Telling vs. Coaching

In the article, "Looking inside classrooms: Refelcting on the "how" as well as the "what" in effective reading instruction" by Taylor, Peterson, Pearson, and Rodriguez, I found it very interesting that they found that "telling" children things in excess amounts does not seem to be nearly as effective as "coaching" children.  In coaching, the children are more responsible for coming up with their own responses and gives them the opportunity to use their own skills and strategies.  Although teaching would be impossible without telling some things, it's good to limit this because children become disengaged. 

Here is a helpful website with a list of skills young readers should develop and ways teachers can help improve these skills in the classroom!
http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/reading/stratread.htm

Running Records

In Marie Clay's book, Running Records, she discusses ways for teachers to keep track of student's reading and the notes that should be made to indicate certain assessments.  In other words, it's "shorthand" for teachers when assessing children.  These notes not only help the teacher understand what the student struggles with, but how they think while reading.  For instance, if a student struggles with a word, do they completely skip it as a whole, sound it out, or repeat it?  This approach helps teachers agree on one (of many ways) to read notes and assessments done by themselves or other teachers!

Here is a running record calculator!  You type in the # of words in the text, and then the # of errors and self-corrections.  It is a helpful way to "score" a student and see what reading level is appropriate for them.
http://www.wordcalc.com/runningrecord/

Guided Reading

Guided reading is something that is very beneficial for children and can be easily implemented by both parents and teachers.  To start, the parent or teacher needs to find a book that is age-appropriate for the child and they can read 90% of or are very familiar with the story.  This way, the children can use context clues, such as surrounding words and pictures, to identify unfamiliar words.  Guided reading is very helpful to do individually, but it's also effective in small and large groups!

Below is a website that has many helpful strategies to encourage guided reading both at home and in the classroom.  If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page, there is a section dedicated specifically to theses guided readings.  They have ideas for "take home book boxes" for parents  and links to other lessons and articles that are very helpful to teachers!

http://www.hubbardscupboard.org/guided_reading.html#TakeHomeBookBoxes

Here is also a link that gives an example of how a kindergarten teacher used guided reading in her full day classroom.

http://www.lindaslearninglinks.com/gdrdgkdg.html

Oral Language Experiences

"Many authorities agree that oral language experiences 

and wide reading influence students’ word knowl- 

edge and refer to this type of word learning as “inci- 

dental word learning.” In fact, they believe that the 

majority of new words acquired over the life span are 

learned incidentally (Cunningham, 2005). "

The quote above is from the article "Ten Important Words Plus: A Strategy for Building Word Knowledge" by Yopp and Yopp. This quote reminded me of another article we read in earlier in the year that discussed statistics in the # of words children are exposed to everyday, depending on race, class, etc.  It made me think that if a child's environment is filled with uneducated people, this could indefinitely affect them (and their vocabulary) for the rest of their life.  This just proves how individual conversations with children in the classroom are very important!

Below is a chart of ways to expose children to vocabulary!  This chart is a great overview of this article too.

http://www.ldonline.org/article/9943/

Reading Comprehension is a Ball!

In this week's Cunningham and Allington's reading, the subject of reading comprehension was discussed.  They gave many great ideas for activities to enhance comprehension, such as think alouds, graphic organizers, and literate conversations.  My personal favorite was the activity where the children read a story and then threw a beach ball with questions written on it around the circle.  I especially liked how the children could pick any question they wanted and that some of them were as simple as, "What was your favorite part of the story?"  I think it's a great way to get the children talking and engaged 100% because they don't know if they're next in line and they have to listen to what their friends before them said!  I'm curious as to what other fun activities are out there that can help our children's comprehension.

Here is a link to a Halloween themed reading comprehension computer game!  Although this is good for spare time at home, I want to find more activities to do in the actual classroom.  Any suggestions?

http://funschool.kaboose.com/fun-blaster/games/game_bon_appetit.html

"Weather Watcher" to "Meteorologist"!

In this week's readings I found many inspiring things, but one stuck out in particular.  In the article by Holly Lane and Stephanie Allen, The Vocabulary-Rich Classroom: Modeling Sophisticated Word Use to Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth, the kindergarten teacher's story had a great impact on me.  In the anecdote, the teacher gives the children classroom jobs (such as "zookeeper", "line leader", "cleanup helper", "weather watcher", etc).  Many of the jobs are common in classrooms across America, however her's became more unique.  As the year progressed she expanded the children's vocabulary by changing the jobs' names.  For example, "zookeeper" became the "animal nutrition specialist" and the "weather watcher" turned into the "meteorologist".  It's simple things such as this that can help teach children, without having to take time out of class to have a lesson plan - instead, it's integrated learning!  It's the simple things such as this that can have a huge impact on children's experience in the classroom.

It's the 21st Century! - Reading Cues

In both of the articles this week, reading cues were discussed and how they can be best used in the classroom and their benefits.  In Kathleen Clark's article, "What can I say besides 'sound it out?' Coaching word recognition in beginning readers", she discusses how important it is to use modern-day reading cues.  If teachers emphasize the "rules" of phonics, and not how use them, the methods become ineffective in the classroom.  They gave a surprising statistic by Theodore Clymer who found that "only 45% of the commonly taught phonics rules worked as much as 75% of the time".  This quote alone proves how important our modern day teaching strategies need to be used and the cues should focus on "reading words, not learning rules".  The article also gave great suggestions for the different types of cues a teacher can use.

Below is a video that briefly discusses how to use picture cues (this can especially be helpful for parents).  One thing I really liked is that she pointed out to do a "picture walk" before actually reading the book.  Click the video to find out more about picture walks and other ways to use picture cues!

Choral Readings - Halloween Style

http://www.robertpottle.com/poems/halloween-poems.php

Above is a great link to some goofy Halloween poems that would be great for choral readings.  They'd be awesome to use for October and a great way to catch the kids' attention!  I particularly like the poem "Frankenstein bit Duracula".

Practicing Fluency in a New Way

In this week's fluency readings, one quote particularly stood out to me in the article, "Creating Fluent Readers", by Timothy Rasinski.  The quote reads, "I see many teachers converting their classrooms into poetry cafés and readers' theatre festivals on Friday afternoons to give students the opportunity to perform the assigned texts they have diligently practiced during the week."  I see this as being a great way to get children to practice reading aloud, which I learned helps with fluency, and a better option than the normal "sit in your desk and wait to be called on both voluntarily and involuntarily" approach.  This is something children can expect to happen each week and gives them motivation to practice reading aloud!

Below are some pictures of a class who implemented a poetry café setting in their room.  It's a great fun and creative way to encourage young (and old) children!  Here is a link to help you create your own poetry café!  I wonder what else a teacher can do to help children practice fluency in a fun way?

http://hill.troy.k12.mi.us/staff/bnewingham/myweb3/Poetry%20Cafe.htm

Different Kids = Different Books! (IRA Reading)

"...not all children typically come to kindergarten with similar levels of knowledge about printed language." (IRA, 1998).  This quote popped out to me during this week's reading and I think is something very important for kindergarten teachers (and teachers of all subjects) to remember. Teachers' instruction need to account for all of these children's differences, and the way to help this is by giving them a rich print environment!  I think this is a great way to get children interested in reading because each child will have "a book for them", that they can read it as often as they want! And the great thing is when they're ready, they can move onto another great book!  Below are some examples of different print for different reading levels, that all could be included in a kindergarten class.

This book by Mo Williems is great for beginning readers.  There's little text (only text bubbles), but the pictures help display the stories perfectly!

http://www.urbanmoms.ca/mom_without_a_map/2010/04/our-favourite-toddler-books.html

Arthur books, by Marc Brown, are filled with text and are stories kindergartners can relate to.  These books can be looked at by all ages, but more advance learners may find this text more challenging and fun to read.

http://www.k12.nf.ca/perlwin/books.html

McDonald's and Wendy's as Reading Tools?!

Fun in the Classroom and at Home!

http://arapaho.nsuok.edu/~tillman/WORD%20WALLS.htm

"Can You Read This?"

http://webserver.nccsc.k12.in.us/perduec/photos.htm

        In all three articles, environmental print was given as a staple tool to use when teaching young readers.  More importantly, this print can help children become "readers" before they can technically read and write words themselves.  The NAEYC uses this as a rational for their position statement (1998) and our textbook says that by using environmental print in the classroom, it can help children see that all kinds of writings are valued (Cunningham & Allington 2011).  An inspiring story of the use of environmental print was told by Donna Bell and Donna Jarvis, as they explained how their environmental print activities helped their students to see THEMSELVES as readers, even before they know all of their letters. Who knew our every day fast food restaurant signs, road signs, etc was educating our children?! I wonder what other creative activities teachers and parents can use to help their young learners?