Whenever I have thought about the various reading components, I have always thought of everything from word recognition, concepts about print, fluency, phonological and phonemic awareness, word study, as factors that increase comprehension. To me, all the different reading components work together to help a child comprehend a text. Therefore, I believe that when each component becomes stronger, a child has a greater chance that their comprehension will increase. All of the factors, to me, make a proficient reader, and as Keene and Zimmermann (2007) talk about in Mosaic of Thought: The Power of Comprehension Strategy Instruction, comprehension is able to be focused on when learners are proficient readers. In order to be a proficient reader, learners must have word recognition skills, decoding abilities, a fairly high vocabulary (dependent on their age), accuracy, automaticity, fluency, and prosody to name a few. Thus, to me, fluency is a backbone that is essential to comprehension. When learners are not fluent, all of their energy is put towards trying to decode and use context clues or structural clues to figure out words, that phrases are lost, and when phrases are not understood, paragraphs or multiple sentences slip by. Pretty soon the learner has no comprehension of what the story is about. As Rasinski points out, in her article, Reading Fluency Instruction: Moving Beyond Accuracy, Automaticity, and Prosody, fluency needs to be set in place in order for a learner to get past the surface value of the words on the page and start to understand the deeper meaning that lies behind the words.
Currently, in my kindergarten class, I have not had experience with fluency, assessing my learners with fluency, or even teaching fluency. My learners have just started learning how to handle books and look at pictures to tell a story. No emphasis has been placed on fluency, or even reading specific words on a page. Mini-lessons have been devoted to learning how to look at the beginning sounds of a word to try and figure out a word and using illustrations as context clues, but that is the extent of what my learners have learned, in regards to reading. Thus, I have very little knowledge on how we are going to assess my learners in regards to fluency or how it will be taught. I am really interested to see if it is going to be taught altogether, in unison, like Rasinski suggests in her article, or if compression and fluency are going to be taught in isolation from one another. However, I have had experience with how my learners have started approaching automaticity and accuracy. My class has specific popcorn words that they need to know, sort of like word wall words. These are words that “pop-up”: everywhere and that they are required to know. After they have been introduced for a two week span, there is no reason why they should not be able to read the popcorn words or spell them correctly. I am really curious now, after reading this weeks reading, to see if my teacher is going to then start incorporating a fluency component with the popcorn words or if she is going to teach all four components, including comprehension, separately.
In order to fully understand my learners’ reading development, I need to know what they know about letter/sound relationships. Since I am in a kindergarten class, we are teaching them the fundamentals of how to look at words, while teaching them that words are made up of sounds which are represented by letters. Thus, in order to know if my learners are going to be able to stretch out a word to try and decode it, let alone read it with accuracy, automaticity, fluency, prosody, or for comprehension, I need to know if they know which sounds are associated with which letters. I know that I have a handful of learners who do not know which sounds go with which letters, and it makes it very hard for them, both in their reading and their writing. It’s even harder when I have learners who can hear a sound, tell me the letter, but has no clue what the letter looks like. This tells me if that learner was to then try to decode a word in a book, they would be unable to because they would not be able to recognize the letters enough to know what sound went with it. I could find out this information by giving my learners an assessment in which I provide them with a sound and they would have to tell me the letter that is associated with it. This would help me to know which letters my learners knew, how many sound/letters my learners, on average, knew, and if any sounds were exceptionally tricky.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Fluency and Comprehension Blog
Many teachers focus on fluency and comprehension lessons individually without making the connection between the two. Some other teachers stress that one is more important than the other and thus stress the significance of that one. I believe that reading comprehension and reading fluency go hand in hand. When you really think about it, can you really have reading comprehension if you do not have reading fluency? It would be extremely difficult to understand and make sense of what you had just read if you couldn’t read the text smoothly without extensive reading mistakes. In our guided reading groups, my CT works with small groups of children who have been grouped based upon their DRA independent reading level. Each group is assigned a level appropriate book that will work on skills that the children may struggle with. She sets up mini lessons with these books to work of these areas that affect their fluency. She takes extensive records of their progress and learned skills as the weeks go by. We introduce word wall words or “snap words” in our shared reading lessons every week. These are words the children need to know in a “snap” and are used in many different activities throughout the week. This strategy will help the children’s fluency development because it increases their sight words and vocabulary which allows for a more fluid reading. We need to know what their comprehension level is. As I said before, without reading fluency, comprehension is going to be extremely difficult. Likewise, having reading comprehension increases fluency. When you know what the author is telling you in the story, unfamiliar words are easier to understand when the context of the unknown word is understood. For instance, my children are doing a poetry unit every week. Every Monday they learn a new poem with new snap words. Often, there are words in our poems that are unfamiliar to many of my students. We spend a significant amount of time on explaining the meaning of the poem and what the author is trying to tell us through his words. The children are building up their reading comprehension a great deal from this exercise. On last week’s poem, the word “posts” came up. Several children raised their hands and immediately asked me what posts were. I told them to wait to ask this question until after we discussed the meaning and if they couldn’t figure it out after that then they may raise their hands and ask again. After our discussion, I asked if there were any questions of if their questions were already answered. No one raised a hand so I ask the children if they could answer their own question. The child that initially asked the question raised his hand and said “it’s like a pole right?” This will help him remember the word because he now understands how it relates with the other words in the story.
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Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Hilfinger - Gamill Article
I think that the take-home message from Gamill’s article was that writing is not only useful in Language Arts, it can be beneficial in every other part of the curriculum as well. Also one sentence that I thought helped summarize this point was, “the writing process is very similar to the speaking, thinking, and learning processes” (p. 1). This point that writing is similar to thinking made me think about how schools would never eliminate thinking because it took too long, so it makes no sense to skip writing. The article also talks about KWL charts. I think these are important in all subjects, and Gamill makes a good point that they can be done easily as a whole class or with individual students.
I think it definitely makes sense to take this approach with first graders. When teaching lessons, we are supposed to represent information visually and verbally, using as many senses as possible. It makes sense to give the students options like this too. A few students in my class have trouble getting their words out, and it seems to take them forever to answer a question, but one of these little girls always finishes her written work very quickly. She organizes her thoughts on paper better than she organizes them orally, and it would not make sense to take this option away from her. Using both types of answers helps the struggling writers learn to write while expressing themselves orally, and it helps the struggling speakers learn to speak while expressing themselves on paper.
As a professional, I think I would need to get a better understanding of the social studies and science curriculum before I would feel comfortable changing it to include more writing. I think that maybe my first few years in a grade I would try to stick to the curriculum as much as possible, but then as I became more comfortable with the content and student skill levels, I would add more writing into the everyday assignments. As I plan for instruction, I need to get a better understanding of what the students are actually capable of putting down on paper. For example, most students have no problem putting an idea on paper through a picture, and a lot of these students are able to match their picture to sentences about their picture, however; I have not seen students simply write an idea down. They always start with the picture. I think that it would be nice to see what happens when I only have the students write a sentence before I begin my teaching. This will help me understand which students are capable of this and which students are not. My guess right now would be that less than 50% of the class would be able to confidently write a sentence down answering a question without drawing a matching picture.
Gill (2004)- The Forgotten Genre of Children’s Poetry
The main focus of my article was about children’s poetry, the importance of it, and the almost non-existence of it in the elementary classroom. Gill talks about how poetry, when implemented in elementary classrooms, is often taught using simple poems like “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” or is taught using poems from the classical adult poets like William Shakespeare. In doing this, educators make poetry into something that needs to be decoded, something that has a hidden message. When educators make poetry all about famous adult poets, they do a disadvantage to learners, forgetting to teach them what poetry is all about. Poetry is supposed to be a genre of writing where children can share experiences, thoughts, and emotions through a short concise piece of writing. Poetry is supposed to teach learners the importance of word choice, in helping to create images, strike emotions, and create an impact on readers. Gill believes learners should be provided opportunities to engage with poems written for children. There is children’s poetry out there, and it is essential that children learn from children’s poems so they can learn how to write poems, instead of focusing on how to decode them. Learners need to learn how to write with intense imagery and feelings to create an impact. As Gill points out, when educators focus on learners decoding adult poems, “The emphasis of poetry turns to one of knowledge- knowing the types of poems and the names of major poets- rather than on understanding, enjoyment, or participation with poetry” (Gill, 2007). Gill talks about how learners need to be introduced to authentic children’s poets, so they can learn what poetry is all about, how to write it, gain a desire to become a poet, and find the enjoyment in reading it (Gill, 2007).
Even if I had not had an immense passion for writing poetry and teaching poetry to learners, I would have after reading this article. Being in kindergarten, I would definitely start to use children’s poetry in my classroom. Right now, my collaborating teacher has a poem of the week that the learners read, memorize, and place into their poetry binders. However, after reading this article, I discovered that all the poems she uses are the simple poems like “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” None of the poems really focus on what poetry is all about: intense emotions, imagery, word choice, and a way to share thoughts and experiences. Thus, I think that I would add children’s poetry into the morning routine, but also into the word study aspect of the literacy curriculum. I would keep word study as a focus of words, and learning beginning sounds, rhyming, ending sounds, etc., but I would add a branch of word study that focused on poetry. The focuses would range anywhere from thinking of descriptive words to learning about onomatopoeias. Learners could learn about word choices through listening to poems that are strong in word choice and poems that are weak. Learners would start to notice different words they could chose and so on. I think this would really impact their writing during writer’s workshop, as it would hopefully get them to be more descriptive in their writing, and think about their word choices.
As a teacher, I think that before I enacted poetry as part of word study, I would need to figure out the core mini-lessons I could do with my kindergarteners to make it developmentally appropriate and beneficial to them. Having not ever thought about how I would incorporate poems in word study, it would be a little bit of a challenge to find really strong poems to highlight the different aspects of poetry I would want to highlight. Furthermore, before I could implement a poetry branch into word study, I would need to know where my writers currently were with their word knowledge. I know, right now, my learners are just learning how to stretch out words for beginning sounds. I would need to continually informally assess their writing and their word understanding before I could start to add more concepts. All the poetry lessons would have to go off what the learners know about already about words.
Even if I had not had an immense passion for writing poetry and teaching poetry to learners, I would have after reading this article. Being in kindergarten, I would definitely start to use children’s poetry in my classroom. Right now, my collaborating teacher has a poem of the week that the learners read, memorize, and place into their poetry binders. However, after reading this article, I discovered that all the poems she uses are the simple poems like “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” None of the poems really focus on what poetry is all about: intense emotions, imagery, word choice, and a way to share thoughts and experiences. Thus, I think that I would add children’s poetry into the morning routine, but also into the word study aspect of the literacy curriculum. I would keep word study as a focus of words, and learning beginning sounds, rhyming, ending sounds, etc., but I would add a branch of word study that focused on poetry. The focuses would range anywhere from thinking of descriptive words to learning about onomatopoeias. Learners could learn about word choices through listening to poems that are strong in word choice and poems that are weak. Learners would start to notice different words they could chose and so on. I think this would really impact their writing during writer’s workshop, as it would hopefully get them to be more descriptive in their writing, and think about their word choices.
As a teacher, I think that before I enacted poetry as part of word study, I would need to figure out the core mini-lessons I could do with my kindergarteners to make it developmentally appropriate and beneficial to them. Having not ever thought about how I would incorporate poems in word study, it would be a little bit of a challenge to find really strong poems to highlight the different aspects of poetry I would want to highlight. Furthermore, before I could implement a poetry branch into word study, I would need to know where my writers currently were with their word knowledge. I know, right now, my learners are just learning how to stretch out words for beginning sounds. I would need to continually informally assess their writing and their word understanding before I could start to add more concepts. All the poetry lessons would have to go off what the learners know about already about words.
Blog post 10-12
The Forgotten Genre of Children’s Poetry
by Sharon Gill
Summary:
This article started off by the author expressing her concern with the lack of children’s poetry books that are available. She stressed that children are told that poems are written by “great poets” such as Homor, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, Robert Browning, Emily Dickenson, and Walt Whitman. The books that were supposedly “children’s poetry” was really for adults that could possibly be used by children. She was concerned that none of the great 20th century children’s poets were forgotten about. She also expressed concern that children will have a “mistaken idea of what poetry is.” (Gill, 622) She states that great poets create the poems but it “can only be understood and evaluated by academics whose job it is to tell the rest of us what the poem means.” (Gill, 622) This is also a problem in our school systems. The emphasis is placed on who the great poets are and what the different types of poems are. Poetry lessons are not often focused on understanding the poems, enjoying them, or participating in them. Teachers need to understand the definition of poetry and why we should need it in order to incorporate it into their classroom. Teachers also need to find appropriate children’s poetry books from various sources to add to their classroom library. “It is up to teachers to make sure that poetry in not a forgotten genre.” (Gill, 625)
Discuss:
The reason I initially chose this article was because we have been doing a poetry unit in my class for about 4 weeks now during our shared reading lessons. I was interested to what the author of the article wanted to say about poetry and possibly give me some insights to whether our poetry unit was effective or not. From this article, I learned that our poetry unit is fairly rare in a school setting and we are doing a good thing by exposing our students to age-appropriate poems. Our poems are designed for young children and typically come with an illustration to help build upon the text. I have actually taken on this lesson a few weeks ago and really see the benefits to showing this genre of literature. We have our poems individually written out on large sheets of paper and we introduce one poem per week. Each day of the week serves as a different purpose. Monday we introduce the poem, show body movements that supplement the text and explain the author’s meaning in the poem. Tuesday we have the children make personal connections with the text. We ask them to tell us a personal story that helps them to understand what the author is telling us through the poem. Wednesday is devoted to showing patterns within the poems. It focuses on the structure of the poems. On Thursday, we focus on finding visual patterns in the text such as rhyming words. Friday is their oral language lesson where they each will go in front of the class and recite the poem into the microphone. Within each day, we explain why it is important for them to learn each individual skill and how it will help them in other academic areas. We also teach return sweep, one-to-one correspondence, directionality, word and letter recognition, and sight “snap” words that make up our word wall. We are constantly stressing the relationship between reading and writing in our classroom. We actually use the words synonymously within our discussions. Each day provides a new skill for each child to incorporate into their reading and writing.
Identify:
As a professional teacher, we need to understand the meaning and purpose of poetry ourselves before we can teach it to our students. We need to make sure that we are not just teaching types of poems or “great poets” to our class. Our class library should include rich, age-appropriate poetry books that our students can read. We should be focused on increasing understanding on the meaning of the poems and enhancing enjoyment in reading poetry. As teachers, we need to help our student’s understand what poetry is and what it is all about. We should also model and scaffold the children to write their own poetry in writer’s workshop.
Module Ideas:
This online module made me think a lot about how I can enhance my writer’s workshop to include a great deal of informative and informal assessment and how to include different genre’s instead of the typical fiction writing. There is so much that can be done during writer’s workshop that I was not aware of because I have yet to see a great variety done. I know that as the year progresses, I will see what different forms of assessment my CT uses and will model her techniques at first. However, when I implement my unit lessons, I would like to use a variety of different types of assessment. I believe that this will be the most effective form of assessment when it comes to my children’s writing. I want to ensure that I assist each child with their own individual needs so that they can become successful writers in the future. The only way I can help them is to find gaps in their development and work to fill those gaps.
Gill, Sharon. The Forgotten Genre of Children's Poetry. N.p.: International Reading Association, 2007. 622-25. Print.
by Sharon Gill
Summary:
This article started off by the author expressing her concern with the lack of children’s poetry books that are available. She stressed that children are told that poems are written by “great poets” such as Homor, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, Robert Browning, Emily Dickenson, and Walt Whitman. The books that were supposedly “children’s poetry” was really for adults that could possibly be used by children. She was concerned that none of the great 20th century children’s poets were forgotten about. She also expressed concern that children will have a “mistaken idea of what poetry is.” (Gill, 622) She states that great poets create the poems but it “can only be understood and evaluated by academics whose job it is to tell the rest of us what the poem means.” (Gill, 622) This is also a problem in our school systems. The emphasis is placed on who the great poets are and what the different types of poems are. Poetry lessons are not often focused on understanding the poems, enjoying them, or participating in them. Teachers need to understand the definition of poetry and why we should need it in order to incorporate it into their classroom. Teachers also need to find appropriate children’s poetry books from various sources to add to their classroom library. “It is up to teachers to make sure that poetry in not a forgotten genre.” (Gill, 625)
Discuss:
The reason I initially chose this article was because we have been doing a poetry unit in my class for about 4 weeks now during our shared reading lessons. I was interested to what the author of the article wanted to say about poetry and possibly give me some insights to whether our poetry unit was effective or not. From this article, I learned that our poetry unit is fairly rare in a school setting and we are doing a good thing by exposing our students to age-appropriate poems. Our poems are designed for young children and typically come with an illustration to help build upon the text. I have actually taken on this lesson a few weeks ago and really see the benefits to showing this genre of literature. We have our poems individually written out on large sheets of paper and we introduce one poem per week. Each day of the week serves as a different purpose. Monday we introduce the poem, show body movements that supplement the text and explain the author’s meaning in the poem. Tuesday we have the children make personal connections with the text. We ask them to tell us a personal story that helps them to understand what the author is telling us through the poem. Wednesday is devoted to showing patterns within the poems. It focuses on the structure of the poems. On Thursday, we focus on finding visual patterns in the text such as rhyming words. Friday is their oral language lesson where they each will go in front of the class and recite the poem into the microphone. Within each day, we explain why it is important for them to learn each individual skill and how it will help them in other academic areas. We also teach return sweep, one-to-one correspondence, directionality, word and letter recognition, and sight “snap” words that make up our word wall. We are constantly stressing the relationship between reading and writing in our classroom. We actually use the words synonymously within our discussions. Each day provides a new skill for each child to incorporate into their reading and writing.
Identify:
As a professional teacher, we need to understand the meaning and purpose of poetry ourselves before we can teach it to our students. We need to make sure that we are not just teaching types of poems or “great poets” to our class. Our class library should include rich, age-appropriate poetry books that our students can read. We should be focused on increasing understanding on the meaning of the poems and enhancing enjoyment in reading poetry. As teachers, we need to help our student’s understand what poetry is and what it is all about. We should also model and scaffold the children to write their own poetry in writer’s workshop.
Module Ideas:
This online module made me think a lot about how I can enhance my writer’s workshop to include a great deal of informative and informal assessment and how to include different genre’s instead of the typical fiction writing. There is so much that can be done during writer’s workshop that I was not aware of because I have yet to see a great variety done. I know that as the year progresses, I will see what different forms of assessment my CT uses and will model her techniques at first. However, when I implement my unit lessons, I would like to use a variety of different types of assessment. I believe that this will be the most effective form of assessment when it comes to my children’s writing. I want to ensure that I assist each child with their own individual needs so that they can become successful writers in the future. The only way I can help them is to find gaps in their development and work to fill those gaps.
Gill, Sharon. The Forgotten Genre of Children's Poetry. N.p.: International Reading Association, 2007. 622-25. Print.
Oct 4th Blog
The chapters we read in Book Club Plus was very helpful in my understanding of what Book Club Plus is all about and how we can (and already do) incorporate aspects of book clubs in my class. Much of my classroom’s daily schedule consists of some form of literacy. We start the day with a shared reading lesson, move onto writer’s workshop mini lesson and then writer’s workshop independent writing. We usually try and offer time for the children to share their writing afterward. Next we move onto reader’s workshop and phonetics lesson. We always have at least one read-aloud and two days a week we utilize the Making Meaning literacy program. We also do Daily 5 centers four days a week. In these centers, we have guided reading, independent reading, oral language (usually partner reading or retelling), handwriting/writing, and word study. During our read-alouds and Making Meaning lessons, we utilize literacy discussion to point out the key concepts and big ideas we want the class to understand. Lately, we have been stressing the concepts of a book such as author, illustrator, who is telling us the story. We also ask questions that relate to making connections to personal experiences or books that we have previously read. We also have been showing the children that stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. We point this out when we read to the children. We also model how to stretch their stories in writer’s workshop to show a beginning, middle, and end. We show them how to sketch all three pictures first and then write about their pictures after. What I read in the chapters that we do not use in my own classroom is the concepts of themes. I think that later in the year, my teacher may incorporate themes into the classroom but I’m not really sure. I am used to teaching based upon themes and would really like to see this happen. I have used it in my last student teaching classroom but I’m not really sure. I am used to teaching based upon themes and would really like to see this happen. I have used it in my last student teaching experience and thought it was a wonderful way to expose the children to curriculum materials while tying in other information that may not be required to teach. I would also like to see more classroom discussions. Our discussions are minimal and restrictive but I hope as the year progresses and the children learn their classroom expectations and rules, more discussions will be possible. I would like to see the students’ converse with each other about literature. I think this would be beneficial for them as well as for myself and my CT. It would be a great way for the children to share their opinions and thoughts on the books they read and hear other children’s reflections and ideas. It would also be a great informal assessment for me to be able to observe the types of conversations between the children and get an understanding of what the children are understanding and where more explanation by be required.
Monday, October 4, 2010
October 4th blog
After reading Book Club Plus, and learning all the dimensions of how one would manage a Book Club Plus literacy framework, I started to see some similarities, some differences, and some things that I might want to incorporate into my classroom. First off, as I pointed out last week, my literacy program is slightly similar to the Book Club Plus framework, minus the theme aspect. My class engages in read-alouds, and do reader’s workshop, writer’s workshop, shared reading, literacy centers, and guided reading. They even engage in discussions about literature throughout the day. The aspects that are different between the Book Club Plus framework and my class, is the incorporation of a theme, and book clubs, or fishbowls. In my classroom, the different aspects of the literacy program are not managed by a connecting theme, but instead, are connected by various literary aspects and comprehension strategies. For example, in reader’s workshop the learners are currently learning how they are able to read a book, by reading the pictures. A whole unit has been dedicated to teaching the learners how to read the pictures. This overflows into writer’s workshop, where the learners are learning that the words that they write must correlate to their picture. Furthermore, they get this emphasis of picture/word correlation, when they engage in shared reading activities, in which they have to try and decode the word on the page by using the beginning sound presented and the illustrations. Thus, my teacher connects and makes sure to continually re-emphasis various objectives throughout all the literacy components, but they are not connected by a common theme, nor do the other lessons presented in each aspect of the literacy program always relate. For example, some days during shared reading the learners learn what the front of the book is all about, whereas during writer’s workshop they learn how to add details to a picture. There is no correlation. Their writing, during writer’s workshop, always has to be about something that has already happened, nothing about a story they have read. The only correlation between literature and writing I have witnessed is during literacy centers (the daily 5), in which learners listen to a book on tape and then have to draw a picture, illustrating their favorite part. This engages the children in a “writing out of” piece. As for the talk in my class, my learners do engage in a lot of talk related to different books, but not in the aspect of fishbowls or book clubs. Usually throughout a read-aloud, or during making meaning lessons, discussions are touched upon about the theme, specific to the story read. Learners engage in a lot of the discourse. A lot of the discourse resembles the types of questions and responses one might hear in a fishbowl or book club, however, the discussion takes place as a whole group. Thus, the questions asked and the ideas brought up, such as, “Why do you think this character did this?” is presented to the learners as a whole. Therefore, my learners are learning how to respond to specific types of questions, whether it be before a story, such as a prediction question, during a story, or after a story, just as they would in a book club. The downside is that my learners are not getting the social piece of how to interact with each other. In our discussions, it is a lot about me talking to them and them responding back to me. Sometimes, they engage in think-pair share, but they do not really talk amongst each other any other time. Thus, I am the main facilitator, not allowing them to discuss amongst themselves for long periods of time. I do, however, find the think-pair share beneficial and developmentally appropriate for my learners, for they are just learning how to listen to someone else, how to vocalize their opinion, and how to talk amongst each other to come to a conclusion. Both of these are skills that I feel are essential for them to have before they would ever be able to engage in fishbowl discussions or book clubs. I feel like maybe my learners would be able to engage in fishbowls, later in the year, if they continue to be successful in whole-group discussions, and working with their think-pair share partners.
If I were able to add dimensions to my literacy program, from the Book Club Plus framework, I would add a theme to connect all of our different literacy components. I don’t think I would necessarily add fishbowl or book clubs right away, as I pointed out, because I am not sure my learners are quite ready for that. However, as I pointed out, my learners may be able to later in the year. I think once they gained the specific social skills, pointed out in Book Club Plus!, of “asking good questions, knowing how to build on another student’s comments, and engaging other classmates,” during large group, they may be able to then take those skills to work in highly regulated fishbowls (Rapheael, Florio-Ruane, Goerge, Hasty, Highfield, 2004). In contrast, however, I would be very excited to implement themes to our literacy program, especially themes that would be relevant to science and social studies. The Book Club Plus framework talked about how it is important to pick literature pieces that cross-disciplines, and since I am such a strong advocate of creating a stronger social awareness in younger learners, I would love to add themes relevant to teaching about social studies and science. I think teaching my learners themes such as friendship, justice, patience, family, cultures, etc., would not only focus my literacy lessons, but would greatly impact the knowledge my learners would gain from engaging in reading and writing throughout the day. I loved the idea of creating specific “big theme questions,” that the learners want to learn throughout the unit, and that the learners answer throughout. This makes learning so meaningful to them and gives them a specific purpose as to why they are engaging in different tasks. True, there still will be the different objectives embedded, such as, learning about concepts about print during shared reading, but the learners would also be learning a lot about the theme. It would make the different literacy lessons seem less segregated and irrelevant. I further love how then, the writing they would do during writer’s workshop would be relevant to the reading that they did. This would make it so much easier to teach learners different writing styles and how to use writing to respond to reading. There could be so many more connections. For example, if you were doing a lesson on cultures, you could have the learners do a simple compare and contrast piece, a letter to a friend around the world, etc. They would be able to engage in meaningful pieces of writing that exemplified different writing styles. I think that it would be really easy to connect all the different literacy aspects by a theme. The only part that would be difficult would be finding different selections of books to use. Other than that, I think that my class already engages in enriching discussion and we already talk about a lot of deep themes, thus I feel they would be able to easily transition into a theme based literacy program.
I also really enjoyed all of the resources for ELL learners that the Book Club Plus framework talked about implementing. The idea of books on tape, for both ELL learners and learners who struggle with reading, really sparked me as a great idea. I truly believe that learners who find reading difficult are often placed at a disadvantage because they are given books that are developmentally appropriate but are not as rich in content. Thus, those learners start to lose their love for reading because they are not able to really engage in enriching text. I truly believe, in allowing them to listen to books on tape, instead of not being able to engage with certain higher content texts, would keep them more engaged and loving reading. They would have the opportunity to learn how to become stronger readers during guided reading, thus not taking away from their ability to grow as readers. Furthermore, I loved how chapter 10 talked about having books in ELLs’ native languages so they are able to pick up the content. So much of reading to me is the comprehension piece, the delving deep into the meanings of books. If I am able to share that with my ELL learners, that would be beyond words to me. So often ELL’s struggle because they cannot get past the decoding. This would solve that, for bigger purposes such as comprehension or for their writing. If they are able to read richer content books, they are going to engage in more in-depth writing. I think the books on tape and books in my ELL’s language would be really easy to implement and would only take time and effort on my part to find the resources.
Overall, though I feel as though my literacy program is strong, I think that it could be even stronger if I added a theme as a connecting piece to tie all of our literacy components in the day. I also think that it is really important to add books on tape to my classroom and texts written in the languages of my learners. I believe all of these dimensions would make my learners stronger readers and writers, and also would make them better citizens, as it would further increase their social awareness (by adding cross-cultural content as the source of where I derive my themes).
If I were able to add dimensions to my literacy program, from the Book Club Plus framework, I would add a theme to connect all of our different literacy components. I don’t think I would necessarily add fishbowl or book clubs right away, as I pointed out, because I am not sure my learners are quite ready for that. However, as I pointed out, my learners may be able to later in the year. I think once they gained the specific social skills, pointed out in Book Club Plus!, of “asking good questions, knowing how to build on another student’s comments, and engaging other classmates,” during large group, they may be able to then take those skills to work in highly regulated fishbowls (Rapheael, Florio-Ruane, Goerge, Hasty, Highfield, 2004). In contrast, however, I would be very excited to implement themes to our literacy program, especially themes that would be relevant to science and social studies. The Book Club Plus framework talked about how it is important to pick literature pieces that cross-disciplines, and since I am such a strong advocate of creating a stronger social awareness in younger learners, I would love to add themes relevant to teaching about social studies and science. I think teaching my learners themes such as friendship, justice, patience, family, cultures, etc., would not only focus my literacy lessons, but would greatly impact the knowledge my learners would gain from engaging in reading and writing throughout the day. I loved the idea of creating specific “big theme questions,” that the learners want to learn throughout the unit, and that the learners answer throughout. This makes learning so meaningful to them and gives them a specific purpose as to why they are engaging in different tasks. True, there still will be the different objectives embedded, such as, learning about concepts about print during shared reading, but the learners would also be learning a lot about the theme. It would make the different literacy lessons seem less segregated and irrelevant. I further love how then, the writing they would do during writer’s workshop would be relevant to the reading that they did. This would make it so much easier to teach learners different writing styles and how to use writing to respond to reading. There could be so many more connections. For example, if you were doing a lesson on cultures, you could have the learners do a simple compare and contrast piece, a letter to a friend around the world, etc. They would be able to engage in meaningful pieces of writing that exemplified different writing styles. I think that it would be really easy to connect all the different literacy aspects by a theme. The only part that would be difficult would be finding different selections of books to use. Other than that, I think that my class already engages in enriching discussion and we already talk about a lot of deep themes, thus I feel they would be able to easily transition into a theme based literacy program.
I also really enjoyed all of the resources for ELL learners that the Book Club Plus framework talked about implementing. The idea of books on tape, for both ELL learners and learners who struggle with reading, really sparked me as a great idea. I truly believe that learners who find reading difficult are often placed at a disadvantage because they are given books that are developmentally appropriate but are not as rich in content. Thus, those learners start to lose their love for reading because they are not able to really engage in enriching text. I truly believe, in allowing them to listen to books on tape, instead of not being able to engage with certain higher content texts, would keep them more engaged and loving reading. They would have the opportunity to learn how to become stronger readers during guided reading, thus not taking away from their ability to grow as readers. Furthermore, I loved how chapter 10 talked about having books in ELLs’ native languages so they are able to pick up the content. So much of reading to me is the comprehension piece, the delving deep into the meanings of books. If I am able to share that with my ELL learners, that would be beyond words to me. So often ELL’s struggle because they cannot get past the decoding. This would solve that, for bigger purposes such as comprehension or for their writing. If they are able to read richer content books, they are going to engage in more in-depth writing. I think the books on tape and books in my ELL’s language would be really easy to implement and would only take time and effort on my part to find the resources.
Overall, though I feel as though my literacy program is strong, I think that it could be even stronger if I added a theme as a connecting piece to tie all of our literacy components in the day. I also think that it is really important to add books on tape to my classroom and texts written in the languages of my learners. I believe all of these dimensions would make my learners stronger readers and writers, and also would make them better citizens, as it would further increase their social awareness (by adding cross-cultural content as the source of where I derive my themes).
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