Book Club #3-Kindergarten Literacy

Book Club #3-Kindergarten Literacy

Heather and I read the last two chapters of Kindergarten Literacy by Dr. Anne McGill-Franzen on reading and writing.  Children write for a reason.  They have something to say that they want others to understand.  Learning to write often precedes learning to read.  Reading and writing go hand in hand.  Wanting to write motivates children to learn how print works.  Writing is talk with an added twist.  The twist is we must choose a form in which to convey our ideas. We talked about the importance of the table on page 198 ‘A Child’s Understanding of Print Concepts’.  We must understand the progression of a child’s writing.  Children need to learn how to write for different purposes and for different people.  Our audience or ideas are never the same.  I like the idea of thinking aloud about the process of writing, the process of choosing an idea, thinking what to write next, think about your audience, or choosing words, etc.  There are many useful strategies in both of these chapters.  I am also excited about “sharing the pen” with my students more this year.  I have been doing guided writing with my students after my guided reading lesson but I would like to have more writing interaction as a whole group.  I also agree with Heather that the everyday writing routines will be very useful when I begin to think about scheduling for the upcoming school year.  I want to do more writing strategies in my classroom such as revision, editing, and articulation. Read alouds, shared reading, guided reading and independent reading are very important and a combination of these things can support children at all ability levels.  We also must model reading strategies so that they will be able to use them effectively.  There is no reading if either decoding or listening comprehension is missing.  We thought the table on page 250 was very useful and also how to model the strategies is beneficial.  The idea of linking reading and writing with series books which is a new strategy for the both of us.  We hope to use this in our classrooms since we know more about it now.       

I love the last paragraph on page 222, “Watching a kindergartener learn to write is like watching a morning glory unfurl in he morning sun.  One minute the child is writing a faint scribble on the page, and the next time you turn around, the writing is in full bloom.  What a thrill it is to see that full, bold color, and hear a new voice declaring itself to the world.  And, oh, children have so much to say!”  It is so exciting to see my students grow throughout the school year and I believe Dr. Anne’s book will be helpful as a start a new journey with a new group of students this fall.    

Theoretical Discussion #3-Neufield, Pardo, Stahl

Comprehension- Pardo, Stahl, and Neufeld

Theoretical Discussion #3

Shannon Blackwell

           

            The articles we read this week all dealt with comprehension and its uses in the classroom.  Comprehension strategies are important to a reader because they have the potential to provide access to knowledge that is removed from personal experience.  My group (Krista, Lara, and myself) discussed how there is tremendous evidence that teacher questioning can play a key role in enhancing student comprehension.  We saw more of this evidence in the book Choice Words that we read last semester in Dr. Anne McGill-Franzen’s class. We know that the type of text talk, questioning, and what you say modeling and thinking out loud are very important in teaching kids to become strategic readers.  We all like the tables regarding prompts in Neufield’s article, “Getting Ready to Read” and “ While I’m Reading and When I’m Done.”  We plan on using these tables in our own classroom as an extra resource in our toolbox.  It explained in this article in great detail that question asking and answering can be viewed as the strategy that drives all the other strategies.  And we must have explicit instruction of individual strategies.  The process of explicit instruction is one in which the teacher must take an active role in teaching the strategy to be learned, rather than simply presenting it and hoping the students “catch on” and learn to use it effectively.  Again model, model, model. We also believe that comprehension should not be based in language arts alone but across all subject areas.  We found that the teaching of comprehension strategies does not always occur in classrooms but it can be done.  We have to teach our students to comprehend by teaching decoding skills, vocabulary words, motivate our students, and engage them in personal responses to text.  Teaching vocabulary is a very important part of comprehension. We have read the research where first-grade children from higher-SES groups know twice as many words in comparison to lower SES children. 70% of our children at our school are on free/reduced lunches.  We are implementing a Vocabulary program for this very reason.  Research also says that even if a child comes to school and learns to decode words and progresses in reading, if the vocabulary is not there, it will come back to them in 4^th or 5^th grade.  The texts are harder and they might can read the passage, but if they can’t comprehend it they won’t understand what they just read. Students must actively engage with the words-use them in written and spoken language in order for the words to become a part of the students’ reading and writing vocabularies.

Pardo pushes the research that Read Alouds are one of the most effective ways to increase comprehension.  We will be implementing interactive read alouds throughout our school this fall but I did a wiki in regards to reading aloud and have been doing a few interactive read alouds in my own classroom last semester and I believe he is right.  I felt like all of my students took something away from the read aloud and probably understood the story more than if I just read it to them.  Students need to be engaged and talked to about a text.  He also says informational books are a great way to add world knowledge/background info.  In Stahl’s article, we were surprised to see that she said Beck and McKeown’s interactive read-alouds actually limits discussion of background knowledge and extensive discussions of the students’ prior knowledge often led students far from the text.  I think students’ attention can be redirected and time limited to their discussion so they do not venture away from the idea.  I have used this program in my classroom and they started using the vocabulary effective in their reading, writing, and general conversation.    We all liked the idea literature webbing in Stahl’s article.  I am excited to use it in my own classroom this year.  It was also interesting that Stahl suggested video was advantageous for at-risk students.  She said they could re-tell twice as many statements as to the children who only heard the story and viewed the illustrations.  I feel like children watch too much TV and need to have more exposure to books in hand.  It may be useful tool, but the challenge as she states is finding quality videos. 

            The articles I read this week really helped my to look into my own teaching and see where I can improve teaching comprehension to my students.  When we started guided reading this past year, I thought there is no way they will be able to read these books and understand what they just read.  But I was proven wrong because I was able to give them strategies they could use to do just that. 

Book Club Discussion #2-Kindergarten Literacy Chapters 4 and 5

Heather and I discussed Chapters 4 and 5 in Dr. Anne’s Kindergarten Literacy book this week.  As Chapter 4 is titled, “What Counts as Progress?” was our first topic.  You must “know a child to teach the child”.  The gap between “literacy-rich” and “literacy-deprived” kids begins to widen as they begin reading and writing.  As teachers we must do everything in our power to lessen this “great divide”.  Based on the assessments from the book that we discussed last week, we see we can hold ourselves accountable for learning gains of all students.  As Johnston says, we must become “evaluation experts” because experts see children differently than non-experts (writing: experts see signs of development whereas non-experts see scribble scrabble, reading: experts hear self-correction and monitoring behaviors while non-experts hear only dysfluency and errors).  And struggling readers are not the only ones that need differentiated instruction.  We need to increase the learning rate of high achievers as well as those starting far behind.  Heather and I also discussed how one school used the literacy assessments from our readings to construct a local norm of what they expected of kindergarteners.  From that they could see what the “average yearly progress” looked like for kindergarten student.  So based on that a teacher could see that if a child knows a certain amount of letters at the beginning of the year what reading level they may achieve by the end of the year (0-10: reads back own writing, 11-24: GR Level A, 25-41: GR Level B, 42-47: GR Level C, 48-54: GR Level D or higher).  We felt like this table was closely related to the students in our own classroom.  As we discussed how we would use the results of these literacy assessments, we talked about the two teachers in the book: Ruth and Mandy.  It was interesting to see how they used their test results, placed them into the stages of early literacy development, and the ideas they would use to help them in areas they are struggling.  We also thought about our students from this past year and how they would have fit into each of these stages (letters & sounds kids/sounds kids which are the pretend readers and writers, almost readers-beginning readers and writers, and readers-conventional readers and writers) as the year progressed. 

In Chapter 5, we talked about the different ways of teaching the alphabet, names, and words that were discussed in this chapter.  A child’s name is their most “prized possession” so why not use it to help them learn.  Visual supports and think alouds really help students think about what they are learning.  Students must know what a “letter”, “word”, “sound”, “first,last” is before you can ask them these key concepts.  The use of names from a word wall was neat because they compared the same beginning letters but sometimes that letter makes a different sound.  Using “I spy” or hunt game with the word wall is also beneficial.  Letter sorts, font sorts, making letters (rainbow writing), writing names, name games, name hunts, name graphs, and name sorts are all great ways to teach letters (we have been using some of these already in our classroom).  There are so many useful tools in this chapter that we could have went on and on.  We can see ourselves taking a lot of these activities from this book to incorporate in the upcoming school year. J  

Theoretical Discussion #2-Allington, Valencia & Buly

Krista Lara, and I discussed the ideas from the Allington and Valencia/Buly articles this week.  We discussed how Allington “concludes that enhanced reading proficiency rests largely on the capacity of the classroom teachers to provide expert, exemplary reading instruction-instruction that cannot be packaged or regurgitated from a common script because it is responsive to children’s needs”.  When I first started teaching, I was given scripted math and phonics program and it was difficult for me to deviate from my norm when we adopted our Scott Foresman reading series a couple of years later.  But I really had to step out of my comfort zone when we started guided reading.  I think guided reading has helped me become a better teacher all around not just in reading.  I am now able to be more flexible and be more “responsive to children’s needs”.  I can no longer look at my class as a whole I can see what each of my students need individual and use that information to help them all progress accordingly.    Time: “reading and writing versus stuff”-effective teachers had their students reading and writing for as much as half of the day (we have allotted more time at our school for reading and writing as well).  We have been doing more guided reading, independent reading, and adding more science and social studies to our curriculum J.  But the instructional planning of the reading and writing is what makes the use of this extra time so beneficial.  Texts: “a rich supply they can actually read”.  Through a grant we have received, we were able to purchase these types of books.  We discussed how we have more resources to where we could have books for their instructional level as well as their independent level (more texts will be added to our book room as well).  This will help with both their comprehension and fluency.  I told my group that now when I send my students to read-to-self, I know they have a book box on their level and they are actually reading.  In the past they would just "pretend" to read.  “One-size-fits-all” does not work and the lowest achievers are the ones that will benefit most from a rich supply of books.  Teaching: “active instruction, explicit explanation, and direct teaching”.  Model, model, model!  You cannot expect a child to understand how to do something unless you show them how to do it.  We talked about how assign-and-assess does not work.  We have to have active instruction in our classrooms.  How if we give our students a missing vowel worksheet, the ones that will be able to complete it will be the ones that already know that skill (basically just another assessment).  I have found myself become frustrated in the past if a child could not complete a worksheet but now I know that I have to model and demonstrate those skills multiple times prior.  Talk: great teachers generate more student talk.  The one doing the most talking is doing the most learning (so we need our students talking more).  As teachers we need to use more “open” questions with more than one answer not interrogational questions with only one answer.  Classroom talk should be more conversational and not interrogational.  The idea that "thoughtful" classroom talk leads to improved reading comprehension, especially in high-poverty schools” which is just like our own school with 70% of our students on free/reduced lunch.  We may be the only people that talk to them and use meaningful words they can add to their limited vocabulary.  Tasks: “longer assignments and less emphasis on filling day with multiple, shorter tasks”.  It is definitely true that students become more engaged in longer tasks because they have more time to think deeper about the task at hand.  Student choice is also very beneficial. Also it makes it more difficult to see which of their peers is high or low achieving.  Testing: “more on effort and improvement than simply on achievement”-we always need to look at where a student began and how far they have come.  Parents need more explanation about this because they want to see a numerical grade (especially when we started using our standards based report card).  Teachers and parents can actually see what a student needs to do to achieve a better grade. 

In the article by Valencia & Buly, we discussed the in-depth study of 108 and the six-prototypical types of students.  “A test score is like a fever, it is a symptom that needs more specific analysis for the problem.  We need to stop buying in to all special programs and figure out what is going on with each child.  Assessing students is time consuming but like they recommend we need to go beneath the scores on state tests by conducting additional diagnostic assessments that will help identify students' needs. We have recently been trained by Dr. Allington on the Woodcock-Johnson Revised (WJ-R) and it was interesting to see it used in this study.  This study just shows that we may think a child is strong overall but unless we pick it apart we may not see their weaknesses because they have strength in other areas.  We must break it down to see what they need.  We need to match assessments to a student’s needs.  Long-term professional development and time to implement great assessments is beneficial.  Just like we have at our school, you need “multilevel, flexible, small-group instruction”.  I feel like our school is moving in the right direction to help our students become strong, independent, life-long readers. 

Book Club Discussion #1: Kindergarten Literacy-Dr. Anne McGill-Franzen Part 1 and 2

Heather and I discussed in our book club for Kindergarten Literacy the importance of professional development and how kindergarten is more academic (Part 1) and compared our kindergarten assessments to the assessements in Dr. Annes' book. We have started the Fountas and Pinnell Reading Benchmark Assessment and Jan Richardson's Guiding Reading at our school and were given high quality training in both instead of it just being handed to us and said here you go.  When I started teaching kindergarten seven years ago, it was half day with snack to full day with my students reading by the time they leave my classroom.  It is unreal where I started as a teacher and how much I have grown professionally so I feel like my students have too.  In Part 2, we compared our beginning of the year assessment to the ones provided in the book.  We normally assess on letter and sound recognition but I think it would be ideal to pull some assessments from this book such as print concepts.  I had a child that if I had assessed print concepts at the beginning of the year I could have provided him with more support for tracking print because he would just follow along in his group based on what the other students were doing.
We also agreed that we liked the idea of using portfolios in our classroom.  This is a great concept because 1) they involve students in their own learning and 2) they allow your students and you to compile samples of students' work that represent development over time.  This is a great way to communicate progress to themselves, their parents, and their teacher.  Also the writing rubric helped us think about our own students writing in the classroom.  This will help us watch our students' progress and know exactly where they are.  I believe this book will be beneficial to us as kindergarten teachers and help us strengthen us professionally.

Theoretical Discussion-Fitzgerald and Duffy

Krista and I met to discuss the articles by Fitzgerald and Duffy.  "What exactly is the balanced approach?" was the first topic of our discussion.  We agreed that there is no single, right balanced approach to teach reading but a philosophical perspective (Pressley 1996).  The idea of a balanced approach varies across the board.  Fitzgerald discusses some of these approaches in her article and the one that fits the closest to what we have been doing at BES is Cunningham & Hall's four blocks reading program.  We have implemented guided reading, self-selected reading (read to self during daily 5), writer's workshop, and working with words (word work during daily 5 and words their way this upcoming year).  The only difference I see is that Cunningham avoided ability grouping but we ability group based on reading level and the skills that need to be targeted based on the child.  Krista and I discussed the most recent definition of a balance as "a decision-making approach through which the teacher makes thoughtful choices each day about the best way to help each child become a better reader and writer" (Spiegel, 1998).  This idea was similar to the thoughts in the article by Duffy where the teacher thought and implementation of multiple ideas makes the difference instead of just a set reading program.  A teacher must be able to think on their feet and use what they think will help that particular child that particular day because we know "no two situations are the same; no two days are the same".  Every child has a different way they are able to learn how to read.  One child may do well using the whole language approach and another child with phonics while another may need experience in both whole language and phonics to be a successful reader.  We also discussed how children's knowledge about reading is equally important: local knowledge (phonological awareness, sight words, sound-symbol relationship, orthographic patterns, word identification strategies, etc.), global knowledge (understanding, interpretation, and response to reading), and love of reading (feelings, positive attitudes, motivation, and desire to read).  Together we need to be able to use the knowledge of others to help us in our balanced view, that is that teachers, parents, and children learn from one another (Fitzgerald).  How we group our students was another topic we discussed (homogeneous vs. heterogeneous) because that can change the whole dynamic of your balanced approach.  Teachers will vary their groupings based on the activity or lesson at hand.  As Fitzgerald said, Balance does not mean "one size fits all".  As we explored the article by Duffy, we discussed how a teacher should not have an "anything goes" approach.  As Duffy said, "Effective teachers root their eclecticism in assessing students and analyzing situations before deciding what method or material to use, in ongoing evaluation, and in thoughtfully adapting to the students and situation".  This article really hits all that are involved in the reading process.  "There is no one perfect method for teaching reading to all children.  Teachers, policy makers, researchers, and teacher educators need to recognize that the answer is not in the method but in the teacher" (Duffy).  This quote is very powerful because they need to let the teachers teach because they know what the students need and just need to be given the resources needed to help them with what the students need.

As I reflect on my own teaching, I see how I have conformed to a set reading program because I was told to do so.  It was hard to get out of my comfort zone with guided reading and explore what worked for me but once I did that it was a wonderful feeling.  I began to find myself as a teacher finally.  I could actually teach reading to my students effectively instead of worrying if I was doing it wrong.  Just  like in the Duffy article, teacher education must be ongoing not short term.  I was taught how to do guided reading but then I had continuous support as I implemented the program and continued learning different ideas throughout.  Just like me going back to school to receive my Ed.S as a Reading Specialist, I know that will help me be a stronger teacher for my students, parents, fellow colleagues, and even my daughter.

What makes me a reader?

*I read children's books, textbooks/educational articles for class, and magazines (Parent, All You, Better Homes and Garden, etc.).

*I am not able to read for fun as much as I use to but am hoping I can get back on track reading for fun. I like reading popular novels or best sellers. I always read children's book for fun to bring out the kid in me.

*I enjoy reading magazines about parenting, recipes, home living, and entertainment.

*Like most of our students, I avoid reading texts that are too hard for me or of little interest (business, political, etc.)

*I enjoying reading on the couch or in my bed. I like to cozy up to a good book. Outdoor reading is something I also enjoy (at the beach/pool, on a blanket under a shade tree, etc.)

*I read late at night, during my daughter's naps, and sometimes early in the morning. I have to have it very quiet if I am reading something for a class but not as much if it is for enjoyment.

*One of the most important people I read to besides my students is my daughter Mia because I know how beneficial it will be for her once she enters school and I enjoy the one on one time I have with her while we read. I read to my students at school on a daily basis and multiple times a day. I read for the professors of my graduate classes and principal at my school if he gives us articles or texts to read.

*My earliest reading memory is that I always enjoyed looking at books and even comics out of my mamaw's sunday papers.

*I do not really remember how I learned to read. My first grade teacher, Mrs. Mantooth, taught me how to read and she was a great reading teacher. She always made reading fun so that is probably why I did not realize I was really learning how to read. I think our reading program was more of reading by sight with a little phonics added in.