October 28th Blog Post

I learned a lot from this weeks readings on comprehension. Pardo stated that every teacher should

know that comprehension is a transaction between the reader and the text and from this transaction meaning emerges. I could not agree more. If a student is not understanding what the text is saying, then they are unable to form meaning. As a teacher you must make sure that your students are really grasping and understanding what they are reading, and what they text is trying to say to them. In my opinion, reading is much more enjoyable if you are able to comprehend what you are reading and if you are able to make sense of the text. That way you will be able to relate to what you are reading, which makes the act of reading more fun!

As a teacher you have to allow students to ask questions about the text that they are reading, especially if it is new material for me. You should encourage your students to make connections to the text, to visualize, to make inferences about characters, to wonder, and to recognize text features. I know when I was in school my teachers always encouraged questions and always made me focus on the things listed above. When you give students the task of visualizing or making connections it is much easier for them to comprehend the text that they are reading. In what ways did your teachers teach you reading comprehension? What are some activities that were implemented in your classroom to help you better understand what you were reading?

Below is the link to a cute video on reading comprehension that I found on YouTube. It is from the students point of view, so I think it would be great to show to my students in my classroom. They come up with a catchy song that they sing to help them remember what questions to ask when trying to understand the text a little better. Take a look!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5Xw9yoYCRY

October 21st Blog Post

Reading fluency is something that many people tend to have their own definition for. There are three

important dimensions of reading fluency. These include: accuracy in reading, automatic processing, and prosodic reading. These three dimensions require students to be able to sound it out, use little mental effort, and put the text into syntactically and semantically appropriate units. Teachers can access their students reading fluency through many different ways. One of these ways for example, would be to calculate the percentage of words the student can accurately decode on grade level material. A way that teachers can calculate the students reading rate is by having them read on material for their particular grade level for 60 seconds.

 

Assisted reading and repeated reading are two ways which help improve reading fluency. If you use these two activities along with coaching in the classroom, you will see great results in students fluency levels. Some teachers and parents tend to make the mistake of confusing being fluent with being fast. A student might be able to read quickly, but might have no comprehensions of what they have just read.

What are some ways in which you will be sure to promote reading fluency in your classroom?

I found this really cute YouTube video where the teacher implements "Readers Theatre" to help encourage and prove to his 2nd graders that reading is fun! I know at a young age when my teachers offered a chance to read aloud in a fun, interacting with the class kind of way, I was all about it. It really made me want to read and want to keep reading at home so that I could improve and impress my classmates and teachers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L5q0Y8hukU

October 7th Blog Post

Making words is a fun way to help young students with decoding, spelling phonetically, and

phonemic awareness. It has been found that there is a relationship between spelling ability and the ability to identify words in a reading, which is why "Making Words" is such a helpful method of teaching. Not only is this a simple activity, but it is also rather short and it is recommended that it be done for no longer than fifteen minutes. Children will make between 12 and 15 words and will begin with two words until they gradually advance to larger words. An example is the word spider. By using a "pocket chart" with the letters: e, p, i, s, d, r are presented to each child. The teacher may start out with the word "Ed" then go to "Red". Many students would then change the uppercase E to lowercase and the teacher can ask them why they did that.

Making words is something that I wish my teachers would have focused on more when I was in elementary school. Yes, my teachers spent time teaching us spelling words and things of that sort; but we never spent much time with "pocket charts" in the class. I think that it would have been so beneficial to me, and I think it will definitely benefit the students in my future classroom.

Did your teachers focus a lot on word making when you were younger?
Do you think you will use making words in your classroom?

I stumbled upon this blog while browsing Pinterest over the weekend. It is written by a first grade teacher, DeAnne and she posts some great things about teaching her class and dealing with certain aspects of the classroom as well as the curriculum. She also posts tons of free class handouts! I highly encourage you to go take a look!
http://firstgradeandfabulous.blogspot.com/2013/07/patience-faith-trust.html