PowerPoint Reviews

Teaching Phonics, High-frequency Words, and Fluency:

　
1. What are some methods for teaching short vowel sounds? Hand gestures that relate the sound to something they know very well help students relate that sound better to when they will see it in sentences.
2. How many pattern words should be first introduced to a student during a word-building lesson?  When introducing new patterns you shouldn't go over six. They should work in the five to six word range to make it more meaningful. 3. True or False: Even though the best practice for phonics is reading, students don't need reading materials that the reinforce skills they've already been taught or that are on the appropriate level of difficulty.     I would say false. I think that students need to work with materials that bring forth what they have been working on and most definitely need to work on their difficulty level. You don't want to make a child frustrated when reading. Yes you want to challenge students but don't want to discourage them that they aren't able to read appropriate text.
4. What are the benefits of having a word wall?
The benefits of having a word wall is that students have somewhere to look for refreshers and can reinforce their understanding. In all grades at my school we have to have word walls. I do it by subject area so that my students have somewhere to look when working on activities to solidify their understanding of ideas being learned. In the lower grades, the word wall is done by beginning letter. This is very useful for students when learning patterns because they are able to transfer their understanding of one word to another new word.
Linking Phonics and Vocabulary Development:
It is important to link phonics decoding rules to a text that students are about to read and are expected to understand. Phonics instruction should be explicitly and strategically aligned to what is to come.


Vocabulary Development:
This powerpoint was chock-full of suggested activities to better students vocabulary development in the classroom.

　
1. True or False? Students should only work individually when working on fluency exercises.
     False, like with most activities students work best with other students. Fluency exercises are great for pairs to work together and work with each other on what they are doing well on and what they should work on. As part of my schools school improvement plan we have fluency as something we want to improve school wide so I have been having my students each week work on different fluency activities in pairs. 2. The ability to recognize words quickly is due in part to the reader reading a wide variety of books.      This statement is true because reading exposes students to a wide variety of words and the more students work with high-frequency words, the quicker they will be at recognizing them in a text. It's important to expose students through different genres too to show that these words appear in every type of text.
3. What is repeated reading? Repeated reading is exactly as it sounds, repeating a certain piece of text to work on building fluency. This year my fifth grade class is doing a cold read one week and continuing that same piece for three more weeks to show fluency words per minute and fluency when having repeatedly read the same text over time. 4. What makes a Carbo recording different than a regular book on tape? A carbo recording goes at a slower pace. This type of recording allows for page turns throughout the book and at the end does a quick synopsis of the text. Books on tape are great but they are just that. There isn't any added focus other than the words on the page read with expression.

Video analysis of "Rubrics Introduction"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvJ6qZkXDc4&feature=related

Rubrics are tools that help grade subjective assessments. Rubrics are great to use because you might feel differently about different students and this allows for standardized evaluation of each student. They allow for equal grading of all students. Rubrics are also a road map for students when it comes to completing an activity. Students should be given the rubrics before the assignment to help guide their completion and they are to keep themselves accountable that they are meeting all requirements. I think when you use a rubric and students choose not to meet all requirements it's not an issue for the teacher because the students knew what the expectations were and chose not to fulfill these requirements. Percentages are best to use on rubrics because you can use for more than one assignment no matter what the point value of the assignment is.

Opitz Chapters 13 and 14

Chapter 13- Learning Strategies and study skills
When I first read the title of this chapter I was thinking "my kids need to learn study skills" because mine will be in middle school before I know it. The key questions we have to instill with our children is when to study, where to study, and the amount of time to spend studying. These are such difficult things for children to learn because they always want to be doing something else more fun but in order to be truly successful throughout the more difficult classes they take they need to learn how to study. It's such valuable habits to build before making it to high school and college. Of course we can always find something better to do (I have this problem as well) but we have to learn the importance of these study habits. I had never heard of the SQ3R technique with the five steps for studying: survey, question, read, recite, or recall and review. The key thing you need to do as the teacher is to model your thinking and process of studying. Students need to see and hear what is expected of them. Following directions is hard for students when they are to listen for them. I find myself having to repeat directions several times and I just don't understand sometimes what my students are doing when I'm giving them directions. I see that I need to train them for following directions with some of the steps given in the chapter. "Asking questions is an important part of learning," (p.328) and I could not agree more. I think students that are asking questions are more engaged and truly are wanting to clarify what has been taught. It is also extremely important for us as teachers to be very strategic with our questions for students to help guide our instruction in the direction we have planned. With the way our school systems work now test-taking strategies are extremely important for our students. I am going to take the idea from the book about posting these in the classroom. I think it's important for students to lose the fear of testing and feel confident going in. This chapter was very helpful in guiding me through what types of things I should put more focus on with my fifth grade students.


Chapter 14- Partnering with Parents
This chapter started out with "Parental involvement in the schools is ever present" (p.338) but I would have to disagree with the school that I work at. I have been at my school for two years now and the only times I have seen my students' parents is at parent teacher conferences, maybe 10 in the past two years at curriculum night, and at orientation. These events are good for attendance but then I don't hear from or see my parents the rest of the year. Many of my parents work during the day or more than one job so they don't have the opportunity to be involved. I have seen at my school the value of parents being involved because there is a clear difference between achievement in reading of those who have parents at home when they get home from school and those that don't. "Home support is a major factor in fostering higher achievement; in fact, 'one of the clearest predictors of early reading ability is the amount of time spent reading with parents,'" (p.339) and I see this every single day. I found it interesting the part of the chapter that talked about communities, churches, and local businesses getting involved to encourage parent involvement. Some of the ideas presented for parents to get involved with their children's literacy education are great ideas to incorporate into my classroom since many of my students don't have the opportunity to spend quality instructional time with their parents.



Aricle analysis
This article talks about reading comprehension and how it is affected by our language development, phonics instruction, vocabulary acquisiton, and fluency. I focused in on the part about phonics and vocabulary. The article talks about how both phonics and vocabulary are taugh directly and indirectly. I thought it was interesting that they said phonics instruction should take about two years. Therefore, starting in kindergarten students should have a deep foundation by the end of first grade when it comes to phonics. Vocabulary instruction starts from the day the child is born because we learn vocabulary through listening and later we are taught vocabulary directly from teachers. It is important as educators to incorporate large vocabulary into our conversations with students and teaching so that there is a variety of words being learned. We then can incorporate these same words into direct instruction through phonics instruction and vocabulary instruction. The chapters this week in Opitz didn't talk much about phonics and vocabulary directly but we have read about it in the past. We have read before that direct instruction of phonics isn't always the best way because ideas taught in isolation are hard for students to then trasfer to their reading whereas they can learn the different decoding sounds through exposure in reading the text. I think that there should be a mixed method because some sounds are best taught in isolation especially if they aren't always going to sound the same when presented the same in words. The article was very concise in what is meant to be learned in each area to develop better reading comprehension. The main point with reading is to gain meaning from the text and not just reading the words on the page correctly.

References:

The role of language development, phonics, vocabulary, and fluency in comprehension instruction . (2005, October 5). . Retrieved from www.personal.psu.edu/dgm122/docs/Example2.doc

Opitz, M., Rubin, D., & Erekson, J. (2011). Reading diagnosis and improvement: Assessment and instruction . (sixth ed.). Boston, Massachusetts: Pearson.

Opitz and Tutorial Process Analysis

Overview of Chapters 9,10 and 11 in Opitz
It is important to expose students to various types of text because you want to gain their interest in reading and keep them reading, because students who read more are better at reading. It's a very simple thought that if students read often they become better readers. We as educators want to make sure that we are allowing students to enjoy reading rather than feeling pressured or forced into reading. Chapter nine gives you an explanation into the different types of texts and examples of them for use in the classroom. Reading not only comes from books but magazines, newspapers, signs, product labels, clothing, and many many more. The more students understand the importance of reading for life purposes the more they might be inclined to improve.

Chapter 10: Helping Children Comprehend
COMPREHENSION this is the most important word for me when it comes to teaching my fifth graders during our reading block. I am not teaching phonics but I am teaching my students HOW to understand what it is they are reading. Comprehension is what is going on in the reader's mind. Not only do students need to understand what they read but they need to understand readings that are read aloud to them through their listening comprehension. There are several reading comprehension taxonomies mentioned in this chapter and they include literal comprehension, interpretation, critical thinking and creative reading. All of these involve reasoning from the student to go beyond what the words are on the page. Students must work to find the main idea of a book to help comprehend the material to it's fullest. Good reader makes inferences when they are reading based on how the author wrote it. You should be constantly making predictions based on what the book is saying. Teachers should be instructing students through before reading, during reading, and after reading to fully grasp comprehension of a text. This chapter provides ample amount of examples for strategies to assess comprehension as well as instruct comprehension for all learner levels.

Chapter 11: Helping Children Acquire and Apply Vocabulary
Before I even started reading I thought about how I'm sure I can gain some strategies from this chapter to help me with my research question starting in the spring. I am going to be working on vocabulary acquisition with the incorporation of technology. The pyramid on page 256 shows how students learn to listen then work their way to speaking, then reading, then writing. I have seen this very explicitly in the population that I teach having all ELLs. I didn't think about how nouns are much easier to read but it makes sense because students can apply a picture to it. Throughout reading we use context clues but there are many types: definition/explanation/description, comparison/contrast, synonym/antonym, homonym, homograph, and homophone context clues. Vocabulary instruction should be purposeful with an end point in mind. This chapter too gave numerous examples of strategies to help build vocabulary knowledge in our young learners.

Comparing Opitz to the article I found:
The article I found about the tutorial process discusses the roles of the tutor and the purpose of the tutorial process. Throughout the article it discusses how you should find a problem and ways to help solve the problem. The tutorial process is a time for students to know what is meant to come out of the sessions and a time set aside each week to work on achieving the goal. It doesn't necessarily list strategies but throughout these three chapters in Opitz I am given various strategies to help a student in need. I am working with my tutee on comprehension and making sure to finish out words when reading for fluency. Both of these ideas are mentioned throughout the chapters with ways to teach a student to do these two things. Through the article I was informed on how I should approach my lessons and in what way it should run. Neither the article nor the text say the same thing but the end result is to help the tutee with a problem in reading.

Uden, L., & Beaumont, C. (2006). Technology and problem-based learning. (pp. 140-141). Hershey: Idea Group Inc. Retrieved from http://www.irma-international.org/viewtitle/30158/


Opitz, M., Rubin, D., & Erekson, J. (2011). Reading diagnosis and improvement: Assessment and instruction . (sixth ed.). Boston, Massachusetts: Pearson.

Overview of two powerpoints in module 4

Identifying Reading Disabiilties:
Reading disabilities are difficult to diagnose. If students are slow learners but are progressing that doesn't mean that they have a disability but that they need more time. There can be many indicators to why students aren't learning at the same pace as other students. I teach all english language learners so sometimes it's hard to decipher whether it's a language issue that's causing them to not read well or if it's a reading disability. If a student didn't receive proper schooling in their native language they aren't going to be able to transfer that into English so it's not easy to tell whether they have a reading disability in English or not. I am actually running into this problem now with a student of mine (5th grade) who just moved here from Mexico but didn't get proper schooling his whole life there. He doesn't know any reading in Spanish so we are starting with letter recognition in English. This is a very slow process and he has only been able to remember 7 words over the past three weeks. I am not sure if this is due to a reading disability or if he is just having a hard time adjusting to a new language. The RTI process has helped teachers recognize where problems lay and given strategies to help students gain growth in the classroom. This process keeps changing due to super intendents and the states not wanting as many students in Tier 3. There has to be so much data and documentation taken in order for a student to qualify for any subject area. I have to keep in mind that there is a process in order to help the students out that really, truly need to be in RTI.



Assessment: Formative and Summative
Assessments have different purposes for both teachers and learners. Formative assessments are there to help drive instruction. These are meant to be used to see what students have gotten so far and maybe areas that need to be readressed before the end of unit assessments. Formative assesesments don't need to be extremely formal or long by any means. They can be self assessments by students, thumbs up thumbs down, quizzes, ticket out the door, and many many more. Summative assessments are at the end of units. These are post tests that tell you how students did according to the instruction they recieved. These can also be the end of year standardized test scores or district wide tests throughout the year. These are for reflection on student achievement and should be used with students to help them see what they have mastered or not.

Analysis of Videos

Running Record 1:
In this video we learned how to document accurate words, inserted words, ommitted words, or different words for what was in the text. All of these symbols make sense the way she wrote them. It makes sense to write above a word the word said if they substituted something different. You should write what words are inserted as well to see if they are making sense of the sentences. Also it's important to recognize what words they are ommitting in case there is a common thread throughout a passage.

Running Record 2:
In this video we are told to document if they are sounding something out. This is good for teachers to write down when we are analyzing running records so that we can see what types of sounds they might be having trouble sounding out instantly. Self-corrections are good for students to make because it can help show us that they are listening to themselves when they read and make note that something didn't sound right. Self corrections are sometimes more insightful into a students reading ability than the words that they read incorrectly because they are trying to predict the next word due to context when they make self corrections.

Running Record 3:
Repeating of words or a group of words happens a lot with students because they are wanting to make sure that they are reading correctly. The key with this idea is to give the students as few errors as possible and give them the benefit of the doubt. They have already said the words accuractely they just wanted to be positive.

Running Records: Assessing
When you are tutoring a student it's important to show them what they are doing correctly and praise them for this before trying to help where they are making mistakes. If you let them know they are successful they will try harder to make corrections where needed. Also it's important for students to know what they are supposed to be working on before starting a new session. This way they can focus in on something they know you are looking for and can work hard at making corrections.