Reading Lessons Overview

Reading Lesson Overview

Reading Lesson 1: Mia

Target Areas: Prosody/Inflection

Why/learning needs? My MT and I have completed numerous running records and reading assessments on all the students in the class. From these assessments, we have noticed that although Mia is able to read the passages with speed and accuracy, she lacks prosody and inflection. In hopes of helping her become a fluent reader, I would like to focus on teaching her how to gain inflection in her voice, to read with prosody. Thompson, Chapter 6 discusses fluency and what it means to be a fluent reader. Some strategies included in this chapter include choral reading, Readers Theater, guided reading, word recognition teaching and interactive reading. My rough plan is to do a type of Readers Theater. I’ve chosen a book that is mostly conversation between a daughter and her mother. I will read the role of the mother and I plan to have Mia read the part of the daughter. I’m going to direct model by showing her how I read with inflection in my voice, as if I were talking in real life.  I will point how my voice gets higher and lower and how the end of a question sounds compared to the end of a statement, etc.

Reading Lesson 2: Bailey

Target Areas: Reader Factors

Why/learning needs? As with Mia, Bailey is reading at grade level based on running records and short reading assessments that have been completed in the classroom. However, I think Bailey is missing out on some aspects of reading comprehension. I want to work on predicting, connecting and summarizing with Bailey. I think she would be able to have a deeper connection with the story if she was more invested in the plot and story line. These topics are discussed in Tompkins Chapter 8. It lists these aspects along with others and calls them reader factors. I think Bailey could benefit from extra help in all of these aspects, but I’d like to focus on the predicting, connecting and summarizing parts. I plan to do this by reading a book called “Boomers Big Day” about a dog whos family is moving. There are many parts in the book where readers can predict what will happen next, connect one part of the story to another, etc. Then once we’re done I will ask bailey to either write out a short summary of the story or tell it to me orally.

The Phantom Tollbooth Vocabulary

CHAPTER ONE:

Tier One Words:
       1. Book
       2. Rules
       3. Traffic
       4. Birthday
       5. Smaller

Tier Two Words:
      1.Course
      2. Attached
      3. Depicting
      4. Genuine

Tier Three Words:

     1. Dejectedly  

     2. Punctuated

     3. Erected

     4. Impractical


Which Words To Teach and Why...

 I think it makes sense to focus on the tier two words more since these are higher frequency words and are used more often throughout the novel. This was they are prepared to see and comprehend these words that come up more often. I would also focus some of the tier three words since students could strengthen their ability to use context clues since each of these words come up throughout the book in a way that the context could really help them determine an accurate definition of the words or at least help them understand the meaning of the full sentence.


Lesson Plan...

I would begin by showing a list of the tier three words their page numbers. I would ask students to help me explain what context clues are since at least some of them have already been familiarized with context clues. Then we would do a couple examples that I would have prepared with tier three words in them. Then we would do the first one - dejectedly- as a class by all going to the page in the book and then the class would take turns giving a definition of dejectedly and explain how the context clues helped them decide that. Once we get through all four of these words we would begin reading the chapter and I would have highlighted many of the tier two words and when we get to them I would have students discuss the meaning of these words and connect them to the context they're in. At the end I would give a brief assessment with tier three words from chapter 2 in their sentences to use the context clues to help them decide on a definition. Then they will use this context clues skill as well as prepare them for these words when they read the next chapter.

New Literacy Learning

            When I started this project I had always thought of literacy being reading and writing. I never really thought about literacy being cultural. Doing the research for this project made me see that it is actually really easy to include cultural literacy in the classroom. 

             After doing the research I noticed that the activities and lessons that I never really thought about being cultural literacy, were in fact cultural literacy. I think for me learning about cultural literacy was not that surprising, but seeing lessons and ways to include this in the classroom was very interesting. 

            I started out thinking that literacy is just literacy, but I found out that it is much more. Literacy is visual, emotional, digital, and cultural. I have learned that you can incorporate literacy into everything that you do in the classroom. 

           Using the weebly website creator you can create a website of anything you want. Using this in the classroom will allow for students to be interactive with the website and also with cultural literacy. You can make a website about a culture, or many different cultures and assign students to do things each day or week. When the students are engaged with the topic they are more likely to get something from it. 

           As a teacher I want to include this among with other technologies in my classroom. I think that students will find this fun and interesting, they could even make their own website about a culture. 

NL Blog Post

1) YOUR CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING: 

                At the beginning of class, before we even uploaded our definitions of literacy, I was under the impression that literacy was one set definition. I’ve learned since that literacy is just the base and that there are many different types of literacy. The definition of literacy that I posted back in February was for media literacy. I ended up completing my NL project on emotional literacy, so unfortunately I never learned more about media literacy past the definition.

When we first started this project, I wasn’t sure what emotional literacy was. I made an assumption that it was just about knowing why you feel the way you do, but as I did my research, I found that it was much more than that. Back on March 11^th, we posted in our book club blog about what we were learning about our specific literacy and I found a lot of information while researching. The findings of my research have changed my conceptual understanding of literacy in general and more specifically about emotional literacy.

I think there were a few readings that helped solidify the idea that there were numerous type of literacies, but I think the thing that affectd my understanding the most was the new literacies project. I learned a lot about emotional literacy just by doing research and making my weebly, but I learned even more when I compared my weebly to other students’ projects about emotional literacy. It seemed like with each project I learned something else about emotional literacy (along with each other type of literacy). It was so nice to explore a bunch of different projects verse having to read pages and pages of articles.

As I reflect on this project and my past experiences, I feel like I’ve been given a lot of opportunities to become literate; not only digitally, but emotionally, culturally, numeracy, etc. I can remember, back in elementary school, instances where my teacher would ask me “why are you sad?” or “what happened that made you feel this way?” I didn’t realize until now that they were actually helping me become emotionally literate. They got me talking about my feelings at an early age and 20 years later I’m very good at communicating my feelings and understanding why others act and react the way they do. Also, in terms of digital literacy, I can remember numerous projects in middle school that had me working on PowerPoint, using the Internet to research, learning how to use MLA on research papers, etc. In fact, in high school I had a class each day that required me to make things using the computer and the Internet. Things like business cards, PowerPoint presentations, resumes, a graduation binder, word documents, etc. It all seemed very trivial, but I wouldn’t be as technological savvy as I am today with out it.

2) CLASSROOM IMPLICATIONS:

I think that providing ‘effective literacy instruction’ means teaching all types of literacies to all students, no matter their ethnicity, gender, interests, social economic class, etc.  After my research and completion of my project, I realized that teaching these literacies takes time; that we need to expose our students to quality instruction and activities for the ideas to really sink in. Also, we need to start our students off young; preschool would be a great place to start, especially for emotional literacy. Creating an environment that is comfortable, accepting and judgment free, where kids feel free to say, “I don’t understand” or “can you explain that again.”

As teachers we also need to realize that we can’t just have students read during literacy sections. There’s so much more to being literate than just being able to read words on a page and comprehend them. We need to give students exposure to cultural, digital, numeracy, emotional literacy, etc. We need to create well-rounded students and we can begin by implementing these types of literacy instruction into our classrooms.

The research that I’ve done for this project and the projects that my classmates have created have been very eye opening for me. I never realized that we, as humans, need to learn about how to be emotionally, culturally, digitally literate. I thought it was just something that came with age. I think that this project was a good use of my time because I now know that as a teacher I want to incorporate all these literacies into my classroom and make sure my students get lots of exposure to digital technologies. I never grasped how important these topics were until I completed this project and reviewed my classmates’ work on different literacies using different technologies.

Now that you have engaged in this project and reflected on your own learning, what are the implications for you, as a teacher, to implement your ideas about literacy in the K-6 classroom?

            I’ve always been a huge supporter of technology in the classroom. I remember as a student, using technology was a great motivator for me. I was always excited to use the laptops or go to the computer lab and learn how to do research or make PowerPoint presentations. I think due to all the exposure I was given to technology, mostly in middle and high school years, I’m very fluent with technology today. I think it’s important to teach students about digital literacy, to give them the exposure to computers, the internet, creating online projects, researching, etc. The times are changing and technology is more prevalent than ever, both in the classroom and out in the real world. It would be hard to get a job without having at least basic computer sills. If an employer sees that a student knows how to use PowerPoint, weebly, prezi, etc., that will better their chances of getting a job; technological skills make people more employable.

            Digital literacy refers to the ability to make, organize, evaluate, locate and create information using digital technology. As a teacher, I will provide my students with multiple ways to become digitally literate. I want to create projects that allow them to choose their technology, I want to make homework assignments that need to be submitted online with the use of the internet, I want to make research projects that require some internet research, etc. Students need to be taught how to do these things. They need to understand how to research topics, search things online, upload documents or pictures, format papers, etc. These are all skills they will use on the regular in their real life, which makes these activities very authentic and worthwhile. As a teacher I’m going to make it a goal of mine to make sure each of my students has a grasp on different technologies and are on their way to becoming digitally literate.

            In terms of my new literacy, emotional literacy, I will also be teaching my students about this. After doing all my research, I realize how useful and necessary it is to be emotionally literate. It doesn’t matter if you’re 4 or 44, being emotionally literate can only improve your quality of life. The thing about ‘teaching’ emotional literacy is that is doesn’t require a lesson plan, or a day to teach. As a teacher, I can help my students become emotionally literate by direct modeling; modeling correct behavior and reactions to other behavior. I will make my classroom a comfortable environment where kids feel its okay express feelings, which I’ll explain are natural. I can ask them how they feel and ask them to tell me why they think they feel that way. Some songs, books, classroom posters, activities can also help educate students on being emotionally literate.

            Teaching about emotions to all aged students requires a good deal of support. Younger kids don’t know how to express their emotions, so often times they cry. A teacher would need to provide emotional support by scaffolding the student to express themselves by teaching emotional vocabulary, so when that student feels that way again, s/he will have the correct terms to get his/her emotion across without crying. Older students won’t cry as much, but they may act out with violence, which needs support in itself. As a teacher, you may ask the older students questions, much like you would with younger students. Make them feel comfortable, and like you respect them and it’s more probable that emotional literacy will be learned.

New Literacy Project Blog Post

                 

My conceptual understanding on literacy has changed drastically since the beginning of class. I had heard people use the phrase “I am technologically illiterate”, yet I never applied anything but the ability to comprehend what one reads to my definition of literacy. Now I have a much different understanding and definition of literacy and it is more broadly defined in terms of the skills one needs to function successfully in society.

My research with emotional literacy highly influenced this change of understanding because it has nothing to do with written work yet can significantly impact ones success in life and interaction with society at large. That is, low emotional literacy would make it hard to perform well in an interview or to be able to work successfully with colleagues. Low emotional literacy could also make it difficult to maintain friendships. Both of these things are essential to functionality in society.

 My digital literacy advanced this new understanding and fluid and working definition because I realize that students needs navigation skills across many different digital platforms to be able to generalize what to do when faced with a new digital interface. This is an important aspect of literacy because in almost every job you are required to be able to use and navigate digital technologies. By teaching various digital technologies

            My research on new literacy’s definitely as influenced by understanding of how to instruct diverse learners in their literacy development. Now that I have the understanding that literacy involved a variety on skills that assists one in functioning in society, I realize there is much more to teach than strictly reading comprehension.

            Diverse learners would have to learn digital literacy in different ways yet it is important that they are digitally literate because of the importance this literacy hold in society. ELL students would need help navigating pages written in English. Visually impaired students would need to use tools that make these websites more accessible, such as voice over which is provided on most Mac devices. Hearing impaired students would need video tutorials across many different digital platforms so that they can begin to generalize the concepts (just like any students, but only the video tutorials would be different). There are many different ways we need to consider making these digital literacies accessible to all learners.

             Emotional literacy instruction would also vary across different diverse learners. For example, ELL students may come from cultures where different visual cues in relating to people mean different things. This is where cultural and emotional literacy collide and it would require explicit instruction and dialogue to make sure that these students were able to understand these differences and to pick up appropriately on these visual cues so that they are better able to function in American society.