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

When you see links, you must type them into your browser since you cannot copy and paste from these images

The Comprehension Matrix

     As I said last week, reading comprehension is extremely important for children to learn while they are in school.  The comprehension matrix is a great tool to use to aid students in their comprehension while they are reading, and it can help to teach them good reading strategies that they can use in the future when they read. I think that the matrix is a great tool for teachers to use, because it gives examples of different activities that the students can do at the different parts of reading. Here is a picture of the matrix from the reading that we had this week...

  

     Would you use this matrix in your classroom?

    Do you think that having students do activities before reading, during reading, and after reading is a good way to increase comprehension?

Picture from: https://bblearn.utk.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-675872-dt-content-rid-2146733_1/courses/ReadingEducation43045064FA2013/Gill.pdf

Comprehension

      Reading comprehension is extremely important, but the majority of the time spent in the classroom is focused more on the student's ability to read the words rather than comprehend their meaning.  I had never really thought about it before, but I can see how it would be hard in a classroom to make sure that you are not only teaching your students how to read the text but also making sure that they can understand what they are reading.  I really like the idea of having Oprah Winfrey interviews to promote comprehension in students.  I think that you could have a lot of fun with that if you made it a regular activity in your classroom.  You could make special labels for the chairs that the students sit in while they are being interviewed, and you could even have a special seat or something for the person who is going to be Oprah for that interview.  I also think that the students would like getting to pretend to be a character from a story that they have read.  I also think that this is a good way to promote reading, because if you have different groups of students reading different books then maybe once a student hears an interview that sounds interesting then they might decide that they want to read that book on their own.
     What are some other good activities for promoting reading comprehension?
     Would you use an Oprah Winfrey style interview in your classroom?
Picture from: http://ioneglobalgrind.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/obamas_oprah.jpg

Fluency

     When I read something I do not think about having to decode the words to figure out the meaning.  I know the meaning of the majority of the words that I am reading so I am able to go through them quickly because I developed my reading fluency when I was younger.  It is very interesting to think that there was a time that I could not just look at a book or article and not know what it said.  I use reading so often in my life that without reading fluency I would struggle to get through my homework and even my day.
     Also, I think that Word Walls are a great way to get children to learn the more difficult words that they come across.  I babysit this little girl who is six and we were reading a book the other day and she came across a word, I don't remember which one, but she said said,"Oh Lindsay I know that word because it is on my Word Wall at school."  Just to hear her say that shows me that the Word Wall is impacting her ability to read, so it is most likely impacting the other students in her classroom too.

What would your life be like if you were not a fluent reader?     
Can a Word Wall be too big?

This is a website that gives different ideas on how to help struggling readers: http://www.readingrockets.org/teaching/reading101/fluency/
     

Making Words

      I think that the idea of encouraging students to invent the spelling of some words is very interesting.  Because if I didn't know any better, I would think that letting kids make up their own spelling of words would be bad for their education by encouraging bad spelling.  However, I have learned that inventive spelling indicates that the students are developing in their phonemic awareness and starting to understand relationships between different letters and their sounds.

     I also really liked the making words game where the teacher gives the students letters and instructs them on the words they are suppose to be making, but lets the students make the words for themselves.  Once a student gets the spelling correct they go to the board and make the word for everyone to see.  I think that this is a great way to give the students some freedom to play with letters to make words, but at the same time showing them the correct spelling for the words.
     What are some other ways that teachers could encourage inventive spelling?
      When should teachers not encourage inventive spelling?
 picture from: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=R_uICemT-dXetM&tbnid=5e5vNWdl0oc-OM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Ftoedukate.blogspot.com%2F2011%2F07%2Fcorrect-spelling-or-inventive-spelling.html&ei=i-RSUsqVE4-o4APPooDwAg&bvm=bv.53537100,d.dmg&psig=AFQjCNEXUkBb4A4aFbm9naeqLrz396Vkxw&ust=1381250548924968

Decoding and Spelling Patterns

     Ever since I was a little kid, spelling has always been an issue for me.  When I was in elementary school we would always have a spelling test every week, and my parents would have to work with me on those words throughout the entire week for me to do well on my test.  I remember my parents constantly quizzing me on my spelling words, and I can even remember having issues with some of the words.  The word that I had the hardest time with was "picnic."  Now it seems silly, but at the time it was a big challenge for me.                                                               

     With this entire experience in mind, I really like the idea of teaching kids spelling through word games and showing them how some words have similar patterns or rhyming sounds.  It allows the kids to get a better understanding of how different words are related to each other, and that can help them with their spelling when they come across a word they don't know but see that it is similar to a word that they do know.  I think that I might have benefited from this kind of spelling instruction more than just having a list of words that I had to memorize for a test at the end of the week.                                                              

     Is spelling just memorization, or is it also using previous knowledge of sounds, letter groups, and words?  

    What are some other ways to help kids who struggle with spelling?

Here is a link that contains a list of some spelling words that can serve as basic words for students to learn in order to broaden their spelling knowledge.
http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/rtrieger/490i/niftyfifty.htm

picture from: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=KIO4qPbSGQ1-9M&tbnid=ilfyY7bIm0dUuM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.whsd.org%2Fpage.cfm%3Fp%3D3239&ei=6O9IUsbVAoSa9gSt5YGQDg&bvm=bv.53217764,d.eWU&psig=AFQjCNHouM9GFTJjWWTFCPyrI7DEZzFk0Q&ust=1380598092138934

Moving on from letter of the week

     Having a letter of the week is a practice that I remember from when I was in school.  I remember having a certain letter that we were learning and we did many different activities with that letter until the end of the week when we were suppose to be able to identify that letter out of mere memorization.  Until reading this week, I just assumed that this was the best way to get kids to learn their letters.  That it was something that they would just have to memorize in order to learn all of them.  However, this weeks reading has changed my mind.
     The idea of having kids learn their letter through names and objects that are familiar to them makes a lot of sense to me.  I can see how just memorizing letters every week would be boring or uninteresting for students, because I would find that boring and uninteresting.  However, incorporating the letters into their everyday lives helps to keep them interested in what they are learning, and helps them make connections in their brain between the letters and things they see everyday.  For example, when I was in kindergarten I had to make this alphabet book using pictures and objects from my house, and I can still remember that book and making it because I was able to use things that I saw everyday and tie them into learning my letters.
     What would be some other good ways to help students draw connections between their everyday lives and reading?  
picture from: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=PxiIAwl6sWIOAM&tbnid=r3KfupkkeiXSyM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.publicdomainpictures.net%2Fview-image.php%3Fimage%3D35513...&ei=I0xAUuSzJojA9QTI8IGwBQ&bvm=bv.52434380,d.eWU&psig=AFQjCNEJbPeiccu45j6nngHGrlACM_3oQg&ust=1380031897248588

Building the Literacy Foundation

     This week, our reading was mostly about how to help students build their foundation for reading and writing.  As soon as I started reading about how it is important for children to pretend read and pretend write, I immediately thought about my own childhood.  I use to ask my parents to re-read the same books so many times that I had the entire thing memorized, and then I would go and "read" them to other people, but I was really just reciting the story that I knew by heart.  I would even memorize road signs so that whenever I would see those certain ones I could say, "Look Dad that says Stop, S-T-O-P, Stop."I also use to always try to write before I knew how to make the actual letters.  I would draw this line of scribbles and say something like, "Look Mom I wrote my name," when in fact it was just a bunch of random lines.
     Also during the reading, I really liked the idea of teaching children about letters and their sounds by using the different names of the students in the class.  Their names are important to them, so I think that doing activities such as asking all of the students whose names start with the letter s to stand up and the the letter r and so on.
     This website has some fun ideas for ways to help children learn their letters: http://blog.maketaketeach.com/10-activities-for-teaching-and-practicing-letters-and-sounds/

Effective Reading Instruction

     After reading the readings for this week, it just really makes me realize how important reading is for education.  Both of the readings discussed how the highest ranking schools, students, and teachers focused on the importance of reading and writing, so that makes me realize that in my own classroom I should focus on reading and writing.  I also really liked some of the ideas that the articles talked about for encouraging conversations between the teacher and students, and encouraging reading at the same time.  For example, I really liked the idea of the teacher meeting with each student once a week to talk about what that student is reading, why they like it, and the teacher can give the student some ideas of other good books to read.

     However, I do think that it is sad that many teachers are not able to have good books for their students to read because they do not have the funding for it.  Or, the teachers have to spend their own money in order to buy the books that their students should and would enjoy reading.

     What are some ways that teachers can get the materials they need?

     What are some ways that teachers can incorporate reading and writing into other subject areas?

     If these studies show how important reading and writing is for students and they show what teachers have to do in order to have better students, then why do more schools not promote these teaching practices?
picture from: 
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