Week 12

What good readers must do:

· Use prior knowledge

· Make predictions

· Ask questions, not only to the teacher but to themselves as well

· Make connections to their own lives and their prior knowledge

· Reread for meaning and understanding

What teachers do to develop comprehension:

· Motivate their students

· Model good reading behaviors

· Teach good strategies and provide good practice

· Encourage writing

· Help build their students vocabulary

How teachers can help their struggling readers:

· You can use the same strategies for non-struggling readers but make them more intense and more in depth

· Monitor the student more closely to see specifically what they are doing wrong so you can then show the proper adjustments for them to make

After viewing this video I have seen many positive tools that I could use in my classroom as far as teaching my students about comprehension. This video has shown me the many important factors that go in to monitoring your student’s comprehension for all types of readers. It is important to teach strategies to your students and to reinforce the good skills taught. The video goes on to talk about IRE questioning which is a type of one-on-one questioning used between the teacher and their student. Once given the correct answer the student is praised for this and in a way this is good because it is a positive reinforcer but the student really is not fully learning from this type of questioning. Personally I think that classroom discussion is important and getting feedback is helpful for you as the teacher and also for the students and this type of IRE questioning does not promote this. I did like that the video encouraged the use of prior knowledge because I think this is important and can make the difference for your students comprehension and reading level in many cases. Overall this video had many useful tools that I have seen and would like to execute in my classroom.

DIBELS vs QRI-5

After doing examples of both the DIBELS and QRI-5 evaluation I have learned a lot about both. Each of these is an evaluation on the reading comprehension of the students. The DIEBELS evaluation has many more technical parts to it. It breaks down the pronunciation and parts of the words as a student goes through to identify the words. It does letter recognition as well as sounds of letters and parts of word pronunciation to really break apart the students reading abilities. DIBELS also offers something more similar to the QRI-5 evaluation where the student reads a passage and then is asked comprehensive questions after to determine the comprehension. The QRI-5 seems to focus more on general reading skills and comprehension, while it provides word lists and different leveled reading passages as well as comprehensive questions for each passage it is not as technical as the DIBELS seems to be. Also DIBELS is timed in 60 second intervals and nothing more, while the QRI-5 is timed based on the student so they have no time restraints. Each of these evaluations is a great tool to use on your students. You could even use them hand in hand if you wanted to really break down your students reading comprehension abilities. I do think that DIEBELS gets into more technical aspects of word recognition then the QRI-5 does, but however I do believe that they are both excellent options that I would use in my classroom with my students.

Observations

As I continue my observations I am able to see more reading and writing involved in the classroom. While I do observe all subjects, reading is involved in them in some way or another. My target student that I have done the evaluation on has shown great confidence when reading out loud and doing her presentation. Each student had to do their reading report on their independent reading story. They presented their books to the class and created an artistic poster to go along with it that included information about both the story and the author.

Week 8

1. Having an affective writing program is very important and crucial to the students learning. The important components of a good writing program are personal connections, conventions, and inventions. 2. I think it is important to block out time periods for the students to have to do their writing assignments and also some personal writings of their own. I would make sure if there was any down time that the students were writing in their journals. 3. You can have the students write about their own personal experiences that have related directly to the subject. If they have been through the same thing then they can discuss that in their writing. 4. Through students work you can find the most common mistakes your students are making and then implement lessons and tools for the students to use to correct these writing errors. You can also see which students are understanding and comprehending assignments and reading and those who are not. 5. When you do any type of creative writing or personal writings I think is the best time that you promote student inventions and experimentation. Also I think that once you have your students confident in their writing skills that this will allow them to be a little bit more risky with their writing and they will really be ale to use their abilities to their fullest potential.

QRI 5 Analysis

The student observed doing this QRI 5 analysis was a thrid grader and an ESL student. She was started off on the first grade level reading word lists, where she was able to idenfity the words on the list, so moving on to the passage was the next step. With no prior knowledge of the students reading abilities you could quickly tell her certain habbits. She easily becomes discouraged but with some encouragment she is able to read the words and move on. The first passage that she read was on level one and was called "Mouse in a House." When asked about the topic she was able to show she was familiar with 65%. As she went on to the passage you could notice that she struggled with words and their endings, for example she would say went when the correct word on the paper was wanted. When finished with the passage she had a total of 9 misuces, which pur her on the insturcional reading leve. She was able to recall about 22 of the 44 retelling ideas and scored at an instructional level for the questions that she answered. The assessment was moved on to the second grade evaluation level since we were working with a thrid grade student. She scored only 22% when asked the concept questions for the story. She seemed to struggle more on this level and was unable to retain specific information fromt he reading passage, so her comprehension was not that great. She had a total number of 13 miscues when reading the passage "Whales and Fish" and she only was able to recall 11 out of the 49 ideas on her own. however she seemed to be able to answer the questions about the story most accurately. She once again scored on the instructional reading level. Overall one would say that this student is not reading on grade level. While she was able to get through the passages and struggled over certain parts, overall her performance was not that great. I would reccommend that this student not only works on their reading skills but their confidence as well. Confidence seemed to play a major roll in this students abilities, she second guessed herself many times and would stumble over words in the passages taht she was able to identify in the word lists. Also working closely with the teacher as well as the ESL teacher and practicing will help greatly.

Week 6: COCA

This assessment type that is described in the article I think is a great way to evaluate a readers comprehension levels. The COCA method allows teachers to work closely with students to get a better understanding for what kind of reader that particular student is. This method offers two different books to chose from, one on Dragonflies and the other on Salmon. I like that you may choose which one you may want to use for your different students. Also I think it is a good idea that the book has some fill in the blank areas, so the students are not simply just recognizing words and trying to read text but they need to show they are comprehending the text by being bale to take a word from their own brain and putting it in the text themselves. Also the idea that teachers should be prompting the student reader and asking him or her questions through out the evaluation to assess their comprehension levels is a great method. I have never seen an assessment where the words were not provided on the pages for the students to use as a visual aid so I would deffinitely be interested in either putting this method to use myself or observing another teacher using this method to see how well it works with different types of learners.

Christopher Myer's: A Writer's Story

This video clip provided lots of positivity when it comes to students being different from one another and yet all being relateable to not only eachother but to the stories that they are reading. I really liked how the author in the video clip exposed his insecurities and struggles as a child growing up through his own stories that he wrote and to the student's in the class to let them know being different is okay. I also thought it was a great idea that he had them come up with a story based on a character that they made up as a class and gave a certain problem too. In my classroom I would definitely do an activity with the class to have them be the writers of a short story in a similar way. To have them come up with a character, a problem for the character, and the story line is a great way to get the students involved and motivated to read.

Question: Would you try to do this as an activity in your classroom? If so, how might you go about doing it, similarly to what we saw in the clip or do you have any other ideas?

Creating A Home Reading Program

I chose to listen to the podcast on the R4 reading engagemnent method on promoting students reading at home. In this podcast it discussed how to motivate students and parents to implement reading habits at home and how to keep students engaged in reading and to ensure progress and understanding. This podcast discuessed a method created by teachers known as R4: Read Relax Reflect Respond. Following these four R's will help students and teachers keep track of the reading being done by each individual student. I think this podcast had very beneficial information and tips for teachers and parents to use with their children. Reading is a major part of a students education and having the proper support at home is a major factor in a students progress so implementing the R4 program and assigning reading assignments to be done at home are very important and will be very beneficial. By having the students read on their own and then respond to what they are reading I think is a great idea. To have the students respond in their journals as the podcast discusses by either writing a substantial response to what they read or choosing to draw a picture of their favorite character or doing research on the author is a great way to motivate the students and to help the teachers determine the extent of the understanding the student may or may not have. Ensuring that parents are on the same page with the teachers in these methods is also very important I think. With the help of willing parents and the motivation from teachers students will be inspired to read more and this will in turn create good reading habits and better learners. I think this podcast is very important because often it is an issue with students that either they do not have the support at home or they simply are just not motivated to do the reading at home on their own so by implementing an at home reading program I think it is a great way to help eliminate either of these problems and to create positive reading habits

Question:

According to the article on the NAEP exam it states that teachers do not often make sure their students fully understand the text that they are reading, why do you think this is?

The Assessment of Thoughtful Literacy in NAEP: Why The States Aren't Measuring Up

This article talks about the two different exams that are given to study a students reading level, the ones given by the state exam and the NAEP test. This article states that the state tests do not measure up to the NAEP. Across the nation there are so many learners who do not read on their grade level, and in many cases this has not been identified or is identified too late. The article states that nation-wide we are having a problem with teachers not ensuring that thier students fully understand the text they are reading but simply that they are able to read the words. The reason why it is argured that state tests are not as good as the NAEP is becuase that they do not set the bar as high. State tests are not challenging for the students minds. So while the grades of all students across the board for the state test may be good the actual testing itself is not beneficial to the students. By simply just being able to read text and not having the ability to comprehend it is not the quality of good readers and is not what we are striving for for our students. As a teacher it is your responsibility to ensure that all of your students are comprehending and not simply doing just enough to get by. By taking the NAEP test it challenges the students more and will give you a better idea of where their literacy skills are at to make sure that they are the most succesful that they can be.

Response to Intervention (RTI): What Teachers of Reading Need to Know

This article was about RTI, Response to Intervention and its importance in the classroom with struggling readers and learners. The article discusses the significant effects RTI has on students as learners. All too often learning disabilities were being addressed and noticed later on in a students learning experience so the RTI program was implemented as a means to aknowledge and eliminte this problem. RTI's main purpose is for educators to be able to identify students with learning disabilities earlier and to respond to this disability by providing the specific help the students needs. Not only does this article talk about what RTI is it also goes in to detail about the impact it has on students and educators and the process that is taken by educators and how to evaluate the students. RTI has reshaped the education system and has allowed for teachers to offer better and more efficient help to students more effictively and earlier. RTI has allowed students that struggle to have more opportunities to stay on grade level, rather then to fall behind. I believe that RTI has changed the education system for the better. Although it holds the teacher more accountable for each of their students as indivindual learners and may create more work for teachers, it is a very positive system to have been implemented and through the extra time and energy put in by the teachers many students are benefiting from the RTI system.

Reader Assessments

The video I just watched was about reading assessments and being aware of your students reading habits in the classroom. It helped show things that teachers need to be aware of when assessing their students reading abilities and how to test them properly. This video is a useful tool for preservice teachers to utilize in preparing themselves for what to expect when in the classroom with their own students. As teachers it is our obligation and make a point of finding out what grade level each of our students read on as individuals. As teachers we must also make sure to assess the students vocabulary, fluency, context understanding, and the many other aspects that go in to reading. Students need to be absorbing most information possible from the lesson plans and our daily activities and by being aware of our students reading abilities this will help to ensure that this takes place.

Through watching this video it made me realize taht so much goes into assesing a students reading abilities. There are a lot of different steps to take and a lot to be taken into consideration while you are evlauting these skills.

While doing my observations I was able to see the teacher do an assessment on a student who reads below grade level. Watching her assess the student as he struggled gave me good insight into how to stay positive and how to reinforce good habits and good reader skills. The main thing that I noticed the teacher doing was that she was very supportive and encouraging of the reader. This particular student requires extra help with the resource room and one on one reading with the teachers to improve their skills and to try and get them reading on grade level.

Week 2 ELL Survey

Through working, observations, and going to school I have had much experience with different and diverse cultures and linguistic backgrounds. I have work with ELLs and also observed ELL students in the classrooms I have been involved in. I have noticed through my experience that many ELL students have a harder time staying motivated. Since things do not come as easy to them they have a harder time and become discouraged more often. Especially when it comes to reading and writing, these students have low levels of confidence and become embarassed in some cases when doing group work or reading out loud. Teachers have made it their priority in classrooms to give these students the extra help that they need to get these students caught up and on track with the rest of the classroom to keep them motivated and help their performance. Ell students encounter learning difficulties when it comes to reading and writing, which carries over in to almost any subject in school. I have seen teachers incorporate extra reading groups for ELL students, and also set aside extra time to work with their ELL students as much as possible. In one classroom I observed the teacher would provide the students with copies of the directions in their own language along side their language. A strategy I would make a priority in my classroom would be to make sure the students remain confident and motivated in their skills. As ELL students they tend to become unmotivated and embarassed and can fall through the cracks and fall so far behind that they may never catch up and be on level. It is important as a teacher to always promote positivity and offer as much extra help and assitance to the students as possible.