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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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