Clues for Comprehension

What Can I Say Besides "Sound It Out"? Coaching Word Recognition in Beginning Reading by Kathleen Clark asks a question that I believe is more important than I once thought when teaching children to read: what can I say besides "sound it out"? This summer, I worked at an inner-city day camp for elementary school students and had a great deal of experiencing helping these children work on their reading skills. For 40 minutes a day, each child had the opportunity to read one on one with a adult volunteer, getting the attention and help they needed to improve their reading. I spent a good portion of the summer (8 week program) working with a 6th grader who continued to struggle educationally and socially while in school. This student, Louis, was on the reading level of the average first grader, so it was very important for us to take baby steps to help him be successful. We would read very short picture books and he would have trouble recognizing the words and being able to read him. Louis would pause and I would sometimes say, "How about we try to sound this word out?" I would walk him through the process of sounding out a word. He had no trouble with this, but it seemed that he never retained this information. Louis was having difficulty recognizing the words and making connections.

After reading the article by Kathleen Clark, I have been enlightened on some great coaching skills that could be used for students like Louis. Unfortunately, I was not fully aware of the different techniques of coaching that could be used before last summer. I was very interested to learn about the two instructional cues that can be used when coaching: general cues which help guide a children to an idea or thought and focused cues which lead a student to the next step. 

In Chapter 5 of Classrooms that Work: They Can All Read and Write, Patricia M. Cunningham and Richard L. Allington explain some great activities that can help a student learn to recognize words, the similarities between words, and thus using this knowledge to spell new words. I really liked the various activities where a teacher would put a sentence on the board and would cover up one or a few words. The students then had to look at the context of the sentence and figure out what the hidden words were. 

This photo that I retrieved from Pinterest helps a teacher guide a student through reading in 3 different ways. A student can start by just looking at the pictures and talking about what the meaning of a word could be. They can use their memory and previous knowledge. Lastly, they could read the words and the letters to try and figure out the meaning. Because context is so important, I thought these ways of reading could be useful.

Questions to Ponder

1. What experiences have you had with assisting a child to read (coaching)? 

2. What instructional cues have you found are more effective (general or focused)?

Reading Experiences: Good and Bad

What past experiences have brought you to have a passion for reading? If reading isn't your thing, what experiences have caused you to dislike reading?

I believe that asking these questions can help future teachers figure out what encourages students to love reading and what makes children or youth sway away from the idea of "reading for pleasure". Sure, not every student is going to enjoy sitting down with a nice long book, but I believe that educators need to do the best they can to make sure all children experience reading in the most positive and beneficial way possible.
In the article, Letting Go of the "Letter of the Week", Donna Bell and Donna Jarvis discuss their reactions to similar questions to the ones I asked above. Jarvis stopped reading because her teacher moved her to a lower level reading group. Bell doesn't ever remember getting read-to until she was in seventh grade. These stories stuck out to me because they were such small things. Such small things that caused two girls to hardly ever want to pick up a book. If something so small can affect a child's desire to read, this is clearly something that teachers need to dig deeper into.

In a second article, Learning to Read and Write: Developmentally Appropriate Practices for Young Children, the International Reading Association (IRA) and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) discuss their position statement on reading and writing for children. A key issue that they bring up is that preschool educators have not had the extent of the education they need to support literacy development these young children. This is an age group that I believe needs more attention in order to develop stronger literacy skills in students. How do we improve literacy practice in the young preschool years when their teachers are not required to be specialized in this area?

This activity is for preschool students who are getting ready to go to Kindergarten. Parents or teachers allow a child to retell a memory or story, and the adult writes it down  on a large sheet of paper.  The child can look at this and begin to identify with the words they have said.

Source: coffeecupsandcrayons.com

Firm Foundation

Since beginning the Reading Education class and reading the article, The Jones Family's Culture of Literacy, I have been extremely interested in the way that a student's history, upbringing, and culture can shape their future in education. Before, I had never really considered the significance these things can have on the way that the child sees reading, learning, or education in general, but it is clear that the way a child has first experienced reading as a major impact. For some families, reading their children a bedtime story is a natural occurrence, but for other families (let's say a single mother working two jobs), these children may not have the luxury of getting read to regularly. Some families may see education as a priority, the pathway to success, while others may not put such a strong emphasis on education. Whatever the situation may be, a teacher is expected to be able to effectively teach them and provide them with the best education possible.

When a child enters kindergarten, it may be more difficult to figure out the background or history of a student and their family. Some children may have had the experience of pretend reading, a concept introduced in Chapter 3 of Classrooms That Work: They Can All Read and Write. Pretend reading is when a child acts like they are reading by looking at the pictures and mocking what an adult may do when they read to them. Although it is not real reading, this is still an important step for children who will begin learning to read soon.
So what happens to those children who don't pretend read? What happens to those children who are never read to by their parents?
While pretend reading is important, if a student has not experienced this as much as others, they will still be on the write track to learning to read. Chapter 3 discusses many concepts and activities that can build a firm foundation for reading.  One activity particularly stood out to me, because I can remember doing it when I was in the first grade: student interviews. This activity involves picking one student each day to be interviewed in the classroom. The student for the day gets in front of the class and is interviewed. The teacher asks them questions so that the children can get to know one another in their classroom. The teacher also takes this opportunity to discuss the child's name, the letters that compose it, the letter arrangement of the name, etc. These basics introduce the students to concepts that they will need to begin learning.
What activities in elementary school were memorable for you and also incorporated basic literary concepts?

This picture shows an activity that I found on Pinterest, originally sourced from activity-mom.com.

Students can practice matching the words they find on bottle caps to the sentences that they have written on strips of paper. This will help them in recognizing the basics of sentence structure. Students can see that a bunch of words come together to form one big sentence. They can count the words that form the sentences as well. This activity is similar to the activities discussed in Chapter 3 of Classrooms That Work: They Can All Read and Write. 

Fifty FIfty

In chapters one and two of Classrooms That Work by Patricia M. Cunningham and Richard L. Allington and the article, What I've Learned About Effective Reading Instruction by Richard L. Allington, there seems to be an obvious underlying theme: students need more reading and writing throughout the day and schools need teachers who make this a consistent goal.

In the article, What I've Learned About Effective Reading Instruction, the author explains how half of the school day needs to be devoted to some form of reading and writing with the rest of the day being used for other "stuff". Reading and writing, instead of being limited to the Language Arts and Reading periods, needs to be a routine used in all subject areas. When I reflect on my elementary and middle school years, its hard to imagine at least half of the day being spent reading or writing. Maybe this is because we did not actually do that much reading or writing or maybe its because my teachers engaged us in ways so that we did not even realize the extent of reading and writing that we were doing. While I agree that the amount of reading and writing needs to increase, I wonder how teachers across the board can do this in a way that is enriching while entertaining and engaging. Effective and exemplary teachers are ones who have perfected the balance of these things. To you future teachers, how do you plan on incorporating reading and writing into half of the school day in a way that is fun and exciting for your students? Chapter Two of Classrooms that Work provides a great example of a way that children can enjoy reading, get excited about the books they are reading, and have fun sharing with the other students in their class. Through "reading parties" students have fun reading and explaining to their peers what they like about the specific book they have chosen to read. At the same time, students can lounge around in their groups and eat snacks. This creates a positive reading environment and causes students to associate reading with something entertaining.

The following chart effectively summarizes many of the main ideas that were introduced in the articles and chapters from this week's reading. The Education Ins section of the chart explains many of the habits of an exemplary teacher, while the Education Outs shows us the habits of an ineffective teacher.

Chart found on Pinterest and originally gathered from usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com: