Instructional Scaffolds

     When you were learning to read do you remember the teacher asking you questions like, does that make sense? Or, maybe you remember them reminding you to look at the pictures and the words together.  Well these types of questions and comments are all important instructional scaffolds that teachers use to help their students expand their learning.
     Four of the most useful scaffolds, according to Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher are:
1. Questioning to check for understanding- by asking elicitation, elaboration, clarification, divergent, heuristic, and inventive questions
2. Prompting cognitive and metacognitive work- by prompting background knowledge; process or procedural knowledge; using models, templates, or frames; and reflective knowledge
3. Cueing student's attention- by visual cues, verbal cues, gestural cues, physical cues, and environmental cues
4. Providing direct explanations and modeling- when the student still does not understand or needs more help after trying the other scaffolds

     When I first started reading about these different types of scaffolds I thought that there would be no way that I would be able to use all of these in trying to teach a lesson, but after learning more about the different scaffolds I found that they are actually things that are very easy to incorporate into a lesson and some of them are natural questions that you would ask students even if you did not know they were part of an instructional scaffold.  For example, asking a student who the main character of a story was is a natural question to ask a student when you are having them tell you about something that they read, and that question also falls under the first scaffold.

Do you think these scaffolds would be easy to incorporate into a lesson?
Would you use these scaffolds while you are teaching?

Guided Reading

     Guided reading is a way to help students become better readers by learning different strategies to use during reading.  It involves small groups of children who are on the same reading level to read the same book, the teacher directing the group, and the students and teacher having discussions before, during, and after the reading.

Guided Reading   Before Reading	During Reading	After Reading
Talked about things they have already been              learning about They looked at the pictures that the children saw and talked about them Made predictions about the book Teacher had the students follow her as she read the title She tells them to pay attention to the pictures as they read Sounds out some of the words together Asks them to find certain words on the page based on the sounds the letters make Has them point out words they already know Tells them to use the pictures and the text to help them figure out what they should be reading The teacher has them use their finger to follow along with the words she is pointing out	The students read out loud to themselves and the teacher goes around as the students are reading to themselves and listens to them read a little bit She helps them if they are struggling with a word Has them go back and re-read the story if they go through it one time Helps them use the pictures to help them figure out the text	Plays a game with pictures of things they read about and matching those pictures with the letter that starts the word and then the letter that ends the word The teacher gives them some tips about how to be good readers: re-read, make sure the words you are saying make sense, and make sure the letters of the text match up with the word you are saying

     I really liked the teacher's enthusiasm during the video.  It really allowed her to keep the student's attention, and make them excited about reading.  I also liked the game that they played after they were done reading.  I thought the game did a good job of helping students with their vocabulary, but it also showed a little bit of their comprehension because they knew what each picture was and the pictures came from what they had read about.  The only thing that I would do a little bit differently is I think I would like to spend a little more time listening to each students read.

     The website,readinga-z.com, seems to be a really useful tool for teachers to use for guided reading lessons.  Teachers can order all different kinds of books, and the website even has a chart to tell you what level that book is and what skills that book helps to work on.  I would use this website to either order books for my students, or I would use to get an idea of what kinds of books I need to have my students reading.

Assessment

     I think that giving students just one kind of assessment test is not going to give the teacher an accurate measure of the ability of the students.  Some students test well and some do not, some can read read at a higher level and some at a lower level, and every student has different strengths and weaknesses.  So, I agree with the idea that teachers should give students several different kinds of assessments in order to determine their strengths and weaknesses.  One test is not going to tell you everything that you need to know about a student.  For example, I was very good at standardized tests in school not because I was super smart, but because I am a good test taker and guesser if I do not know the answer.  So, if a teacher based all their information on me off of one assessment they might not be able to see if I was struggling in an area because I was able to just guess the right answer.  Then there are the students who are the opposite of the way that I was and were smart kids, but they got too nervous during tests and so they did poorly.  

Would you give your students multiple types of assessments?
Is there a downside of giving multiple types of assessments?

picture: http://school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/clip/dmbtest.html

Guided Reading

     For this reading I had to find my own article on Guided Reading.  I found article called "Guided Reading Procedure" that was written by Anthony V. Manzo, and the article came out of The Journal of Reading.  It is interesting and I think that it gives a good example of how a teacher should conduct a guided reading lesson.  
     Step 1:  Have the students read a passage and ask them to try and remember everything they can from the passage.
     Step 2:  Once the students are done reading, the teacher asks them to recall everything they can from what they just read as the teacher writes down the responses on the board.
     Step 3:  Students are then allowed to go back and reread the passage to correct and add onto the information recorded on the board.
     Step 4:  Create some kind of outline or concept map in order to organize the remembrances.
     Step 5:  The teacher raises questions that are important for complete understanding, and the questions should require the combination of new information and information that the students have already learned.
     Step 6:  The teacher should give the students a diagnostic test to check their short-term memory.  The test should reflect things discussed in class and the information covered in class.
     Step 7:  An optional step that has two sub-steps where the students engage in post-reading activities or more discussion, and then their medium and/or long term memory is checked and scored.

Would you use this kind of lesson in your classroom?
How would you determine an appropriate passage to read?

article link: http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.utk.edu:90/stable/40031402?seq=1
picture: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCMTVA-FBbh6h8i7wE0iIlxq0whoj90YXqMA-ps0tmIi_mGgDUOfZKVgzPYZHxRjmckqQdUu1ICddI3J_l6FPVaFCC3zzzXtxgubdufDGPWHSxg5JvJXbqk77S9IL1SqDQ8zJ0V7jVVrA/s1600/partner+reading+with+Miss+Florentine's+P1+class+013.jpg

Vocabulary

     Vocabulary is an important part of a student's education.  I remember as a kid that when writing a paper or something the teacher would always ask us to use good vocabulary, or when reading a book there would be words that I did not know that I would have to get help with from the teacher.  Building a student's vocabulary can help them become better readers, and there are many different activities that teachers can engage their students in to improve their vocabulary.  Here are some examples...
                                               
 Students can start off with a word they know at the bottom and look up words that can mean the same thing.

                                                         

Real Life Inquiry Project

     For my real life inquiry project, I chose to give these two girls that I babysit, Jenna and Meredith, a spelling inventory test to determine which stage of reading they were at.  Then, I did an activity with them that went along with their reading level to see if the test was a good method in determining their reading level, and to see how they reacted to the reading activity that I did with them.
     I decided that I would give each girl the test separately so that they could take as much time as they needed without feeling pressure from the other one.  So, I started off by giving Jenna, who is six, the spelling inventory test.  The test had 26 words on it and they were fan, pet, dig, rob, hope, wait, gum, sled, stick, shine, dream, blade, coach, fright, chewed, crawl, wishes, thorn, shouted, spoil, growl, third, camped, tries, clapping, and riding.  Before starting the test I told her that I wasn't going to grade it or anything so she didn't have to worry about getting them all right, and I think that made her feel better and not feel as much pressure while writing her words.  For every word that I would give her, I would also give her a sentence to go along with it.  As the test went on, she started to help me made up the sentences to go along with the words.  I also noticed that she would sound out some of the words when she was struggling with the spelling, and she would also get more distracted when she did not know the word and start to look at something else or talk about something else.
     After I gave Jenna her test, I gave Meredith, who is eight, the test of the same 26 words.  Giving her the test was completely different than giving Jenna the test.  She went very quickly through the test, and she would say "next" when she was done with each word and was ready to move on.  Sometimes she would even finish the word before I could finish giving her the sentence to go along with the word.  As we got to the harder words, she slowed down a little bit, but she did not struggle with them.  Another thing that was different about giving Meredith the test was that she wanted me to grade it.  She wanted to know how many of them she got right, because she didn't think that she got any of them wrong.
     When they were both done with the test, I went through their lists and checked them to determine which reading level they were each on.  Jenna was only able to get 7 of the 26 words completely correct ,and I determined that she was in the alphabetic level of reading.  Meredith got all 26 of the words correct ,and I determined that she was in the derivational level of reading.
     The activity that I did with Jenna was one about onsets and rimes.  I gave her cards with different onsets on them, and I then gave her a rime and she would have to tell me which onsets could make words with that rime.  At first she struggled a little bit, but once she caught on to how it worked then she really liked the activity.  She would go through the cards of onsets and read it with the rime to see if it made a word and if it didn't then she would just laugh at the made up word.  I eventually had to tell her that we had to stop playing because I needed to get started on Meredith's activity with her, and she was sad that we had to stop because she wanted to keep going.
     The activity that I did with Meredith was one that involved her using smaller words and patterns to make up bigger words.  I gave her cards that had things such as dis, stand, trust, re, etc. on them and she made up words.  I gave her two minutes to read the cards I gave her and see how many words she could make.  She was only able to get eight words, but after I said time was up she asked if we could keep going because she could make more words.  So, I went through and showed her more of the words that she could make.
      Through doing this project, I found that the spelling inventory test was a good method of determining which level of reading a child is in.  However, it can be hard to determine which stage a child should be put in if they are on the line between stages with this test.  I also found that children really respond to different activities based on their reading level.  The girls loved getting to do the activities that I gave them and they looked at them as if they were a game.  They wanted to show me what they knew and they both wanted to get better.

Visualizing

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