Fluency

Fluency is an important component of reading. Some students read fluently and with expression, which shows some understanding of the the text. There are also some students who struggle to read fluently, stumble over words, and sometimes even lose their place on the page. I noticed my students who are not fluent readers often do not understand what they're reading as well as my fluent readers because they're caught up with trying to read each word and so their reading is choppy and comprehension is lost in the process. As a new teacher, I am always trying to find different ways to help my students excel at reading. Fortunately, there are great resources available online and I wanted to share some things I found. 

• Danielle Mahoney's blog on Scholastic offers some great suggestions of how to improve fluency. I liked how she provided information on the seven basic principles of good fluency instruction, which are word accuracy, modeling, supported reading, repeated reading, phrased reading, text difficulty, and synergy. Be sure to check out the site for details on those seven principles! She also did another blog on fluency where she provided lovely example of her fluency bookmark.
• Alyssa Zelkowitz' fluency posters, which I thought were very creative and cannot wait to use them in my classroom! Her posters include the Cheatin’ Cheetah (for reading too quickly, without care for comprehension); the Just-Right Rabbit (you can hear "just right" with your ears; you'll be hopping along at the appropriate pace); Word-Ending Elephant (good readers never forget to look at the ends of words); and Pointer Penguin (Pointer Penguin reminds us to push our fingers along with the words, as though they're skating on ice). LOVE IT!
• Amanda Nickerson's blog: She has great ideas using fluency folders to have students become more fluent readers. I will have to try this another year.

As you can see, there is an abundance of resources available to use at our fingertips. It's just a matter of finding what you would like to use and adapting it to meet the needs of your students.

E-Readers in the Classroom?

I decided to blog about an article I read about digital readers and how using these e-readers can impact the classroom. The author claims, “E-books have the potential to unveil an array of new teaching and learning possibilities as traditional and new literacy skills are integrated in meaningful ways” (Larson, 2010).   This article discusses the findings of a study on the use of e-readers in the classroom and how it influenced students are readers. The study was conducted on two second graders, one was an avid reader and the other one described as herself as someone who doesn’t read as fast. Both students read the story Friendship According to Humphrey on the Kindles and both students were observed for 45 minutes daily as they were reading. One of the findings of this study was the use of e-readers such as the Kindle “promoted new literacies practices and extends connections between readers and text,” (Larson 2010). More specifically, the students who used the Kindle in the study were more engaged as readers and were given more control then when reading printed text. In addition, there were give categories of response notes the author noted from the students’ notes: understanding of the story, personal meaning making, questioning, answering, and response to text features. The author concluded digital reading devices could provide students and teachers the support they need in the classroom.

I thought the author of this article made an interesting claim about the use of e-readers in the classrom, especially since technology is already playing an important part in the classroom. Although I do see the advantages, not to mention the perks, of using digital readers in the classroom, I can’t imagine how much it would cost. We never used e-readers in my classroom (and I don’t think anyone has yet in my school) but we do use other online resources and display it on the Promethean board. One of my favorite sites to go to for story read out loud is Story Online. Although is not as cool as having individual e-readers, it’s cheap and accessible. Students can listen to the story and view the pictures of the story. It’s like watching a video of the book! My kids love listening to the stories on the Promethean board because they can all see the pictures of the story at the same time on the big screen and not have to wait for me to move the book around to show it to them.

I am intrigued to try out an e-reader myself and if I do happen to get one for myself in the near future, it would be interesting to see how students will respond if I were to use it as one of my literacy centers.

Larson, L. (2010) Digital readers: The next chapter in e-book reading and response. The Reading Teacher, (64(1). 15-22. DOI:10.1598/RT.64.1.2

Teaching Struggling Readers

My blog is in response to one of the articles we read for our class. “Narratives of the Struggling Readers” addresses the needs of the struggling readers and the teacher’s role in helping those students succeed. As an educator of early childhood, I see students who love and enjoy reading. Their passion for reading helps to build their confidence in reading. I also see students who struggle with reading and hate reading. I remember circulating the classroom last week while students were writing in their Writer’s Notebook and saw one student wrote her dislike for reading. Her exact words were, “I HATE reading.” Of course, as a teacher, I would love for all my students to love reading as much as I do and to be good readers and confident in their reading skills. Since one of my goals is to help my struggling readers become better readers, this article offered a few suggestions.

Teachers play an important role in the lives of students, especially struggling readers. As teachers, we can help develop and strengthen students’ reading skills. If a student is struggling, teachers have the opportunity to make a different and impact the way students view their reading competency. Vlach, S. and Burcie, J. (2010) states “Before engaging with a struggling reader-or any reader- it is imperative that a teacher believes that every child can learn and can contribute to the learning community.” With that mindset, teachers can begin to address the needs of struggling by helping them develop a sense of equity. In other words, teachers provide instruction to address the needs of struggling readers and allow students opportunity to contribute to the classroom.

In addition, teachers can use some instructional strategies to promote agency. These instructional strategies are literacy attitude and interest surveys, anchor charts, quality small group instruction, and turn-and-talk. Most of us are familiar with the literacy attitude and interest surveys. This is something I usually give at the beginning of the year just to gauge my student’s reading interest and then again towards the end of the year to see if there is anything change. Anchor charts are something I am not quite familiar with and would like to get more information with. As for the quality small group instruction, this is something I am striving for this year. Finally, turn-and-talk is a instructional strategy I have heard and read about but have not tried in my own classroom. This is also something I am willing to try with my own students.

I found this article to be very helpful and resourceful. Once again, I am left thinking for ways to improve my reading instruction and be more of a skillful teacher for my students.

Vlach, S. and Burcie, J. (2010). Struggling Readers: Narratives of the Struggling Reader. The Reading Teacher. 63(6), 522-525. DOI:10.1598/RT.63.6.10

Teaching Word Recognition

Have you struggled with teaching word recognition to your students? I have. I find it requires a lot of work to teach word recognition to the lower grades because the younger students do not have a lot of vocabulary yet and not a lot of prior knowledge to build off of. However, by the time the time students get to the third grade, they know more vocabulary than they did when they were in Kindergarten or first grade. Our text, Literacy for the 21^st Century (2010), have some suggestions for teaching word recognition. I have included examples of how I use these strategies in my own classroom.

        

      Introduce the words in context.

I always try to do this when introducing a new text in my guided reading groups. I frontload the vocabulary I think students will have trouble with, ask students if they are familiar with them and if not, provide the meaning of the word used in the context of the book. For my ESOL kids, I also provide synonyms of the words so they know there are several words with similar meanings.

      Have children chant and clap the words.

I think this is more appropriate for the lower grades, such as Kindergarten or even first grade. But this will not work so well with my third graders because I don’t think it is age appropriate.

      Have children practice reading and writing the words.

As students are reading their texts, I let students use highlighter tape to highlight the vocabulary words. Students can also practice writing the words by using them in sentences. This is mostly done at home for homework.

           Have children read and write the words.

My students do this more with their spelling words for homework. The strategy is called “Look, say, cover, write, check.” First they look at the word, they say the word aloud, cover the word, write the word, and check to see if they spelled it correctly. So far, this strategy seems to be working, especially for my ESOL kids. But I wonder if this is too easy for my third graders, especially for my high flyers. What do you think?

I believe word recognition is an important part of students reading skills. Although it requires some effort and takes time to teach word recognition; in the long run, students can benefit from it great as it helps to build their vocabulary and ability to read.

Any thoughts on teaching word recognition? 

Motivation: Reading Hard or Hardly Reading?

Our class discussion and assigned reading of chapter eight in Literacy for the 21st Century on motivation has inspired me to blog about it. I decided to blog about motivation because one of my goals as an educator of early childhood is to motivate my students to read and become better readers. English was my second language and I struggled with reading my first years in school. Of course, I did not enjoy reading then because I struggled with reading a great deal. But once I learned how to read, my passion for reading ignited and I couldn’t stop reading. I enjoyed reading a lot. I want to motivate my students to read and grow to love reading and understand the importance reading can play in their lives. In my opinion, the distinction of whether or not students are reading because they want to or have to sets the mood for reading. They could really enjoy what they’re reading because they want to read a particular text or they might be bored, challenged, and unmotivated to read because the text isn’t interesting to them. Fortunately, most of my students enjoy reading. They read a lot. Most of them cannot wait to finish their work early so they can get a few minutes to read. However, there are some students who struggle with reading, especially my ESOL kids. I caught students holding a book, pretending to read, and just looking around. It’s not that they can’t read because they’ve all read with me in our guided reading groups and I know they can read. But they don’t want to read and they find reading to be boring.

According to Tompkins, G. (2010), there are factors influencing students desire to read. One of these factors is students are more interested in reading when their teachers make them feel confident and successful in their reading. I believe this to be true because students may not want to read because they have difficulties reading or they think they’re not good at it. So when teachers encourage them and boost their confidence in their ability to read, students can become more interested in reading because they feel better about themselves. Secondly, when students can take ownership of their reading, such as selecting the books they can read, they are intrinsically motivated to read. In other words, if students can have a say or offer some suggestions to the text they read in guided reading groups, they will be more motivated to read it because they got to choose what the group reads. In my class, this does not happen a lot. Most of the time, I am the one selecting the texts for students to read and the texts I choose are suggested to me by my teammates. Maybe I can let students choose what genre or topics of books to read and see if it impacts their motivation to read or not. Third, students are more engaged with books and the reading process when they are presented with opportunities to listen to the teacher read aloud and when students are given time to read independently. I find this to be encouraging because I always try to read a book aloud to my class to introduce to them a new concept. As I am reading aloud a text, I model the reading strategies we have learned in class. For instance, I model how to make a prediction as to what will happen to the text by looking for clues on the cover and the title of the book. As I begin reading, I model how to verify if my prediction is correct or not. Also, as I am reading, I ask questions and share connections I made with the text. It is true students are more engaged during read a lot because they’re being read to and they look to listen to the connections the teachers made to the text. This is not true all the time for every student. I notice some students just zone out when they have to sit and listen to someone else read so I’m always on my toes to try to reengage the student and help the student focus. I do this by trying to make the text more applicable to their lives so they can see a real world connection to the text.

I’ve made some progress when it comes to motivating my students to read. I’ve walked around the room during D.E.A.R time to observe what books students are choosing to read and made a note of it. I’ve also talked to students to see what their interests are and try to make those books accessible to them in our classroom library. I am taking small steps in motivating my students to read and I’m still learning and finding different ways to do so. How are you motivating your students to read?

Classroom Library

Our class' discussion on readability got me thinking about my own classroom library. Since this is my second year teaching, I do not have a lot of books. Most of the books I've collected last year were generously donated to me by teachers who have no need for them. But I was teaching first grade last year and now that I'm teaching third grade, I find that most of the books I have are not appropriate for my third graders. So I started the school year by borrowing books from the school library. The media specialist was kind enough to organize the books for me by genres. So I have enough books for students to read through during their D.E.A.R time or whenever they finish their work early.

However, given some time (and money), I would really like to started building an extensive classroom library for my students to enjoy. My inspiration comes from Beth Newingham, a fellow third grade teacher and writer for Scholastic. Her class' website can be found here. She has a ton of resources and ideas! Here is what her classroom library looks like. She has A LOT of books and they're all color coded, organized by genres/subjects, and each book is leveled. My dream classroom library would look something like hers. She uses the Scholastic Book Wizard to level her books, which I plan on using myself once I get more books of my own. Scholastic also has a great leveling chart that provides the matching reading levels, DRA level, and Lexile levels.

I am highly encouraged to level the books in my classroom library to track my students' reading. It will let me know if they are reading a book that is too easy, too hard, or just right for them.

Running Records

At the beginning of the school year, I had to do some running records to assess my students’ reading. I use running records to assess text difficulty and capture students’ progress. In addition, the running records provide me with the information I would need to form my guided reading groups. By placing them into small groups, I can work with students reading at or around the same level and I can target their needs on a small group basis. I found it easier to do running records last year as a first grade teacher since I used MClass and conducted the running records on a Palm pilot. There were prompts to guide me throughout the process and it was just a lot quicker on the Palm. I was also fortunate enough to have my reading specialist come in and model the MClass testing for me. I really lucked out to have her as my resource since she was in my classroom everyday for the entire reading block for a whole month! I am teaching third grade this year and we’re using Fontas & Pinell, everything is by hand and there is no one sitting next to me to guide me through the process. Needless to say, running records were a bit challenging and more time consuming to do this time around since I have to mark up the running records by hand. Therefore, the process took me a bit longer than I had planned so I ended up forming my small groups late towards the end of September. But now that running records are done and groups are formed, I can focus on instruction for my guided reading groups!

As a teacher, running records provide valuable information about my students as readers. As the students are reading, I can track their progress, determine what they already know as readers, what they are focusing on as readers, and what they have overlooked as readers. Running records also allow me to track the students' reading fluency and their reading behaviors. Although it requires effort and takes a lot of time, once done, running records are an invaluable piece of information.

Any thoughts on running records?