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.
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Monday, October 13, 2014
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.
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!
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!
Monday, October 6, 2014
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.
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