I can't wait to have my own classroom and help my students grow every day in the literacy department and in other parts of their lives as well. I get more and more excited to teach every day!

Update On My Field Experience

Working at University Elementary School, where I am doing my field experience, has been such a joy. I absolutely love working with the kids and helping them grow, and my case study student has been so fun to work with also. For the most part she is a very good reader and writer, and she loves to read to me while pretending to be the "teacher." At times she will get stuck on a word when she is reading or need help spelling a word when she is writing, but that is something we work through together in order to help her learn. Language arts and literacy is not one of my stronger subjects so it has been a little challenging helping the students in this area, but I try my best to use the strategies and techniques that we have learned in class thus far.

It is really exciting to actually work in the classroom and get a feel for what is it like to be a teacher. The past two years of college have consisted of me sitting in a classroom learning and preparing to become a teacher, so it is neat to finally be able to work in a real classroom with students and get a taste of reality. It also makes me that much more excited to have my own classroom someday. I already have so many cool ideas from Mrs. Cowden's room, my field experience teacher, and I can't wait to incorporate them into my classroom. 

Catching Readers Before They Fall: Ch. 4

     This chapter, Beyond "Sound It Out," was prominently about helping students put sentences and words together in a way that makes sense. A lot of students skip over words they don't know while reading, or they will pronounce a word completely wrong and not think anything of it, as discussed in the book. This is something I really noticed in my case study student the past couple weeks I have been working with her, so this chapter was interesting to me and there were a lot of helpful techniques and strategies I can't wait to use with her to help her become a better reader. While reading Braelyn, my case study student, will skip over words she doesn't know and she does not monitor for 1:1 matching. For example if the book says "come and play baseball with us" she will say, "come play with us." She has a tendency to shorten the sentence and not say every word, but still manages to get the point of the sentence across. However, as a beginning reader that is not a good technique for her to develop because as she gets older she will have to learn how to read every word of a sentence correctly and in order for it to make sense. The book gave a lot of great examples and strategies to use, so I can't wait to try those out and help Braelyn progress! 

      Before reading this chapter I didn't realize how much work goes into reading and helping students read correctly. As an adult, like me, it comes naturally so it is hard to put yourself in the shoes of an elementary school student and help them start from scratch. Every student reads differently and has a different way of thinking, so as a teacher it is so, so important to be patient and help them every step of the way. I also noticed a pattern throughout this book; in every single chapter it stresses how important modeling is, so I really want to be sure to use modeling while working with Braelyn and all of my future students and help them become a stronger reader every single day.