June 28th/30th Readings

In Running Records: For classroom teachers is a guideline for how to implement a running record as part of your classroom assessment. It explains how to actually do a running record, how to record the results, how to score the results, and how to interpret it. I found this book very helpful because it outlined exactly how to perform a running record and keep track of your student's progress over time. I will definitely be using this in my future classroom.

The article Matching Texts and Readers talks about leveling and how to find suitable texts that match the level of reading that children are on. It details a 10 step leveling system to help teachers determine which level a book should be on. They consider vocabulary, size and layout of print, predictability, illustration support, complexity of concepts. By matching texts to readers, it helps them to get the best kind of practicing for their reading level to further develop their reading skills. I found this article very valuable in that it is a very important topic. If children are being given texts that are far out of their reach they may become frustrated and discouraged, in contrast if the texts are too easy they will become bored. It is very important to make sure that children have texts that challenge them, while not overwhelming them.

The article The schools we have. The schools we need. talks about the authors opinion of necessary reforms in elementary schools. The article offers a variety of issues which need to be changed including experience vs. ability, curriculum vs. instruction, and teaching vs. assigning. The article goes on to offer five steps to begin making these changes happen. I thought this article was interesting, although a little extreme. The changes suggested would definitely be hard to make possible although I think some are valid points, such as the need for reform about comprehension as opposed to question answering.

The article Looking Inside the Classrooms discussed determining effecting reading instructions strategies. After doing studies of teachers and their teaching practices over an extended period of time it was determined that different age groups responded more positively in their learning outcomes to different teaching styles. I was not at all surprised to find that small group instruction was one of the most valuable practices in the younger grades.

June 23rd Guided Reading Article

The article I found on guided reading is called Using Centers to engage children during guided reading time: Intensifying learning experiences away from the teacher and it is about what children should be doing when they are not the focus of guided reading. About two thirds of a child's time spent during the guided reading block is spent away from the teacher therefore it is important that they also be doing meaningful literacy activities independently. My article gave many ideas as to how to manage this time, but it focused mainly on the idea of literacy centers throughout the classroom. The article also listed suggested centers such as Big Books, Reading independently or with a friends, Reading the Room (environmental print), Listening Post (books on tape), and Readers Theatre (reading aloud) to name a few. The article was very informative and really made a great point that we need to make sure as teachers that while we are working in small groups we need to ensure that the rest of out students are also receiving meaningful instruction from other medias.

http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.utk.edu:90/stable/20205126

This article came from Google Scholar so you may have to use your netID to sign in and look at it!

June 21st readings

I found the article Kindergartners Can Do It, Too! very compelling and I was impressed by the level of comprehension Mrs. Hope was able to achieve with her kindergartners. She used so many different strategies but none too far removed from the others. I liked the way she gave her children very concrete visualizations so that they would better understand what she was asking them to think about. I especially enjoyed her explanation of schemas through the "Velcro Theory." I feel that it really made the concept simple enough that her children could easily grasp it.

I thought it was interesting how the article What every teacher needs to know about comprehension talked about the readers world knowledge being key in their comprehension. I think it is so important to consider this when working with children on comprehension. My sister worked in an inner city Memphis school this past year teaching third grade and her class had to read a story that used the word "lawn." Not one child in her class has ever lived in a house, therefore the majority of them did not know what a lawn was. It is vital to keep in mind the context in which you are teaching when considering comprehension.

The article The Comprehension Matrix only verifies the point that I made in the previous paragraph. If a reader has no background knowledge on a subject it is impossible for them to comprehend it. I think that this is a definite struggle that we as teachers will have to face. In addition, this article  mentioned a study that was done asking teachers what environmental factors effect their ability to comprehend and they mentioned things such as worries and noise. I think it is really important to keep this in mind when asking students to read and comprehend.

In chapter 7 of the book I really loved the idea of the Oprah Winfrey interview. What a great way to get children thinking about details and really paying attention! It seems like such a fun, interactive way to encourage comprehension in your classroom and it is definitely something I will keep in mind for my own classroom some day. In addition, I liked the section on KWL charts. I have actually done these several times in the preschool that I work at and I have seen what a valuable tool they can be in getting children to really notice things about what they are studying whether it be reading or some other topic of interest.

June 16th Vocabulary

The article Vocabulary Lessons discusses the lack of resources available about teaching vocabulary in schools. It then describes four practices that educations can use to "implement a comprehensive approach to vocabulary development." The first is to "develop word awareness and love of words through word play" which uses playing with words to foster a love of words as well as helping children to develop metacognitive understanding about words. I think this is a great way to use children natural love of play to encourage them to learn new vocabulary in a fun way. The second is to "deliver explicit, rich instruction to develop important vocabulary" through the use of the STAR model of instruction. I liked the idea of this method because it gives a very clear road map as to how to teach vocabulary in an intentional way. The third practice is to "build strategies for independence" which stresses learning to use tools such as root words or the dictionary in order to decode words independently. The fourth and final practice is to "engage students actively with a wide range of books." This practice is the one I think may be the most important because child can be exposed to a huge variety of vocabulary words through the use of literature that they may not ever be exposed to in conversation.

The second article I read, The Early Catastrophe was about a research study that was done with lower, middle, and upper class families where their everyday conversations with their children were recorded and analyzed to see how many words each family used with their child. The recording began when the children were 7-9 months old and ended when they were 3 years old. The findings were overwhelming in that it became immediately apparent that the number of words a child knows is directly related to the number of words their parents know and use with their child. By age four, the average low SES child has had experience with 13 million fewer words than an upper SES child. I found this article amazing, although not surprising. The sheer amount of difference between the vocabulary experiences of these two levels of income is incredible to me however, I have always felt that there was a connection between parents vocabulary and children vocabulary. My parents never hesitated to use words that I did not know but they were always more than willing to define them and even spell them if I asked. Today I have a large vocabulary and I attribute it to the fact that my parents spoke to me like an adult even in my early childhood.


In The Vocabulary Rich Classroom the author stresses the use of adding new vocabulary words into conversations in the classroom. It talks about using different strategies such as promoting word strategies, selecting words to teach based on a 3 tier model, modeling the use of sophisticated vocabulary, being word conscious, as well as avoiding the temptation to dumb down our language to children. This last strategy really hit home with me because as I discussed in the previous paragraph, my own parents made a point not to dumb down their own speech just because my sister and I were young. I really feel that speaking to children as though they understand all of the words that you do is imperative in developing their vocabularies.

In chapter 6 of the book, I really enjoyed reading about bringing real things into the classroom and anchoring words to them. What a wonderfully simple teaching tool! The book describes taking item from home that your students might not know the name of and bringing them into the classroom and then having "show and talk" sessions. It also talks about playing 20 questions to try to describe objects. I think this is a great idea to reinforce the definitions of nouns in vocabulary lessons.

June 14th

In the article What can I say besides "sound it out"? Coaching word recognition in beginning reading the author talks about coaching children by teaching them cues that will help them to decode the words they don't know by sight. By giving them both general cues and more focused cues the teacher can help the child to come to pronounce a word on their own. In addition, it helps to teach the child alternative skills that they can use on their own when reading. The article then goes on to discuss how teachers should go about generating cues as well as how coaching can be used effectively. I found this article very useful in describing alternative ways to help children read words that they don't know by sight. Having many ways of asking them to "sound it out" will not only help them when you are standing right there helping them, but will also give them more self coaching techniques to use when they are reading on their own.

In the article Supporting phonemic awareness development in the classroom, the author explains the concept of phonemic awareness as the awareness that the speech stream consists of a sequence of sounds or phonemes, the smallest unit of sound that makes a difference in communication and the meaning of words.  It goes on to discuss inventive spelling and how it is the beginning of phonemic awareness and children understanding that speech is made up of small sounds. Phonemic awareness instruction is discussed as well as the use of cues. I found it interesting that both articles discussed the use of cues and how they can be very helpful to children. I also found it interesting that the article said that only 10 to 30 minutes per session on phonemic awareness can be useful in increasing skills but that really the quality of the session was what most effected the outcome.

In Chapter 5, "Teaching Phonics and Spelling Patterns" the author talks about guided discovery which is about children needing to learn strategies to help them read so that they can do it on their own later. This then relates to the topic of coaching which is the process of helping children develop the skills to decode words they don't know by sight. I found the section on  the Nifty Thrifty Fifty These fifty words basically  "include examples of all the common prefixes and suffixes as well as common spelling changes." These words help you to decode all other words as you come to them. I thought this was a really interesting concept and something I had never considered before.

June 9th, 2011 Fluency Reading

The article Creating Fluent Readers by Timothy Rasinski talks about the skills that children need to develop in order to become fluent readers. There are three main areas to work in: accuracy, reading rate, and prosodic reading. Accuracy has to do with the child actually decoding the text and being able to say the words out loud. Reading rate addresses how proficiently the child can decode the words and most children should be able to read about 100 words per minute on their reading level. Prosodic reading is about the way that children verbalize what they're reading including the inflection, pauses, and overall tone of their voice. I found it very interesting that the article stresses that reading rate is not the same as reading quickly. It tells that the speed with which children read is really no reflection on their comprehension and by training children to read "fast" we are causing them to miss the meaning behind the words. I remember doing activities in elementary school where we were timed when reading out loud and I really agree with this article: it does not help you to read for comprehension at all. I also found the idea of prosodic reading interesting because I never would have thought that that would be a key component in assessing whether or not children are fluent readers.


The article One Minute Fluency Measures: Mixed Messages in Assessment and Instruction by Theresa A. Deeney discusses the one minute fluency assessments that many schools have begun to use in recent times. This article first adresses three "vehicles to comprehension" which are accuracy, rate, and prosody. It then goes on to say that the components that should be addressed when assessing fluency (speed, prosody, accuracy, and comprehension) are not necessarily what is being paid attention to. Most assessments only take note of accuracy and rate however this definition of fluency is far too narrow. One issue that has arisen from this is that the curriculum have been based more and more around these one minute assessments and now instead of the assessment simply measuring, the curriculum is being driven by it. I found this very troubling, in addition to the point the article makes about children being capable of allocating all of their focus onto a one minute assessment and how it does not accurately portrait how a child will do when reading over time. I also found useful the section on making the most of one minute assessments and how it should be used mainly to determine which students are at risk so that you can better focus your efforts. The article goes on to offer advice for how to put into practice ways to improve fluency. I was interested to see that one of the ideas is to read interesting texts. It seems like such a simple idea, but I think that teachers often overlook that fact that children have to be motivated to want to read and something as easy as offering them interesting readings could really have an effect on their desire to practice reading.