Chapter5 & 10 Post and Reply Due 10-02-2011 DeVries, B. A. (2011) Literacy assessment and intervention for the elementary classroom Chapter 5- Phonics Chapter 10- Fluency
Chapter 5 told us all about phonics. This chapter came at a great time for me as it seems that is going to be my main content focus for my reading group. My second graders really seem to be struggling with phonograms and vowel sounds. They do know their vowel sounds but don't seem to know when to use long vowel/short vowel. It doesn't seem they have an concept of phonograms when decoding as they decode each letter of the word instead of break it down into consonants, vowels, and phonograms. I really enjoyed all of the information presented in the figures during the text. I was actually learning a lot about the different rules. I plan to turn all of that information into a help sheet for my students. I also enjoyed all activities provided. I find them to be very helpful and plan on implementing them into my lessons as I feel they will be very beneficial to my students.
Chapter 10 was based on fluency, which we all know is the number one goal of literacy instruction. I really enjoyed learning about the break down of topic as there are many components of it. I found the assessments information to be very informative. Once again, I also enjoyed the suggestions of activities.
I am so glad that I decided to purchase this book and I have absolutely no intentions of selling it back!!! I can see myself referring to it many, many times in the future!
These chapters came at the right time for me as well because I’m thinking my focus will be on fluency. I enjoyed reading all of the information so I know what to look for and how to help my group as well. I like the ideas presented during the chapter because they can be implemented well into the groups, if necessary.
Kristle, I was very glad that I had the chance to read the chapter over phonics during assessment time in tutoring. I believe this will be my focus for my students as well. My students will definitely need more instruction on phonograms and this chapter really gave me many ideas to use for my sessions. Andrea
1. Analysis of reading/issue. Chapter 5 is about phonics and how to build phonics skills in our students. On page 104, the text provides a bulleted list of what teachers should know. I think these are especially important so we know the steps to begin helping our students with their phonics. There is discussion about the four principles of phonics instruction; the principles are: 1) using students’ prior knowledge, 2) teaching phonics in a planned sequence, 3) using appropriate texts for the students, 4) using meaningful texts to embed instruction. In chapters 5 and 10, there is discussion about assessments and how teachers should be assessing their students and what to be looking for during their assessments.
Chapter 10 is about fluency and all of the different areas that make up fluency. Fluency is made up of the following key elements: phrasing, syntax, and expressiveness. There is also discussion about the four components of fluency: 1) phonological, 2) word identification, 3) word analysis, and 4) semantic. Teachers should also be watching for prosody, also known as phrasing. If the students aren’t phrasing correctly, their comprehension goes down. I really find the hand in hand connection with comprehension. 2. Questions/contradictions about the reading/issues. I don’t have any questions/contradictions at this time. 3. How did the reading reflect you or allow you to look at an issue differently? Reading about fluency really opened my eyes because I realized that when I was younger that my fluency may have been low, which contributed to my comprehension problems. Chapter 10 also helped me consider my group because I have an older group and I want to build their fluency and comprehension skills so they don’t have to go through what I did for so many years and still going through today. 4. Connecting the reading to you. Examples of your own experience. The other day, I was talking with Mrs. Stoppel about fluency and how that’s what my concentration will probably be. She mentioned that she had listened to my read aloud and how well I do prosody. I had never been told that I was doing something right when it came to fluency/comprehension. It was nice to hear. Then once I read the chapter, I realized that I may not have had a comprehension problem, I may have had a fluency problem.
I think I'm amazed at how complexed our rules and strategies are and how hard the English language is to learn, but how hard our children work and how much they intake to learn.Fluency is so important, it can make or break a story. We want to bring reading alive for our students so we have to show how great reading can sound. We have to use our voice.
In chapter 5 I really liked the glossary. It was very helpful, there were words I didn’t know or was not completely sure. Working in a school that is mostly Spanish, it was good to have the table on page 109, common vowel sounds. It seems as though 1st grade gets tossed loads of rules for vowels and consonants. This chapter is also very packed with activities. The technology sites in this chapter are great resources for activities. It talks about how children learn the reading by following the patterns; Sam, ham, jam. They do this in mathematics also. Chapter 10 fluency. Fluency really makes reading pop, or come alive. I think that is why it is so important for children to be read to. They learn to hear the difference between good reading and robot reading. Fluency can affect their understanding. If it takes them too long to sound words out they are usually paying too much attention to how their reading instead of what they are reading. This chapter came at a good time with testing. I noticed that in the last couple of years the teachers in the school have been using the fluency strips. It has a random sentence for the child to read and the teachers usually have several strips for them to practice with. I think this is a good way to get them faster without intimidating them with a long passage.
-I really liked the websites given in the back of chapter 5. We are always being asked to incorporate technology in our lesson plans, so those sites are great resources.
-I agree that fluency can affect comprehension. If a student ignores punctuation marks or does not use correct phrasing, the content will not make sense to the reader. We strive so hard to help students understand what they are reading, so we really need to help students read fluently.
It was really nice to have the added information throughout these chapters and the extra ideas for activities. It was really helpful to have new ideas to add to my tutoring lessons.
I was very excited when I saw that this weeks chapters over phonics and fluency. Since I have 1st graders phonics is a majority of the instruction I’ll be teaching. The text said that Camilli and Wolfe (2004) found that whole class phonics instruction to be ineffective. They said some of the students already know and use the concept and others lack the background knowledge to understand the new instruction. This is exactly why I feel like I am tutoring. All four of my students are at-risk readers at a school that has already implemented MTSS. I loved how the book stated it’s important for me to understand all the terms related to phonics but not for the students because it will confuse them even more. The phonics glossary is nice and I’ll probably end up coping it all down. Everything this chapter had is very helpful. From reading this chapter I learned how important teaching onset and rimes are. The book also said students learn to read from focusing on onset and rime, the initial letter, and by considering the length of words. When I worked at a preschool I found this to be very true. The children would look to see what the others students name started with and how long it was to guess the name. I think it’s important to remember the students have know the basics in order to build on their knowledge. The first principle of phonics instruction is to base instruction on what the students know. Giving all the assessments at our tutoring sessions isn’t fun for us or the students but it is necessary. We need to find which of the big give they struggle with the most. The book gave many good choices of books with predictable texts, phonograms, and rhyming words in Appendix A.7. All the activities in the end fo the chapter were great. A few I’m thinking about using are the wording sorting with pictures, flip books, and the magical e!. Chapter 10 was on fluency, it’s components, instruction, and assessment. Comprehension is the main purpose for reading and it increases when fluency increases. Fluency is defined more then once in this chapter but my favorite definition of fluency is the ease or naturalness of reading. The four components of fluency are rate, automaticity, accuracy, prosody, and comprehension. When I gave my students the leveled sentences from CFC they couldn’t get through level one. They took the sentences word by word and tried their best to sound out each one. By the time we were at the end they didn’t even know what the beginning said anymore. I liked how this chapter gave the advice to have your student skip words they don’t know, instead of just telling them, and then going back to see what would make sense. IT’S really important for the teacher to demonstrate all of the components of all of their readers, struggling or not. That’s why I really liked the choral reading strategy discussed at the end of this chapter.
I think that the comment from the book, "whole class phonics instruction to be ineffective," can apply to more than just phonics and reading. In most areas you have students from different backgrounds and lifestyles. With those you get a wide range of experiences and knowledge. I think it is important for any teacher to keep in mind that WHOLE class lessons may work well at times, but it is definitely not something you want to do every day all day. Teachers need to understand what is known and what is unknown to the students in order to teach an effective lesson.
I can relate to these chapters as well because I, too, have students in tutoring that are at the phonics learning level. I was relieved to see the countless activities at the back of both of these chapters. I will definitely be looking back at these chapters as we progress through internship, and then also when I have my own classroom!
Chapter five covered the topic of phonics instruction including what teachers need to know about phonics, how students learn phonics, how to teach phonics, types of phonics assessments, effective strategies for teaching phonics, and computer programs to increase phonics. The chapter went over a lot of definitions regarding phonics instruction, which I will have to go back to reference and learn better! I also enjoyed reading the best research based methods in teaching phonics instruction with explicit directions on how to achieve that. Then, the text supplied many examples of activities to implement in the classroom for different types of interventions that are very helpful. I will definitely be referencing and using some of these in with my tutoring group! I will remember from this chapter that phonics instruction needs to be based on what students know, and it should be systematic, explicit, and extensive.
Chapter ten went over the topic of fluency in reading methods. Fluency, I learned in the chapter, by definition, as the ease or naturalness of reading. The key elements of fluency is grouping or phrasing words as revealed through the intonation, stress, and pauses exhibited by readers; adherence to author's syntax; and expressiveness of the oral reading-interjecting a sense of feeling, anticipation, or characterization. The more I read these chapters regarding teaching reading skills, I am realizing how complicated and much more I need to learn to be an effective teacher in reading. There are so many different subgroups of the big five that I need to really get a grasp on before I can truly understand everything to have the ability to help my students. It is a little overwhelming. On page 360, I really liked the chart by Allington, Fountas and Pinnell, that describe a chart of fluent readers versus disfluent readers. I learned that teachers need to help students develop skills in rate, automaticity, prosody and comprehension. And that prosody meant the recognition of phrases. This chapter was full of information regarding fluency.
Alison - Teaching reading IS overwhelming, I think! Thank goodness for assessments and teachers who have gone before us!! We have a road map of sorts to guide us in the right direction until we have a good handle on everything. When talking about fluency, the expressiveness and phrasing is something students are somewhat perplexed by. The way I always try to explain it is to show them what the text said: read a passage with robot-like expression and then read with proper expression. Ask students which one they'd rather listen to and they'll tell you! Recording them as they read also helps them hear when they read in a choppy or robotic manner. Sometimes that provides them some realization of how they sound to others. I've told students to imagine that they are telling their buddies a story about something after school and then try to read like that. The way they talk to their buddies is similar to how they should read. It does take some practice, but they eventually get the hang of it!
Alison- I agree that there is so much more to learn when it comes to teaching reading. I believe that fluency is very important for students. If students cannot read fluently they may have a harder time with comprehension.
1. Analysis of the reading/issue: Chapter 5 (phonics) is exactly right when it talks about how the English language and all of the sounds make it so complex and hard for all types of students to learn what sounds to use and when. Even when we teach them the “rules” of phonics, there always seems to be an exception to those rules right around the corner! There are so many things beginning readers have to learn, like reading from left to right and top to bottom, vowel sounds, phonograms, etc. It’s no wonder some children have difficulties with reading! The principles of phonics instruction give a good base for any teacher who wants to help their students learn phonics, and using assessments after providing phonics instruction is the key to determining if the steps you are using are really working for those students. Chapter 10 (fluency) really gets to the heart of how students are reading. Fluency is what we hope all of our students achieve. It is directly linked to a student’s comprehension and understanding of what they are reading. If students read at a rate appropriate for understanding and use appropriate expression for the text, their accuracy and comprehension/understanding will also follow. Fluency instruction involves not only the students practicing their reading, but also hearing others read and having support while they read. Repeated reading is also a big component of fluency instruction. The more times they read a passage, the more likely a student is to learn new words and recognize them later in other texts. They also improve their rate and accuracy and are able to practice appropriate phrasing. Assessment for fluency should also be utilized to make sure instruction is effective and the student’s needs are being met.
2. Questions and/or contradictions about the reading/issue: My question is the same as the debate that is mentioned in Chapter 5. Do older students need explicit instruction in phonics and is it helpful? To me, I would think that if older students are having difficulty decoding and reading words, phonics instruction would benefit them. The great part about using phonics instruction with older students, I think, would be that they would catch on and learn more quickly. Would that instruction help them to recognize patterns in words and create a kind of “light bulb” effect once they start recognizing those patterns? It would seem that they’ve seen so many words in their lives at that point. Once they start figuring out some of the patterns and phonograms, I would think their progress would be rather quick in contrast to NOT using phonics instruction. Any thoughts?
Sometimes phonics doesn't work for students no matter their age. However I believe it is worth trying with all students no matter their age. I would think that they would start to recognize the patterns as well. I am not sure where I read it but it said that if children can read the words and understand them you should not force them to sound out the words. So I guess it depends on the individual.
Continued... 3. How did the reading reflect you or allow you to look at an issue differently? I have had some experience with phonics instruction for 1st and 2nd graders. It is so frustrating to teach them the vowels and phonograms and all the “rules” that go along with them only to have those “cheater” words pop up that defy the very rules you have been teaching them. English is definitely a difficult language. The text said that learning English was similar to learning French due to their deep orthography. I always had such difficulty with French, and now I understand why!! I can only imagine what it must be like for an ELL to learn English! Our letter-sound relationships are so inconsistent that even students who are English speaking natives have difficulty sometimes. This section of Chapter 5 really opened my eyes to this. It just stated it in a way that I had never thought about before. It will be very helpful when teaching all students, but especially ELLs.
4. Connecting the reading to you. Examples of your own experience: The chapter on fluency is one that I needed to read. My tutoring students need work in this area, so I was excited to see the instruction laid out and described for us here. I also really love the interventions listed at the end of each chapter. As I read through them, I highlighted several that I want to use for my tutoring group! It is so important for students to have repeated practice to improve their fluency. As they read, their errors can be pointed out and they can be instructed as to how to listen for those mistakes on their own. As the repeat the reading, they are able to recognize the areas of their errors and work to recognize those words or phrases more automatically. Before they know it, they have committed those new words or phrases to memory! Their automaticity improves, they begin to read more fluidly and with more expression (because they actually understand what they are reading) and then they are able to remember what they’ve read and their comprehension improves! I think it is such an exciting process. I have seen students go through the process who hated to read when they started, but grew to love reading. I have had former students come up to me in the halls and tell me their score on an AR test or tell me about a HUGE book they are able to finally read. SO EXCITING!!!
- Chapter 5 covers the topic of phonics. The graphophonic system is the relationship between the letters and their sounds. A phoneme is the smallest unit of speech sound. A grapheme is the written representation of the phoneme. English spelling has three layers: alphabetic, pattern, and meaning. Students learn about these three layers through decoding, encoding, and teacher modeling. There are four basic principles of phonics instruction: base instruction on what students know, provide systematic instruction, use appropriate texts, and embed instruction in meaningful contexts. There are two types of assessment: informal and formal. There are numerous examples of informal assessments such as checklists, surveys, word sorts, and informal reading inventories. Some examples of formal assessments are the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, the Phonics Criterion Test, and the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS). - Chapter 10 discusses fluency. This text defines fluency as the ease or naturalness of reading. Some key elements include grouping or phrasing of words as revealed through the intonation, stress, and pauses exhibited by readers; adherence to author’s syntax; and expressiveness of the oral reading-interjecting a sense of feeling, anticipation, or characterization. There are a couple of different components of fluency; they include rate, automaticity or accuracy, phrasing or prosody, and comprehension. Fluency instruction should follow these guidelines: students need to hear fluent reading, students need support while reading, students need specific instruction to learn phrasing skills, and students need easy reading to practice fluency. Running records and a miscue analysis are a couple of ways to informally assess a student’s fluency. The Diagnostic Reading Scales assess oral fluency by counting the oral miscues, and they also measure rate. The Durrell Analysis of Reading Difficulty just assesses oral fluency and not rate. - I do not have any questions at this time. - This reading allowed me to reflect on some of my internships. For my Reading and Language Arts, I was in a first grade class. It was really easy to become frustrated when I would assist a child who was reading and trying to sound out a word that didn’t follow the regular rules. Looking back, I don’t really remember how I was taught those words that were considered exceptions. Now, reading all of those words just comes natural. If I teach younger grades, I know it will be a lot of work to introduce phonics to those students; I also know that being able to reinforce what students have learned will take some work too. I also started thinking about my group of students that I tutor for Corrections. I noticed that as they were reading the leveled passages out loud, they did not use the appropriate phrasing. A couple of times, the students just bypassed the period at the end of the sentence and kept reading so it didn’t make sense. I think we need to stress how important punctuation marks are when it comes to reading fluently. - I have found that when I read out loud, I read at a fast rate, but it is not always fluent. I have to stop often and silently reread the information before I can comprehend it. Even when I read silently to myself, I sometimes skim and omit important words. I miss a lot of punctuation marks too which causes me to hinder fluency.
You gave a wonderful overview of chapter 5. I foudn the principles of phonics instruction to be new learning for me. Principle 1: Base Instruction on What Students Know. Principle 2: Provide Systematic Phonics Instruction. Principle 3: Use Appropriate Texts. Principle 4: Embed Instruction in Meaningful Contexts. The examples of checklists are a useful resource. I have found many teachers are posting these types of assessment tools on blogs and online networking sites. Teachers seem to know when they have created a useable tool that they should be sharing it with the teaching community.
I would consider myself to be a fluent reader, however I do not comprehend at the same level. I can read at a fast rate fluently just to read, but to comprehend the material myself, I have to slow down and reread some parts. This is an important area for me to assist my students with, at being at the same level of fluency and comprehension. I do not want students to struggle as a did and currently do.
I enjoyed reading the Principles of Phonics Instruction (pages 109-111). I felt like it gave me a lot of insight that I can use in the future. I think it’s important for any educator to base instruction on what the students know. If we don’t use their knowledge and experiences to build onto, I don’t think lessons or learning will get far at all. Using systematic approaches is key in several aspects of teaching, but I think it is important to keep this in mind while teaching phonics. If you are constantly jumping from place to place, and in different order all of the time, students will most likely be lost and confused. I feel like using appropriate texts is commonsense, but I’m sure there are teachers or schools out there that don’t – and that’s in general with any subject, not just reading and language arts. I think the most important principle is embedding instruction with meaningful contexts. I believe that this ties back to basing knowledge off of what the students already know. Using what they know and applying that in meaningful ways will result in a lot of gained knowledge.
One thing that caught me off guard in chapter 10 was the line on page 258 that stated, “Teachers report that many of their most fluent readers do not comprehend what they read.” When I think of fluency I think of comprehension. I have always been a proficient reader, but I was also diagnosed with a processing disorder, which interfered with my comprehension, so I don’t believe that I can adequately judge that high fluency, low comprehension through my own eyes.
My goal while teaching is to definitely reach out to readers that are not fluent. I feel like since they struggle they are at a disadvantage when it comes to enjoying reading. Even though my comprehension issues were related to a processing disorder I do know that there are ways to enjoy reading. I dread school-assigned reading books, because I knew there were quizzes and tests involved. However, once a teacher reached out and was willing to work with me in alternative ways in means of tests or quizzes, it made me more confident and enjoyed reading assigned materials more.
Emily - I too agree with your statement about the importance on relating new topics to what your students already know. If you test a child who has never see the mountains on the different mountains in the United States do not expect them to ace the test. You need to break it down a level and show them how mountains relate to hills, or bluffs.
Chapter 5 talks about phonics. There is the graphophonic system, phoneme and grapheme. Our book takes about our English spelling and how students learn the three different layers by learning how to decode, encode, and by watching how the educators in their lives. I have to be honest while reading this chapter I was unaware of the four basic principles of phonics instruction. I am sure that when using phonics I am aware of these four basic steeps but I just didn’t seem them separated this way. Base instructions, provide systematic instruction, use appropriate texts, and embed instruction in meaningful contexts.
Chapter 10 talks about fluency. Our book explains fluency as the ease or naturalness of reading. In speaking terms of fluency it should include rate, automaticity or accuracy, phrasing or prosody, and comprehension. When I think of fluency I relate back to my Reading and Language Arts internship. I was in a Kindergarten classroom and in our reading groups I had several students who really struggled with reading fluent. When a child can’t read fluent it messes with their confidence as a reader.
I’m not sure if I have mentioned this during our blogging time but as a child I really struggled with reading fluency, as well as spelling; it really made me self-consciousness about my reading. Still to this day I will not raise my hand to read orally in class.
I was also unaware of the four basic principles of phonics but I'm so glad I learned about them now because I think my content focus for my tutoring students will be phonic. I definitely feel like these principles will help me help my students with their phonics. When it comes to fluency I also struggled as a child. I feel like this experience will help us with our tutoring students who are struggling with fluency. It will allow us to relate to them and help them through their uncomfortable situations. I know now that I have to be confident in reading even when I feel I may struggle with fluency because the students can pick up on it. Just be confident when you read now because I think there are so many other people who struggled with fluency like us! Good post!
Matraca- I did not realize either that there were four basic principle of phonics. I think that it is very useful to the students to know how to decode and code words so that they can better understand how to pronounce words they are unfamiliar with. I also struggled and still do struggle with spelling, my parents can attest to my creative spelling when in grade school.
I really needed to reach chapter five for my tutoring group! I really feel like phonics is going to be my overall content focus so this chapter really helped me get an idea of what my tutoring sessions will consist of in the near future. I learned that the key to teaching phonics in my tutoring groups will be to always respond to reader errors, give examples, explain spelling patterns, integrate language, and provide organized sequenced instruction. A lot of teaching phonics involves constant teacher modeling. I plan on doing this a lot in tutoring, especially with our weekly vocab words. I think if I can model some decoding with a few of the words then the students will be able to decode the other vocabulary words. I plan on having every word on our word wall be decoded. I also plan on having my students focus on consonants, vowels, and phonograms daily! The section about consonants and vowels was extremely informative for me. Especially as to why students sometimes struggle with them. I don’t really have any questions about this chapter but I do plan on researching word sorts more. This type of assessment is interesting to me and I’ve never worked with it before so I’m excited to find out more. Chapter ten was all about fluency. I do have one student who is better with her phonics but she constantly repeats words and phrases. I think her repetitiveness has to deal with fluency, right? I think she is not associating letters and letter combinations with their sounds. She will try to say a word and then say it letter by letter until she gets it. I’m glad she is sound the words out but I will need to work with her on her automaticity. I was interested to see that comprehension was related to fluency. My last girl really struggles with her comprehension. After reading this chapter I think it will be crucial to relate her fluency to how her comprehension improves. My favorite part in this chapter was the intervention section that contained strategies for tutoring settings. I really think the supported-reading strategy will be useful for my group of students during guided reading. I also liked the poetry party idea. I think it will be a great activity for my tutoring students to share with their regular classroom students. Chapter ten was very informative and very useful for me. I don’t have many questions right now but I’m sure when I go to implement some of these strategies questions may develop.
The textbook classifies repetition as miscues, but I agree with you that it interferes with that student's ability to read fluently. If she is spending time sounding words out and trying to figure out words, it's definitely keeping her from being a fluent reader. I also was shocked that fluency had such an impact on comprehension, but thinking about it it makes sense. If you were to read in a choppy sort of way, I would imagine it would interfere with your ability to recall details from the story / reading.
The support activities are great! The best part is that they are in just about every chapter!
Both of my students need extra practice with comprehension and fluency. I was also very excited to see that Fluency is tied so closely to comprehension, but like you said it makes sense why. If the students are spending a lot of time trying to decode the words as they read then of course they are not focusing on what the story is actually saying. When I read the chapter on fluency it mentioned finding the words per minute while silently reading and when again when reading aloud. I would like to try this on my students, because I think the stress of reading out loud often effects a students fluency. At least that is the case for me. I also love the activities at the end of the chapters. This is probably one of the first textbook that I am actually excited to read (rather than just skim). Most textbooks you know you will only use 1/3 of the information but this one is so cut and dry about the topic and it relates directly with what we are doing in our tutoring group.
This week we read chapter 5 over phonics and chapter 10 over fluency. Phonics is just the next step after phonemic awareness. Once students have mastered that words are made up of sounds and that letters represent these sounds the next step is for students to learn the sounds associated with these phonograms so that they are able to decode and incode words for themselves. Phonograms are one of the most complicated parts of reading because they are so essential for students in order to be good readers and the only way for students to know the sounds letter relationship is to memorize them. It is usually very apparent when students do not have a good grasp on phonics because it shows both in their reading abilities and their spelling skills. I found the principles of phonics instruction very helpful because it gives a clear overview of the factors to consider when teaching phonics so that it is both meaningful and explicit. My students didn’t seem to have much problem with their phonics skills but we are still going to be practicing the phonograms chant. I think it will help them memorize the sounds so they can use them later, especially when sounding out and writing more advanced words. Chapter 10 was the section that I focused much of my attention on because it is an area that I have noticed that one of my students is having trouble with. After giving all of the assessments I am almost positive that my content focus will be comprehension but fluency will also play a large part in each lesson. With that information I was very excited to see it stated that “when fluency increases, comprehension increases and vice versa.” It also says that like any skill the more a student practices it (during guided reading) the better they will become. This means that our guided reading time will be very beneficial to increase fluency skills and in turn increase comprehension. There are four main components to fluency; rate: the speed at which text is read at, automaticity: the ability to engage and coordinate the sub skills needed for reading with little cognitive effort, prosody: the recognition of phrases and expression: the ability to make written words sound like speech. The next section was over the different types of assessments that can be used to assess students’ fluency. One of the most important points that I got from this chapter was the importance of having struggling readers read aloud during guided reading and giving them adequate time to sound out words and to read the entire section. At the end of the chapter there are different activates you can do with students. My favorite is the oral recitation lesson (ORL). I am thinking I would like to do a lesson with by group on poetry and they would get to recite the poem (after a lot of practice) to parents or someone else. Overall all of these activities are great and I will use them as references when creating my lesson plans.
The quote at the beginning of this chapter is great: Education costs money, but then so does ignorance. Sir Moser Claus Well I have to start by saying that this chapter is loaded with useable material. Beginning with figure 5.1 which gives 9 useful consonant generalizations. I was not surprised to read that research had shown that 50% of teachers needed additional linguistic training in the area of phonics. This is a word that I would not associate with my own learning as a child. The chart on page 112 that shows a teacher how to make a formative type checklist for those students who know and don't know their letter sounds is just one way to assess this knowledge. The graphic organizer examples given in this chapter are resources that I can start to design now and have ready for my class when I start teaching. I find the activities in this chapter to be very rhythmic. I know that this is one way children learn and will encourge my students to use this style of learning. Creating word family books or dictionaries is a way to create a visual way to see the words as the child reads them. The same goes for the word walls. Figure 5.13 is my favorite of the chapter. I think this activity is just wonderful for visually seeing the magic e at the end of words or the lack of the magic e at the end of the words.
I agree that it's not surprising that 50% of teachers need additional linguistic training when it comes to phonics. I remember learning phonics, but even some of the things that I learned in Reading / Language Arts Methods like the phonograms were hard for me to learn. It's not that I'm unfamiliar with any of the phonograms, but it was a new concept / strategy that I hadn't ever been introduced to prior to last semester.
I also think that the way we use this book right now is going to help prepare us in the future. All of the tools we use in tutoring will help us in our future classroom. Word family books and dictionaries are great for children to be able to take home and look at before they go back to bed.
1. Analysis of the reading/issue. Phonics and Fluency For the Phonics chapter I learned a lot about speech and writing. Technical terms were made clearer and now easier to understand. The difference between phoneme and grapheme, which before I really didn’t understand. I remember reading about them in reading and language arts class but this text seemed to make them more understandable to me. The three layers of English spelling, was very interesting to me. I guess that is because when I was in school I had real difficulty spelling. I think all of these new strategies are helping our children understand a lot better than when I was in primary school. One of my favorite parts in both chapters was the activities. In chapter 5 word walls and word ladders I see used all of the time. They are both very good learning tools. In chapter 10 there were two that I would like to try with my group, poetry party and use the supported reading strategy. Chapter ten discussed fluency, I am now leaning towards this for my group. I have one child that still needs testing and that will be finished on Friday. I am excited to get my testing done so that I can look at all of the data and decide what will be best for them to work on. One of the most important things that I read in this chapter was the guidelines for fluency instructions. It is very important for a teacher to know and understand how to teach fluency. I found this very helpful, especially since I am thinking that I will be working on fluency with my group. 2. Questions and/or contradictions about the reading/issue. One thing that I have a question on is if a reader is fluently reading at his/her reading level but reads so fast that they don’t comprehend. Do they need to work on fluency or comprehension? 3. How did the reading reflect you or allow you to look at an issue differently? The one thing that I really looked at differently was the part in the book that says disfluent readers should not be embarrassed by being forced to read in front of the class. For myself I hated reading in front of the class. It was the most embarrassing thing for me. As I struggled to sound out words and to have my classmates tell me the words, I just wanted to crawl into a corner and hide. However as I sub I have had several students who are not fluent readers raising their hands to read, even though they struggle. When this occurs I make sure to tell students to let their classmate try and sound out the word. Don’t just give it to them when they pause. 4. Connecting the reading to you. Examples of your own experience. As a child I was a very slow reader, I still am not as fast as I probably should be. The text said that when students read slower they tend to not comprehend what they read. I was the total opposite of that statement. I read slowly, but my comprehension skills were very good. I could tell you everything that I read with details. To this day my husband and I can be reading the same thing and he will finish a lot faster than me, but he doesn’t take any of the information with him, like I do. So I have to kind of disagree with the statement in the book. However if you don’t understand what you read you will not comprehend it as it says in the book. But if you read slow and understand what you read you will comprehend it.
I am so glad that you brought this up and used a personal example. I have noticed this with a lot of people. My husband is a fast reader as well, but he remembers very little of what he reads. It is great to point this out, just because it is so important that readers not only work on their rate and fluency, but that they are comprehending what they read and using the context to recognize vocabulary.
This chapter reading could not have come at a more perfect time for me personally. In our Corrections tutoring internship, I am just getting ready to start my lesson plans after assessments, and I believe my content focus will be phonics.
The "Phonics Glossary at a Glance" was a valuable figure to look at. It showed me how to break down phonics, and a little insight to how I might break down my lessons going forward in tutoring internship.
Figure 5.3 was interesting to look at, as it showed how a human articulated vowel sounds in their mouth and throat. The front and back of the mouth is where ~95% of the articulation was coming from. That may not be a necessity for a teacher to know, but yet a good piece of information for students having trouble saying vowel sounds.
Lastly in chapter 5, the countless activities suggested for students is extremely helpful. I will look at these activities for something I could possibly do with my students in tutoring.
Chapter 10 was over fluency. I like how these two chapter are together for our reading, as phonics and fluency work closely together in the reading process.
This chapter breaks down fluency into 4 levels, so anyone who feels stressed by fluency can just look to that graph, and hopefully feel less stressed.
Then again all of the activities at the end of the chapter are just beyond helpful. When looking through them, I feel a sense of relief that I can look at these pages when struggling to find a good activity to fit fluency in my classroom. I will definitely bookmark these pages for when I do get my own class!
Cody, I agree that these are two very good chapters, and the activities at the end I know will come in handy when tutoring. The authors of this book really knew what they were doing when they put the graphs, lists, etc. into it for teachers!
Chapter 5 is about phonics and I like how on the second page it gives a glossary at a glance. Teachers should know at least five things to help struggling readers. These five things are interpret and respond to readers’ errors, provide clear and simple examples for decoding and spelling, organize and sequence instruction, explain spelling patterns, and integrate language instruction. How students learn phonics is through decoding words, encoding words, and through teacher modeling. Three principles to phonics instruction: base instruction on what students know, provide systematic phonics instruction, use appropriate text, and embedded instruction in meaningful contexts. The thing that I like about this chapter is it gives activities emphasizing initial consonant sounds for different grade levels. Chapter 10 is about fluency and right off the bat it gives the definition and components of it. Phonological, word identification, word analysis, and semantic are the four master components. The chapter gives the formula for rate, and gives the definition of automaticity. This chapter gives examples of phrasing or prosody and punctuation. Again at the end of this chapter it gives activities for fluency and some comprehension. I have no questions about these chapters. These chapters allowed me a deeper look at phonics and at fluency. They gave me great ideas not only to use in the classroom, but also in my tutoring sessions as well. I was in Reading and Language Arts internship last semester, and some of the students had some trouble with phonics. Over all they did really well, but the internship I am in the students have trouble with phonics. Even though it is a math internship, when I first get there they are usually writing something.
I also liked how the chapter defined the components too. They are so many definitions that it is easily to get confused. I liked the examples of phrasing the chapter gave. This allowed me to reflect upon the past and be able to relate, therefore understand more about the chapter.
Chapter 5 begins by discussing the definitions of graphophonic, phoneme and grapheme. It is important to understand that graphophonic is the relationship between letters and their sounds. Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound, and graphemes are the written representation of the phonemes. Teachers should know how students learn phonics, English spelling patterns, and be knowledgeable about English learners and the graphophonic system. Students learn phonics by decoding words, encoding words and by following teacher modeling. It is also necessary for teachers and students to know and understand English spelling patterns, which include, consonants, vowels, and common spelling patterns. This chapter goes on to describe the principles of phonics instruction. The first principle is that teachers should base their instruction on what students know, second they should provide systematic phonics instruction, thirdly use appropriate texts and lastly embed instruction in meaningful contexts. As we read about and consider how students learn phonics, I think about the phonics instruction I have observed and participated in during my internships. In those experiences teachers have used a variety of methods and strategies to model and assist students in learning to decode words- through decode-able stories. Once students use these decode-able stories for phonics purposes, they can be used for fluency practice, which is the topic of our next chapter. Chapter 10 describes fluency. Fluency does include reading rate and accuracy, but it also considers phrasing, such as, intonation, stress and pauses, as well as syntax, and expressiveness. And as educators we cannot neglect to take into consideration that comprehension can be considered a component of fluency as well. In my internships I have also had the chance to experience a lot of fluency lessons. Students practiced reading decode-able stories in partners and small groups. They are told to mark punctuation and adjust their phrasing. One of my mentor teachers commonly said things like “Read it like a story- how do you think the character would tell us the story?”
This reading presented information pertaining to phonics and fluency. Chapter 5 discussed how students learn phonics, strategies for teaching phonics, phonics assessments, and ways to incorporate technology for learning. The text also presented various phonics activities to implement within the classroom. I found these to be very useful for the tutor sessions and in the near future. Chapter 10 discusses fluency, defined as the ease of naturalness of reading. Phrasing, syntax, and expressiveness are key elements of fluency. There are various ways to assess student fluency. This reading as allowed for better insight and assistance within the tutor sessions. I have no questions. When it comes to reading, I think about my process through school with reading. This was one of my struggle areas and still is today. In recalling how I struggled through school and how it still effects me in all areas of reading and comprehension, I want to do a great deal to assist students in not struggling with this in the way I did. Reading and comprehension is a large factor in our lives. If you can not do these together at an equal level, it makes things more of a challenge.
I completely agree, Sheena! I too struggled when I reached my upper literary courses in high school. I wish that my instructor would have opted to take several different approaches in his instruction. We were his final "guinea pig" course he was using towards his PhD program and I feel like he was more concerned with getting the data he needed than instructing us.
Sheena, I think when you struggle with something you end up being one of the best persons to teach it. You know how the students feel when they are struggling and you may know better how to reach them where they are at and give them what they need to grasp a concept. I once had a professor tell me the best math teachers are they students who struggled with it in school. Once you overcome your struggle you can use it to help others overcome their struggles as well. I think it is awesome that you are becoming a teacher and helping students to overcome those struggles
Chapter 5 focused on the importance of phonics. This chapter was a great review for me personally and as an educator as I am working with two advanced four year olds who are preparing to enter kindergarten next year. They both seemed to have a great understanding on their letter identification and of the initial letter sounds. However, they both struggled with initial segmentation of words along with blending consonants. They have easily become frustrated with the reviews on how even though those letters may say that sound the best majority of the time, there are also instances in which letters will say something different. We have begun to review the vowel code rap at the beginning of each lesson and since beginning this routine, each student has exhibited a greater understanding for their letters and have requested that we find more pictures to place on our word board.
Chapter 10 focused on the importance of fluency and presented a variety of instructional information on assessments. As a whole these two chapters went well hand in hand and will become an extremely valuable tool for establishing instruction, not only in our smaller tutoring groups, but I imagine I will be reaching for this literature periodically throughout my new career!
My students struggle with segmentation too! They do fine with the initial sound, but medial and final sounds are a struggle. I haven't taught them the vowel code rap because I wasn't sure they would get it, but reading about your students has inspired me to start it with mine. You should check out the websites at the end of Chapter 5, they have some good stuff!
Chapter 5 needs to be a whole separate manual for you to keep with you when teaching students reading. There are so many language and phonics rules that I can see how learning the English language can be difficult for speakers of other languages. I did find the information useful and interesting. I never really thought about the positioning of the mouth as being something that a reading teacher should know. Chapter 10 talks about fluency and how critical it is to reading instruction. This is something that I have discussed with my mentor teacher. She said it is hard to tell a parent whose child reads fast that they have a reading problem. I can see what she means because before I started taking education classes I probably thought the same thing, if my child reads quickly they must be a good reader and actually it is not always the case. Fluency doesn't equal comprehension. I would think teaching these type of students would be a challenge especially if they think they are a good reader because they can read fast. There are good strategies for helping a student not only read quickly, but with proper pronunciation, intonation, and meaning. I think a great way to get students to do this is by having them act out stories as much as possible. I think having them record and listen to themselves read is also a great way of getting them to hear what they sound like when they are reading.
I know what you mean, I have a 1st grader that is in special ed. but he reads really fast. He doesn't stop at any punctuation. I have had several people tell me it can be very important to practice in front of a mirror and that way they can see if they are positioning it correctly. We don't think about it when we say it but when were teaching we need to make sure that were showing them the right way.
Chapter five was great review for me. When I was studying to become a speech-language pathologist, I had to study the importance of phonics and their articulation. When I think of phonics, I remember the phonics program that came out when I was a child. I also remember doing so many phonics worksheets in second grade. In my opinion phonics is fun to teach. I like the activities that were listed in the chapter. I have used the flip books and have seen the phonogram word wall in classrooms. There are so many fun games to play with the students when it comes to teaching phonics. Poetry and rhyming is another great way to teach, I am glad the text mentioned this method of teaching. I agree with the text when they stated that all teachers need to understand the graphophonic system that links letters with sounds. Phonics may seem easy and fun to teach, but if a child is struggling with phonics it’s not just because they cannot pronounce the word. The teacher needs to know HOW they are struggling. Helping a child with dipthongs is different from helping a child that struggles with fricative consonants. Teachers must know this in case they need to see a SLP. From my previous background knowledge, I do not have any questions for this chapter.
Speech-language pathology seems like a difficult field! I have a friend who graduated with a BS in communication and now is in her graduate program to get become an actual SLP. The information that she has to know alone astounds me! I think that teaching phonics can be fun too but back when we did worksheets and stuff on it, we didn't have all of the different types of learners and definitely not NCLB put in place. Not that there weren't different learners in the same classroom as me, it was just not addressed I suppose. Everyone did the same work and learned the same information, it seems more difficult now because you have to involve every modality of teaching as possible to address all learning styles. Maybe it's just me? Am I over-working myself when it comes to teaching? I know that Ms. Stoppel mentioned "work smarter not harder" in her Adobe Connect, and I think I may have to switch around the way I have been doing things because I am exhausted when I am finished teaching.
Chapter 5 was on phonics. The information on the short and long vowels and diphthongs was helpful as sometimes its difficult to find a word that it references to. On a slightly different and same topic, I nanny for a four year old and I am teaching her how to read. The other day we were driving along in the car and she asked me what letters make the "ch" sound, so as I was getting ready to tell her "c and h" make that sound, I first asked her what word. She then told me she wanted to spell "tree." No wonder the English language is so confusing!!!
I did like the long list of example activities in this chapter for phonics and might be using them in upcoming lesson plans. The mini-books would be easy to fit in to a lesson and helpful with time management in case advanced students finish the work before others in the group.
Chapter 10 was on fluency. I thought it was interesting when the text noted that in order for students to become more fluent readers (the ease/naturalness of reading), teachers need to help students develop: rate, automaticity or accuracy, prosody, and comprehension. Also, students have to master (1) phonological, (2) word identification, (3) word analysis, and (4) semantic. There was a rather extensive list of activities available for this chapter also that will prove beneficial for developing the lesson plans.
Chapter 5 phonics, the smallest unit of speech sounds. I see how phonemes, being able to use the tongue correctly and hearing correctly. Figure 5.6 shows how there are English and Spanish vowel sounds in common. I think this is especially important to those that teach children that are Spanish speaking. There are phonics principles that help to make instruction 5easier. Figure 5.7 gives us a great to introduce phonics, for kindergarten through third grade. This unit also has many activities. I really love all the activities in this book. Chapter 10 fluency. Fluency takes on phonological, word identification, word analysis, and semantic. This chapter breaks down what fluent readers do and don’t do. It gives the readers how to figure WPM. In the first grade classrooms they use an automaticity chart that the children read. I really didn’t realize how much went into the charts, till I read the definition. I see how punctuation can make fluency bad or good. I also like how it said that short phrases can be used to teach fluency because I know long passages can be very intimidating to students.
Chapter 5 is solely about Phonics. How to teach it and how to test children. I found this chapter very informative for myself. Since my focus in tutoring is most likely going to be phonics I found myself looking more in-depth and comparing my children to the book. One part of the chapter that actually helped me with the lesson for my week was the systematic phonics sequence. I looked to this sequence and placed my children at the level I believe they are. This helped me create a lesson around my students more precisely. A lot of the assessments that I saw in this chapter I will be using to assess my students progress. At the end of the chapter there were several activities that I am going to try to incorporate into my lessons. I overall loved this chapter because I can definitely relate to it.
Chapter 10 was over fluency and I think that the two go together well. Without phonics you will never have fluency. One part of fluency that is incorporated is expression. I'm really glad this is part of the definition because I think it is important for children to read with expression. Fluency is a very big topic and breaks down into many different parts. I think it is going to be hard to find where my students struggle with fluency, because it is so broad. One of the best ways I think to get children to be expressive is through poetry. Poetry can definitely bring an expressive side to a child.
Amanda, I agree with you that poetry is an excellent way to help children learn to read with expression. This is one of the things my group needs to work on as well. I mentioned in my post that I plan to use reader's theater at some point during tutoring. I think the kids will love it, and this is another way to get them reading with expression.
As always, these chapters were packed with good information. It's not often that I don't return a book at the end of the semester, but this will be an exception. I know all of this information will come in handy when I have my own classroom and it will always be helpful to brush up on this sort of information. Even if I never read the chapters again, the activities withing the chapters are worth it. Working with kindergarten students has caused me to think a little bit differently about fluency, but the principles are still the same. My students work on fluency with letter recognition and letter sounds. They also gain fluency by repeating what I read. I try to model good rate, automaticity, and prosody, but I sometimes find myself sounding almost robotic to make sure they hear all of the sounds in the words I am saying. Mr. Harry Wong taught me to beg, borrow, and steal. This book provides tons of information and activities to use. I also really liked the list of websites at the end of chapter five. I am always on the hunt for good websites for my students. I spent a little bit of time looking at ReadWriteThink.org and it is really pretty neat. You can filter it by grade and/or subject. The only problem I had with it was that some of the age ranges for games seemed a little bit off.
Kyleigh--I completely agree with you. This text is great at providing useful resources that will be very beneficial for us in the very near future. This text is also helpful with writing our lesson plans for our tutoring sessions. I also really liked the provided activities to use to incorporate phonics and fluency in the classroom!
Chapter 5 was over phonics and what teachers need to know about phonics and chapter 10 was all about fluency. I really enjoyed reading these two chapters and was very relieved when I seen what we would be learning about in each chapter. These two chapters came in very handy this week because we were required to choose what content focus we were going to be focusing on throughout our lesson plans. I believe these two chapters did a great job breaking down each skill and telling us how to incorporate each one of them in our classrooms. I liked looking and reading about all the resources we can use to teach in our classrooms, for instance: definitions and computer games. I believe computer games would be a great resources because what student does not like to plan the computer and learn at the same time, sometimes with out even knowing it! They were both great to learn about but I believe chapter 10 was more beneficial for me as of now because one of my tutoring students really struggles with this. As stated before, I am definitely going to have to try out the provided resources in this chapter.
One of the things about chapter 5, on phonics, that stood out to me was the importance of mouth positioning when modeling how to make sounds properly. This is not something I used to think of when I think about teaching phonics. I need to pay more attention to this technique when teaching phonics to students and my own children. When reading about fluency in chapter 10 I noted the section on phrasing and prosody, in particularly the point on teachers potentially interfering with students through the overuse of praise. The example shows a teacher commenting after every single word read which leads to the student waiting for his/her affirmation before continuing. This made it clear to me how important it is to be cognizant of our interruptions no matter how well intended they may be. I really like the activities listed at the end of each of these chapters. I plan on using the reader's theater activity on page 276 in my tutoring group. I love how there is even a list of websites where I can find scripts included.
I also love the activities listed at the end of both of the chapters. I found many of them very applicable to tutoring and plan on integrating several of them into my lesson plans as well.
Chapter 5 discusses phonics, which is definitely an area I need more practice in. Because I have spent most of my time in the upper grades, my phonics knowledge is mostly limited to lectures from this class and Reading and Language Arts methods. However, now that I am working with 2nd graders this semester I hope to get a lot more practice with phonics. This chapter definitely has some great information on phonics including definitions, what teachers should know and how students learn. I found the phonics glossary very helpful and will be studying this and referring to it often. I also found the “principles of phonics instruction” helpful and think that this tells me how to get started in my tutoring group. Lastly, I also like the phonics activities in chapter five and will begin to integrate some of these into my tutoring groups. Chapter 10 discusses fluency which I am more familiar with. This chapter broke down the different components of fluency and how they affect a student’s ability to read fluently. By knowing the different things that can affect a student’s ability to read fluently I can better identify what I need to do to help them read more fluently. This chapter also gave several fluency strategies that can be used in tutoring settings which I will definitely be using in my future lesson plans for fluency drills. Overall I found both of these chapters very applicable to our tutoring sessions and see myself using a lot of the information and activities from both of them.
You prove a good point. I have spent most of my time in the lower grades and need practice on phonics but have a good understanding of it. Fluency is where I need practice. I do now understand that phonics is very important for fluency.
The relationship between letters and sounds is discussed in depth in chapter 5. I am amazed that phonics is such a broad topic that it has a glossary all to itself! I appreciated that the text spent a paragraph on teacher modeling. The statement that “Effective Teachers Choose Texts that Use Rhyme” is so helpful. Rhyming is an important part of the process of learning phonics. I also found it amusing that the text stated that the “rule” when two vowels go walkin’ the first one does the talkin’ is not a good one to use. I hear teachers say this to the first and second graders and then in the next sentence they say, well the rule doesn’t work on that word. Figure 5.7 will be helpful in tutoring this semester. The activities in this chapter will be very helpful in the years to come! Chapter 10 began with the discussion on fluency! I was excited to see this information as this is what I am working with in tutoring! After reading this information, I understand why so many students struggle with fluency. If our students don’t get the basics in kindergarten, reading fluently is not going to be happening by second grade. Chapter 10 encourages to use echo reading as well as rhyming and poetry.
It sounds like we are enjoying the same topics in the readings. I am so excited to start implementing these activities with my guided reading group! Good luck with the new activities!
I found chapter 5 to be very beneficial, the charts were a great visuals. I like the phonics glossary at a glance because it helps to clarify terms. I also like figure 5.3, I must admit, I tried many different words to identify where I articulate the words. In tutoring, my group of students loves rhyming words; I think they would love making a flip book to create rime families! Fluency, in chapter 10, is an area that my guided reading groups needs a large amount of attention in. This chapter has really good ideas that I want to implement in my next couple of lessons. Like I mentioned before, my students like rhymes and songs, this is why I would love to implement a rhythm walk. I really think they would have a positive response to this activity.
Chapter 5 told us all about phonics. This chapter came at a great time for me as it seems that is going to be my main content focus for my reading group. My second graders really seem to be struggling with phonograms and vowel sounds. They do know their vowel sounds but don't seem to know when to use long vowel/short vowel. It doesn't seem they have an concept of phonograms when decoding as they decode each letter of the word instead of break it down into consonants, vowels, and phonograms. I really enjoyed all of the information presented in the figures during the text. I was actually learning a lot about the different rules. I plan to turn all of that information into a help sheet for my students. I also enjoyed all activities provided. I find them to be very helpful and plan on implementing them into my lessons as I feel they will be very beneficial to my students.
ReplyDeleteChapter 10 was based on fluency, which we all know is the number one goal of literacy instruction. I really enjoyed learning about the break down of topic as there are many components of it. I found the assessments information to be very informative. Once again, I also enjoyed the suggestions of activities.
I am so glad that I decided to purchase this book and I have absolutely no intentions of selling it back!!! I can see myself referring to it many, many times in the future!
These chapters came at the right time for me as well because I’m thinking my focus will be on fluency. I enjoyed reading all of the information so I know what to look for and how to help my group as well. I like the ideas presented during the chapter because they can be implemented well into the groups, if necessary.
DeleteKristle, I was very glad that I had the chance to read the chapter over phonics during assessment time in tutoring. I believe this will be my focus for my students as well. My students will definitely need more instruction on phonograms and this chapter really gave me many ideas to use for my sessions.
DeleteAndrea
1. Analysis of reading/issue.
ReplyDeleteChapter 5 is about phonics and how to build phonics skills in our students. On page 104, the text provides a bulleted list of what teachers should know. I think these are especially important so we know the steps to begin helping our students with their phonics. There is discussion about the four principles of phonics instruction; the principles are: 1) using students’ prior knowledge, 2) teaching phonics in a planned sequence, 3) using appropriate texts for the students, 4) using meaningful texts to embed instruction. In chapters 5 and 10, there is discussion about assessments and how teachers should be assessing their students and what to be looking for during their assessments.
Chapter 10 is about fluency and all of the different areas that make up fluency. Fluency is made up of the following key elements: phrasing, syntax, and expressiveness. There is also discussion about the four components of fluency: 1) phonological, 2) word identification, 3) word analysis, and 4) semantic. Teachers should also be watching for prosody, also known as phrasing. If the students aren’t phrasing correctly, their comprehension goes down. I really find the hand in hand connection with comprehension.
2. Questions/contradictions about the reading/issues.
I don’t have any questions/contradictions at this time.
3. How did the reading reflect you or allow you to look at an issue differently?
Reading about fluency really opened my eyes because I realized that when I was younger that my fluency may have been low, which contributed to my comprehension problems. Chapter 10 also helped me consider my group because I have an older group and I want to build their fluency and comprehension skills so they don’t have to go through what I did for so many years and still going through today.
4. Connecting the reading to you. Examples of your own experience.
The other day, I was talking with Mrs. Stoppel about fluency and how that’s what my concentration will probably be. She mentioned that she had listened to my read aloud and how well I do prosody. I had never been told that I was doing something right when it came to fluency/comprehension. It was nice to hear. Then once I read the chapter, I realized that I may not have had a comprehension problem, I may have had a fluency problem.
I think I'm amazed at how complexed our rules and strategies are and how hard the English language is to learn, but how hard our children work and how much they intake to learn.Fluency is so important, it can make or break a story. We want to bring reading alive for our students so we have to show how great reading can sound. We have to use our voice.
DeleteIn chapter 5 I really liked the glossary. It was very helpful, there were words I didn’t know or was not completely sure. Working in a school that is mostly Spanish, it was good to have the table on page 109, common vowel sounds. It seems as though 1st grade gets tossed loads of rules for vowels and consonants. This chapter is also very packed with activities. The technology sites in this chapter are great resources for activities. It talks about how children learn the reading by following the patterns; Sam, ham, jam. They do this in mathematics also.
ReplyDeleteChapter 10 fluency. Fluency really makes reading pop, or come alive. I think that is why it is so important for children to be read to. They learn to hear the difference between good reading and robot reading. Fluency can affect their understanding. If it takes them too long to sound words out they are usually paying too much attention to how their reading instead of what they are reading. This chapter came at a good time with testing. I noticed that in the last couple of years the teachers in the school have been using the fluency strips. It has a random sentence for the child to read and the teachers usually have several strips for them to practice with. I think this is a good way to get them faster without intimidating them with a long passage.
-I really liked the websites given in the back of chapter 5. We are always being asked to incorporate technology in our lesson plans, so those sites are great resources.
Delete-I agree that fluency can affect comprehension. If a student ignores punctuation marks or does not use correct phrasing, the content will not make sense to the reader. We strive so hard to help students understand what they are reading, so we really need to help students read fluently.
It was really nice to have the added information throughout these chapters and the extra ideas for activities. It was really helpful to have new ideas to add to my tutoring lessons.
DeleteI was very excited when I saw that this weeks chapters over phonics and fluency. Since I have 1st graders phonics is a majority of the instruction I’ll be teaching. The text said that Camilli and Wolfe (2004) found that whole class phonics instruction to be ineffective. They said some of the students already know and use the concept and others lack the background knowledge to understand the new instruction. This is exactly why I feel like I am tutoring. All four of my students are at-risk readers at a school that has already implemented MTSS. I loved how the book stated it’s important for me to understand all the terms related to phonics but not for the students because it will confuse them even more. The phonics glossary is nice and I’ll probably end up coping it all down. Everything this chapter had is very helpful. From reading this chapter I learned how important teaching onset and rimes are. The book also said students learn to read from focusing on onset and rime, the initial letter, and by considering the length of words. When I worked at a preschool I found this to be very true. The children would look to see what the others students name started with and how long it was to guess the name. I think it’s important to remember the students have know the basics in order to build on their knowledge. The first principle of phonics instruction is to base instruction on what the students know. Giving all the assessments at our tutoring sessions isn’t fun for us or the students but it is necessary. We need to find which of the big give they struggle with the most. The book gave many good choices of books with predictable texts, phonograms, and rhyming words in Appendix A.7. All the activities in the end fo the chapter were great. A few I’m thinking about using are the wording sorting with pictures, flip books, and the magical e!. Chapter 10 was on fluency, it’s components, instruction, and assessment. Comprehension is the main purpose for reading and it increases when fluency increases. Fluency is defined more then once in this chapter but my favorite definition of fluency is the ease or naturalness of reading. The four components of fluency are rate, automaticity, accuracy, prosody, and comprehension. When I gave my students the leveled sentences from CFC they couldn’t get through level one. They took the sentences word by word and tried their best to sound out each one. By the time we were at the end they didn’t even know what the beginning said anymore. I liked how this chapter gave the advice to have your student skip words they don’t know, instead of just telling them, and then going back to see what would make sense. IT’S really important for the teacher to demonstrate all of the components of all of their readers, struggling or not. That’s why I really liked the choral reading strategy discussed at the end of this chapter.
ReplyDeleteI think that the comment from the book, "whole class phonics instruction to be ineffective," can apply to more than just phonics and reading. In most areas you have students from different backgrounds and lifestyles. With those you get a wide range of experiences and knowledge. I think it is important for any teacher to keep in mind that WHOLE class lessons may work well at times, but it is definitely not something you want to do every day all day. Teachers need to understand what is known and what is unknown to the students in order to teach an effective lesson.
DeleteI can relate to these chapters as well because I, too, have students in tutoring that are at the phonics learning level. I was relieved to see the countless activities at the back of both of these chapters. I will definitely be looking back at these chapters as we progress through internship, and then also when I have my own classroom!
DeleteChapter five covered the topic of phonics instruction including what teachers need to know about phonics, how students learn phonics, how to teach phonics, types of phonics assessments, effective strategies for teaching phonics, and computer programs to increase phonics. The chapter went over a lot of definitions regarding phonics instruction, which I will have to go back to reference and learn better! I also enjoyed reading the best research based methods in teaching phonics instruction with explicit directions on how to achieve that. Then, the text supplied many examples of activities to implement in the classroom for different types of interventions that are very helpful. I will definitely be referencing and using some of these in with my tutoring group! I will remember from this chapter that phonics instruction needs to be based on what students know, and it should be systematic, explicit, and extensive.
ReplyDeleteChapter ten went over the topic of fluency in reading methods. Fluency, I learned in the chapter, by definition, as the ease or naturalness of reading. The key elements of fluency is grouping or phrasing words as revealed through the intonation, stress, and pauses exhibited by readers; adherence to author's syntax; and expressiveness of the oral reading-interjecting a sense of feeling, anticipation, or characterization. The more I read these chapters regarding teaching reading skills, I am realizing how complicated and much more I need to learn to be an effective teacher in reading. There are so many different subgroups of the big five that I need to really get a grasp on before I can truly understand everything to have the ability to help my students. It is a little overwhelming. On page 360, I really liked the chart by Allington, Fountas and Pinnell, that describe a chart of fluent readers versus disfluent readers. I learned that teachers need to help students develop skills in rate, automaticity, prosody and comprehension. And that prosody meant the recognition of phrases. This chapter was full of information regarding fluency.
DeleteAlison - Teaching reading IS overwhelming, I think! Thank goodness for assessments and teachers who have gone before us!! We have a road map of sorts to guide us in the right direction until we have a good handle on everything. When talking about fluency, the expressiveness and phrasing is something students are somewhat perplexed by. The way I always try to explain it is to show them what the text said: read a passage with robot-like expression and then read with proper expression. Ask students which one they'd rather listen to and they'll tell you! Recording them as they read also helps them hear when they read in a choppy or robotic manner. Sometimes that provides them some realization of how they sound to others. I've told students to imagine that they are telling their buddies a story about something after school and then try to read like that. The way they talk to their buddies is similar to how they should read. It does take some practice, but they eventually get the hang of it!
DeleteAlison- I agree that there is so much more to learn when it comes to teaching reading. I believe that fluency is very important for students. If students cannot read fluently they may have a harder time with comprehension.
Delete1. Analysis of the reading/issue: Chapter 5 (phonics) is exactly right when it talks about how the English language and all of the sounds make it so complex and hard for all types of students to learn what sounds to use and when. Even when we teach them the “rules” of phonics, there always seems to be an exception to those rules right around the corner! There are so many things beginning readers have to learn, like reading from left to right and top to bottom, vowel sounds, phonograms, etc. It’s no wonder some children have difficulties with reading! The principles of phonics instruction give a good base for any teacher who wants to help their students learn phonics, and using assessments after providing phonics instruction is the key to determining if the steps you are using are really working for those students. Chapter 10 (fluency) really gets to the heart of how students are reading. Fluency is what we hope all of our students achieve. It is directly linked to a student’s comprehension and understanding of what they are reading. If students read at a rate appropriate for understanding and use appropriate expression for the text, their accuracy and comprehension/understanding will also follow. Fluency instruction involves not only the students practicing their reading, but also hearing others read and having support while they read. Repeated reading is also a big component of fluency instruction. The more times they read a passage, the more likely a student is to learn new words and recognize them later in other texts. They also improve their rate and accuracy and are able to practice appropriate phrasing. Assessment for fluency should also be utilized to make sure instruction is effective and the student’s needs are being met.
ReplyDelete2. Questions and/or contradictions about the reading/issue: My question is the same as the debate that is mentioned in Chapter 5. Do older students need explicit instruction in phonics and is it helpful? To me, I would think that if older students are having difficulty decoding and reading words, phonics instruction would benefit them. The great part about using phonics instruction with older students, I think, would be that they would catch on and learn more quickly. Would that instruction help them to recognize patterns in words and create a kind of “light bulb” effect once they start recognizing those patterns? It would seem that they’ve seen so many words in their lives at that point. Once they start figuring out some of the patterns and phonograms, I would think their progress would be rather quick in contrast to NOT using phonics instruction. Any thoughts?
Sometimes phonics doesn't work for students no matter their age. However I believe it is worth trying with all students no matter their age. I would think that they would start to recognize the patterns as well. I am not sure where I read it but it said that if children can read the words and understand them you should not force them to sound out the words. So I guess it depends on the individual.
DeleteContinued...
ReplyDelete3. How did the reading reflect you or allow you to look at an issue differently? I have had some experience with phonics instruction for 1st and 2nd graders. It is so frustrating to teach them the vowels and phonograms and all the “rules” that go along with them only to have those “cheater” words pop up that defy the very rules you have been teaching them. English is definitely a difficult language. The text said that learning English was similar to learning French due to their deep orthography. I always had such difficulty with French, and now I understand why!! I can only imagine what it must be like for an ELL to learn English! Our letter-sound relationships are so inconsistent that even students who are English speaking natives have difficulty sometimes. This section of Chapter 5 really opened my eyes to this. It just stated it in a way that I had never thought about before. It will be very helpful when teaching all students, but especially ELLs.
4. Connecting the reading to you. Examples of your own experience: The chapter on fluency is one that I needed to read. My tutoring students need work in this area, so I was excited to see the instruction laid out and described for us here. I also really love the interventions listed at the end of each chapter. As I read through them, I highlighted several that I want to use for my tutoring group! It is so important for students to have repeated practice to improve their fluency. As they read, their errors can be pointed out and they can be instructed as to how to listen for those mistakes on their own. As the repeat the reading, they are able to recognize the areas of their errors and work to recognize those words or phrases more automatically. Before they know it, they have committed those new words or phrases to memory! Their automaticity improves, they begin to read more fluidly and with more expression (because they actually understand what they are reading) and then they are able to remember what they’ve read and their comprehension improves! I think it is such an exciting process. I have seen students go through the process who hated to read when they started, but grew to love reading. I have had former students come up to me in the halls and tell me their score on an AR test or tell me about a HUGE book they are able to finally read. SO EXCITING!!!
- Chapter 5 covers the topic of phonics. The graphophonic system is the relationship between the letters and their sounds. A phoneme is the smallest unit of speech sound. A grapheme is the written representation of the phoneme. English spelling has three layers: alphabetic, pattern, and meaning. Students learn about these three layers through decoding, encoding, and teacher modeling. There are four basic principles of phonics instruction: base instruction on what students know, provide systematic instruction, use appropriate texts, and embed instruction in meaningful contexts. There are two types of assessment: informal and formal. There are numerous examples of informal assessments such as checklists, surveys, word sorts, and informal reading inventories. Some examples of formal assessments are the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, the Phonics Criterion Test, and the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS).
ReplyDelete- Chapter 10 discusses fluency. This text defines fluency as the ease or naturalness of reading. Some key elements include grouping or phrasing of words as revealed through the intonation, stress, and pauses exhibited by readers; adherence to author’s syntax; and expressiveness of the oral reading-interjecting a sense of feeling, anticipation, or characterization. There are a couple of different components of fluency; they include rate, automaticity or accuracy, phrasing or prosody, and comprehension. Fluency instruction should follow these guidelines: students need to hear fluent reading, students need support while reading, students need specific instruction to learn phrasing skills, and students need easy reading to practice fluency. Running records and a miscue analysis are a couple of ways to informally assess a student’s fluency. The Diagnostic Reading Scales assess oral fluency by counting the oral miscues, and they also measure rate. The Durrell Analysis of Reading Difficulty just assesses oral fluency and not rate.
- I do not have any questions at this time.
- This reading allowed me to reflect on some of my internships. For my Reading and Language Arts, I was in a first grade class. It was really easy to become frustrated when I would assist a child who was reading and trying to sound out a word that didn’t follow the regular rules. Looking back, I don’t really remember how I was taught those words that were considered exceptions. Now, reading all of those words just comes natural. If I teach younger grades, I know it will be a lot of work to introduce phonics to those students; I also know that being able to reinforce what students have learned will take some work too. I also started thinking about my group of students that I tutor for Corrections. I noticed that as they were reading the leveled passages out loud, they did not use the appropriate phrasing. A couple of times, the students just bypassed the period at the end of the sentence and kept reading so it didn’t make sense. I think we need to stress how important punctuation marks are when it comes to reading fluently.
- I have found that when I read out loud, I read at a fast rate, but it is not always fluent. I have to stop often and silently reread the information before I can comprehend it. Even when I read silently to myself, I sometimes skim and omit important words. I miss a lot of punctuation marks too which causes me to hinder fluency.
You gave a wonderful overview of chapter 5. I foudn the principles of phonics instruction to be new learning for me. Principle 1: Base Instruction on What Students Know. Principle 2: Provide Systematic Phonics Instruction. Principle 3: Use Appropriate Texts. Principle 4: Embed Instruction in Meaningful Contexts.
DeleteThe examples of checklists are a useful resource. I have found many teachers are posting these types of assessment tools on blogs and online networking sites. Teachers seem to know when they have created a useable tool that they should be sharing it with the teaching community.
I would consider myself to be a fluent reader, however I do not comprehend at the same level. I can read at a fast rate fluently just to read, but to comprehend the material myself, I have to slow down and reread some parts. This is an important area for me to assist my students with, at being at the same level of fluency and comprehension. I do not want students to struggle as a did and currently do.
DeleteI enjoyed reading the Principles of Phonics Instruction (pages 109-111). I felt like it gave me a lot of insight that I can use in the future. I think it’s important for any educator to base instruction on what the students know. If we don’t use their knowledge and experiences to build onto, I don’t think lessons or learning will get far at all. Using systematic approaches is key in several aspects of teaching, but I think it is important to keep this in mind while teaching phonics. If you are constantly jumping from place to place, and in different order all of the time, students will most likely be lost and confused. I feel like using appropriate texts is commonsense, but I’m sure there are teachers or schools out there that don’t – and that’s in general with any subject, not just reading and language arts. I think the most important principle is embedding instruction with meaningful contexts. I believe that this ties back to basing knowledge off of what the students already know. Using what they know and applying that in meaningful ways will result in a lot of gained knowledge.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that caught me off guard in chapter 10 was the line on page 258 that stated, “Teachers report that many of their most fluent readers do not comprehend what they read.” When I think of fluency I think of comprehension. I have always been a proficient reader, but I was also diagnosed with a processing disorder, which interfered with my comprehension, so I don’t believe that I can adequately judge that high fluency, low comprehension through my own eyes.
My goal while teaching is to definitely reach out to readers that are not fluent. I feel like since they struggle they are at a disadvantage when it comes to enjoying reading. Even though my comprehension issues were related to a processing disorder I do know that there are ways to enjoy reading. I dread school-assigned reading books, because I knew there were quizzes and tests involved. However, once a teacher reached out and was willing to work with me in alternative ways in means of tests or quizzes, it made me more confident and enjoyed reading assigned materials more.
Emily - I too agree with your statement about the importance on relating new topics to what your students already know. If you test a child who has never see the mountains on the different mountains in the United States do not expect them to ace the test. You need to break it down a level and show them how mountains relate to hills, or bluffs.
DeleteI am a prime example of the student that is very fluent but does not comprehend what is read.
DeleteChapter 5 talks about phonics. There is the graphophonic system, phoneme and grapheme. Our book takes about our English spelling and how students learn the three different layers by learning how to decode, encode, and by watching how the educators in their lives. I have to be honest while reading this chapter I was unaware of the four basic principles of phonics instruction. I am sure that when using phonics I am aware of these four basic steeps but I just didn’t seem them separated this way. Base instructions, provide systematic instruction, use appropriate texts, and embed instruction in meaningful contexts.
ReplyDeleteChapter 10 talks about fluency. Our book explains fluency as the ease or naturalness of reading. In speaking terms of fluency it should include rate, automaticity or accuracy, phrasing or prosody, and comprehension. When I think of fluency I relate back to my Reading and Language Arts internship. I was in a Kindergarten classroom and in our reading groups I had several students who really struggled with reading fluent. When a child can’t read fluent it messes with their confidence as a reader.
I’m not sure if I have mentioned this during our blogging time but as a child I really struggled with reading fluency, as well as spelling; it really made me self-consciousness about my reading. Still to this day I will not raise my hand to read orally in class.
Matraca Forell
Matraca,
DeleteI was also unaware of the four basic principles of phonics but I'm so glad I learned about them now because I think my content focus for my tutoring students will be phonic. I definitely feel like these principles will help me help my students with their phonics. When it comes to fluency I also struggled as a child. I feel like this experience will help us with our tutoring students who are struggling with fluency. It will allow us to relate to them and help them through their uncomfortable situations. I know now that I have to be confident in reading even when I feel I may struggle with fluency because the students can pick up on it. Just be confident when you read now because I think there are so many other people who struggled with fluency like us! Good post!
Matraca-
DeleteI did not realize either that there were four basic principle of phonics. I think that it is very useful to the students to know how to decode and code words so that they can better understand how to pronounce words they are unfamiliar with.
I also struggled and still do struggle with spelling, my parents can attest to my creative spelling when in grade school.
I really needed to reach chapter five for my tutoring group! I really feel like phonics is going to be my overall content focus so this chapter really helped me get an idea of what my tutoring sessions will consist of in the near future. I learned that the key to teaching phonics in my tutoring groups will be to always respond to reader errors, give examples, explain spelling patterns, integrate language, and provide organized sequenced instruction. A lot of teaching phonics involves constant teacher modeling. I plan on doing this a lot in tutoring, especially with our weekly vocab words. I think if I can model some decoding with a few of the words then the students will be able to decode the other vocabulary words. I plan on having every word on our word wall be decoded. I also plan on having my students focus on consonants, vowels, and phonograms daily! The section about consonants and vowels was extremely informative for me. Especially as to why students sometimes struggle with them. I don’t really have any questions about this chapter but I do plan on researching word sorts more. This type of assessment is interesting to me and I’ve never worked with it before so I’m excited to find out more.
ReplyDeleteChapter ten was all about fluency. I do have one student who is better with her phonics but she constantly repeats words and phrases. I think her repetitiveness has to deal with fluency, right? I think she is not associating letters and letter combinations with their sounds. She will try to say a word and then say it letter by letter until she gets it. I’m glad she is sound the words out but I will need to work with her on her automaticity. I was interested to see that comprehension was related to fluency. My last girl really struggles with her comprehension. After reading this chapter I think it will be crucial to relate her fluency to how her comprehension improves. My favorite part in this chapter was the intervention section that contained strategies for tutoring settings. I really think the supported-reading strategy will be useful for my group of students during guided reading. I also liked the poetry party idea. I think it will be a great activity for my tutoring students to share with their regular classroom students. Chapter ten was very informative and very useful for me. I don’t have many questions right now but I’m sure when I go to implement some of these strategies questions may develop.
The textbook classifies repetition as miscues, but I agree with you that it interferes with that student's ability to read fluently. If she is spending time sounding words out and trying to figure out words, it's definitely keeping her from being a fluent reader. I also was shocked that fluency had such an impact on comprehension, but thinking about it it makes sense. If you were to read in a choppy sort of way, I would imagine it would interfere with your ability to recall details from the story / reading.
DeleteThe support activities are great! The best part is that they are in just about every chapter!
Both of my students need extra practice with comprehension and fluency. I was also very excited to see that Fluency is tied so closely to comprehension, but like you said it makes sense why. If the students are spending a lot of time trying to decode the words as they read then of course they are not focusing on what the story is actually saying. When I read the chapter on fluency it mentioned finding the words per minute while silently reading and when again when reading aloud. I would like to try this on my students, because I think the stress of reading out loud often effects a students fluency. At least that is the case for me. I also love the activities at the end of the chapters. This is probably one of the first textbook that I am actually excited to read (rather than just skim). Most textbooks you know you will only use 1/3 of the information but this one is so cut and dry about the topic and it relates directly with what we are doing in our tutoring group.
DeleteThis week we read chapter 5 over phonics and chapter 10 over fluency. Phonics is just the next step after phonemic awareness. Once students have mastered that words are made up of sounds and that letters represent these sounds the next step is for students to learn the sounds associated with these phonograms so that they are able to decode and incode words for themselves. Phonograms are one of the most complicated parts of reading because they are so essential for students in order to be good readers and the only way for students to know the sounds letter relationship is to memorize them. It is usually very apparent when students do not have a good grasp on phonics because it shows both in their reading abilities and their spelling skills. I found the principles of phonics instruction very helpful because it gives a clear overview of the factors to consider when teaching phonics so that it is both meaningful and explicit. My students didn’t seem to have much problem with their phonics skills but we are still going to be practicing the phonograms chant. I think it will help them memorize the sounds so they can use them later, especially when sounding out and writing more advanced words. Chapter 10 was the section that I focused much of my attention on because it is an area that I have noticed that one of my students is having trouble with. After giving all of the assessments I am almost positive that my content focus will be comprehension but fluency will also play a large part in each lesson. With that information I was very excited to see it stated that “when fluency increases, comprehension increases and vice versa.” It also says that like any skill the more a student practices it (during guided reading) the better they will become. This means that our guided reading time will be very beneficial to increase fluency skills and in turn increase comprehension. There are four main components to fluency; rate: the speed at which text is read at, automaticity: the ability to engage and coordinate the sub skills needed for reading with little cognitive effort, prosody: the recognition of phrases and expression: the ability to make written words sound like speech. The next section was over the different types of assessments that can be used to assess students’ fluency. One of the most important points that I got from this chapter was the importance of having struggling readers read aloud during guided reading and giving them adequate time to sound out words and to read the entire section. At the end of the chapter there are different activates you can do with students. My favorite is the oral recitation lesson (ORL). I am thinking I would like to do a lesson with by group on poetry and they would get to recite the poem (after a lot of practice) to parents or someone else. Overall all of these activities are great and I will use them as references when creating my lesson plans.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe quote at the beginning of this chapter is great: Education costs money, but then so does ignorance. Sir Moser Claus
ReplyDeleteWell I have to start by saying that this chapter is loaded with useable material. Beginning with figure 5.1 which gives 9 useful consonant generalizations. I was not surprised to read that research had shown that 50% of teachers needed additional linguistic training in the area of phonics. This is a word that I would not associate with my own learning as a child. The chart on page 112 that shows a teacher how to make a formative type checklist for those students who know and don't know their letter sounds is just one way to assess this knowledge.
The graphic organizer examples given in this chapter are resources that I can start to design now and have ready for my class when I start teaching. I find the activities in this chapter to be very rhythmic. I know that this is one way children learn and will encourge my students to use this style of learning. Creating word family books or dictionaries is a way to create a visual way to see the words as the child reads them. The same goes for the word walls.
Figure 5.13 is my favorite of the chapter. I think this activity is just wonderful for visually seeing the magic e at the end of words or the lack of the magic e at the end of the words.
I agree that it's not surprising that 50% of teachers need additional linguistic training when it comes to phonics. I remember learning phonics, but even some of the things that I learned in Reading / Language Arts Methods like the phonograms were hard for me to learn. It's not that I'm unfamiliar with any of the phonograms, but it was a new concept / strategy that I hadn't ever been introduced to prior to last semester.
DeleteI also think that the way we use this book right now is going to help prepare us in the future. All of the tools we use in tutoring will help us in our future classroom. Word family books and dictionaries are great for children to be able to take home and look at before they go back to bed.
Delete1. Analysis of the reading/issue.
ReplyDeletePhonics and Fluency
For the Phonics chapter I learned a lot about speech and writing. Technical terms were made clearer and now easier to understand. The difference between phoneme and grapheme, which before I really didn’t understand. I remember reading about them in reading and language arts class but this text seemed to make them more understandable to me. The three layers of English spelling, was very interesting to me. I guess that is because when I was in school I had real difficulty spelling. I think all of these new strategies are helping our children understand a lot better than when I was in primary school. One of my favorite parts in both chapters was the activities. In chapter 5 word walls and word ladders I see used all of the time. They are both very good learning tools. In chapter 10 there were two that I would like to try with my group, poetry party and use the supported reading strategy. Chapter ten discussed fluency, I am now leaning towards this for my group. I have one child that still needs testing and that will be finished on Friday. I am excited to get my testing done so that I can look at all of the data and decide what will be best for them to work on. One of the most important things that I read in this chapter was the guidelines for fluency instructions. It is very important for a teacher to know and understand how to teach fluency. I found this very helpful, especially since I am thinking that I will be working on fluency with my group.
2. Questions and/or contradictions about the reading/issue.
One thing that I have a question on is if a reader is fluently reading at his/her reading level but reads so fast that they don’t comprehend. Do they need to work on fluency or comprehension?
3. How did the reading reflect you or allow you to look at an issue differently?
The one thing that I really looked at differently was the part in the book that says disfluent readers should not be embarrassed by being forced to read in front of the class. For myself I hated reading in front of the class. It was the most embarrassing thing for me. As I struggled to sound out words and to have my classmates tell me the words, I just wanted to crawl into a corner and hide. However as I sub I have had several students who are not fluent readers raising their hands to read, even though they struggle. When this occurs I make sure to tell students to let their classmate try and sound out the word. Don’t just give it to them when they pause.
4. Connecting the reading to you. Examples of your own experience.
As a child I was a very slow reader, I still am not as fast as I probably should be. The text said that when students read slower they tend to not comprehend what they read. I was the total opposite of that statement. I read slowly, but my comprehension skills were very good. I could tell you everything that I read with details. To this day my husband and I can be reading the same thing and he will finish a lot faster than me, but he doesn’t take any of the information with him, like I do. So I have to kind of disagree with the statement in the book. However if you don’t understand what you read you will not comprehend it as it says in the book. But if you read slow and understand what you read you will comprehend it.
I am so glad that you brought this up and used a personal example. I have noticed this with a lot of people. My husband is a fast reader as well, but he remembers very little of what he reads. It is great to point this out, just because it is so important that readers not only work on their rate and fluency, but that they are comprehending what they read and using the context to recognize vocabulary.
DeleteThis chapter reading could not have come at a more perfect time for me personally. In our Corrections tutoring internship, I am just getting ready to start my lesson plans after assessments, and I believe my content focus will be phonics.
ReplyDeleteThe "Phonics Glossary at a Glance" was a valuable figure to look at. It showed me how to break down phonics, and a little insight to how I might break down my lessons going forward in tutoring internship.
Figure 5.3 was interesting to look at, as it showed how a human articulated vowel sounds in their mouth and throat. The front and back of the mouth is where ~95% of the articulation was coming from. That may not be a necessity for a teacher to know, but yet a good piece of information for students having trouble saying vowel sounds.
Lastly in chapter 5, the countless activities suggested for students is extremely helpful. I will look at these activities for something I could possibly do with my students in tutoring.
Chapter 10 was over fluency. I like how these two chapter are together for our reading, as phonics and fluency work closely together in the reading process.
This chapter breaks down fluency into 4 levels, so anyone who feels stressed by fluency can just look to that graph, and hopefully feel less stressed.
Then again all of the activities at the end of the chapter are just beyond helpful. When looking through them, I feel a sense of relief that I can look at these pages when struggling to find a good activity to fit fluency in my classroom. I will definitely bookmark these pages for when I do get my own class!
These are two good chapters!
Cody,
DeleteI agree that these are two very good chapters, and the activities at the end I know will come in handy when tutoring. The authors of this book really knew what they were doing when they put the graphs, lists, etc. into it for teachers!
Chapter 5 is about phonics and I like how on the second page it gives a glossary at a glance. Teachers should know at least five things to help struggling readers. These five things are interpret and respond to readers’ errors, provide clear and simple examples for decoding and spelling, organize and sequence instruction, explain spelling patterns, and integrate language instruction. How students learn phonics is through decoding words, encoding words, and through teacher modeling. Three principles to phonics instruction: base instruction on what students know, provide systematic phonics instruction, use appropriate text, and embedded instruction in meaningful contexts. The thing that I like about this chapter is it gives activities emphasizing initial consonant sounds for different grade levels.
ReplyDeleteChapter 10 is about fluency and right off the bat it gives the definition and components of it. Phonological, word identification, word analysis, and semantic are the four master components. The chapter gives the formula for rate, and gives the definition of automaticity. This chapter gives examples of phrasing or prosody and punctuation. Again at the end of this chapter it gives activities for fluency and some comprehension.
I have no questions about these chapters.
These chapters allowed me a deeper look at phonics and at fluency. They gave me great ideas not only to use in the classroom, but also in my tutoring sessions as well.
I was in Reading and Language Arts internship last semester, and some of the students had some trouble with phonics. Over all they did really well, but the internship I am in the students have trouble with phonics. Even though it is a math internship, when I first get there they are usually writing something.
I also liked how the chapter defined the components too. They are so many definitions that it is easily to get confused. I liked the examples of phrasing the chapter gave. This allowed me to reflect upon the past and be able to relate, therefore understand more about the chapter.
DeleteChapter 5 begins by discussing the definitions of graphophonic, phoneme and grapheme. It is important to understand that graphophonic is the relationship between letters and their sounds. Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound, and graphemes are the written representation of the phonemes. Teachers should know how students learn phonics, English spelling patterns, and be knowledgeable about English learners and the graphophonic system. Students learn phonics by decoding words, encoding words and by following teacher modeling. It is also necessary for teachers and students to know and understand English spelling patterns, which include, consonants, vowels, and common spelling patterns. This chapter goes on to describe the principles of phonics instruction. The first principle is that teachers should base their instruction on what students know, second they should provide systematic phonics instruction, thirdly use appropriate texts and lastly embed instruction in meaningful contexts. As we read about and consider how students learn phonics, I think about the phonics instruction I have observed and participated in during my internships. In those experiences teachers have used a variety of methods and strategies to model and assist students in learning to decode words- through decode-able stories. Once students use these decode-able stories for phonics purposes, they can be used for fluency practice, which is the topic of our next chapter.
ReplyDeleteChapter 10 describes fluency. Fluency does include reading rate and accuracy, but it also considers phrasing, such as, intonation, stress and pauses, as well as syntax, and expressiveness. And as educators we cannot neglect to take into consideration that comprehension can be considered a component of fluency as well. In my internships I have also had the chance to experience a lot of fluency lessons. Students practiced reading decode-able stories in partners and small groups. They are told to mark punctuation and adjust their phrasing. One of my mentor teachers commonly said things like “Read it like a story- how do you think the character would tell us the story?”
This reading presented information pertaining to phonics and fluency. Chapter 5 discussed how students learn phonics, strategies for teaching phonics, phonics assessments, and ways to incorporate technology for learning. The text also presented various phonics activities to implement within the classroom. I found these to be very useful for the tutor sessions and in the near future. Chapter 10 discusses fluency, defined as the ease of naturalness of reading. Phrasing, syntax, and expressiveness are key elements of fluency. There are various ways to assess student fluency. This reading as allowed for better insight and assistance within the tutor sessions.
ReplyDeleteI have no questions.
When it comes to reading, I think about my process through school with reading. This was one of my struggle areas and still is today. In recalling how I struggled through school and how it still effects me in all areas of reading and comprehension, I want to do a great deal to assist students in not struggling with this in the way I did. Reading and comprehension is a large factor in our lives. If you can not do these together at an equal level, it makes things more of a challenge.
I completely agree, Sheena! I too struggled when I reached my upper literary courses in high school. I wish that my instructor would have opted to take several different approaches in his instruction. We were his final "guinea pig" course he was using towards his PhD program and I feel like he was more concerned with getting the data he needed than instructing us.
DeleteSheena, I think when you struggle with something you end up being one of the best persons to teach it. You know how the students feel when they are struggling and you may know better how to reach them where they are at and give them what they need to grasp a concept. I once had a professor tell me the best math teachers are they students who struggled with it in school. Once you overcome your struggle you can use it to help others overcome their struggles as well. I think it is awesome that you are becoming a teacher and helping students to overcome those struggles
DeleteChapter 5 focused on the importance of phonics. This chapter was a great review for me personally and as an educator as I am working with two advanced four year olds who are preparing to enter kindergarten next year. They both seemed to have a great understanding on their letter identification and of the initial letter sounds. However, they both struggled with initial segmentation of words along with blending consonants. They have easily become frustrated with the reviews on how even though those letters may say that sound the best majority of the time, there are also instances in which letters will say something different. We have begun to review the vowel code rap at the beginning of each lesson and since beginning this routine, each student has exhibited a greater understanding for their letters and have requested that we find more pictures to place on our word board.
ReplyDeleteChapter 10 focused on the importance of fluency and presented a variety of instructional information on assessments. As a whole these two chapters went well hand in hand and will become an extremely valuable tool for establishing instruction, not only in our smaller tutoring groups, but I imagine I will be reaching for this literature periodically throughout my new career!
Megin,
DeleteMy students struggle with segmentation too! They do fine with the initial sound, but medial and final sounds are a struggle. I haven't taught them the vowel code rap because I wasn't sure they would get it, but reading about your students has inspired me to start it with mine. You should check out the websites at the end of Chapter 5, they have some good stuff!
Chapter 5 needs to be a whole separate manual for you to keep with you when teaching students reading. There are so many language and phonics rules that I can see how learning the English language can be difficult for speakers of other languages. I did find the information useful and interesting. I never really thought about the positioning of the mouth as being something that a reading teacher should know. Chapter 10 talks about fluency and how critical it is to reading instruction. This is something that I have discussed with my mentor teacher. She said it is hard to tell a parent whose child reads fast that they have a reading problem. I can see what she means because before I started taking education classes I probably thought the same thing, if my child reads quickly they must be a good reader and actually it is not always the case. Fluency doesn't equal comprehension. I would think teaching these type of students would be a challenge especially if they think they are a good reader because they can read fast. There are good strategies for helping a student not only read quickly, but with proper pronunciation, intonation, and meaning. I think a great way to get students to do this is by having them act out stories as much as possible. I think having them record and listen to themselves read is also a great way of getting them to hear what they sound like when they are reading.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean, I have a 1st grader that is in special ed. but he reads really fast. He doesn't stop at any punctuation. I have had several people tell me it can be very important to practice in front of a mirror and that way they can see if they are positioning it correctly. We don't think about it when we say it but when were teaching we need to make sure that were showing them the right way.
DeleteChapter five was great review for me. When I was studying to become a speech-language pathologist, I had to study the importance of phonics and their articulation. When I think of phonics, I remember the phonics program that came out when I was a child. I also remember doing so many phonics worksheets in second grade. In my opinion phonics is fun to teach. I like the activities that were listed in the chapter. I have used the flip books and have seen the phonogram word wall in classrooms. There are so many fun games to play with the students when it comes to teaching phonics. Poetry and rhyming is another great way to teach, I am glad the text mentioned this method of teaching. I agree with the text when they stated that all teachers need to understand the graphophonic system that links letters with sounds. Phonics may seem easy and fun to teach, but if a child is struggling with phonics it’s not just because they cannot pronounce the word. The teacher needs to know HOW they are struggling. Helping a child with dipthongs is different from helping a child that struggles with fricative consonants. Teachers must know this in case they need to see a SLP. From my previous background knowledge, I do not have any questions for this chapter.
ReplyDeleteMarei -
DeleteSpeech-language pathology seems like a difficult field! I have a friend who graduated with a BS in communication and now is in her graduate program to get become an actual SLP. The information that she has to know alone astounds me! I think that teaching phonics can be fun too but back when we did worksheets and stuff on it, we didn't have all of the different types of learners and definitely not NCLB put in place. Not that there weren't different learners in the same classroom as me, it was just not addressed I suppose. Everyone did the same work and learned the same information, it seems more difficult now because you have to involve every modality of teaching as possible to address all learning styles. Maybe it's just me? Am I over-working myself when it comes to teaching? I know that Ms. Stoppel mentioned "work smarter not harder" in her Adobe Connect, and I think I may have to switch around the way I have been doing things because I am exhausted when I am finished teaching.
Chapter 5 was on phonics. The information on the short and long vowels and diphthongs was helpful as sometimes its difficult to find a word that it references to. On a slightly different and same topic, I nanny for a four year old and I am teaching her how to read. The other day we were driving along in the car and she asked me what letters make the "ch" sound, so as I was getting ready to tell her "c and h" make that sound, I first asked her what word. She then told me she wanted to spell "tree." No wonder the English language is so confusing!!!
ReplyDeleteI did like the long list of example activities in this chapter for phonics and might be using them in upcoming lesson plans. The mini-books would be easy to fit in to a lesson and helpful with time management in case advanced students finish the work before others in the group.
Chapter 10 was on fluency. I thought it was interesting when the text noted that in order for students to become more fluent readers (the ease/naturalness of reading), teachers need to help students develop: rate, automaticity or accuracy, prosody, and comprehension. Also, students have to master (1) phonological, (2) word identification, (3) word analysis, and (4) semantic. There was a rather extensive list of activities available for this chapter also that will prove beneficial for developing the lesson plans.
Chapter 5 phonics, the smallest unit of speech sounds. I see how phonemes, being able to use the tongue correctly and hearing correctly. Figure 5.6 shows how there are English and Spanish vowel sounds in common. I think this is especially important to those that teach children that are Spanish speaking. There are phonics principles that help to make instruction 5easier. Figure 5.7 gives us a great to introduce phonics, for kindergarten through third grade. This unit also has many activities. I really love all the activities in this book.
ReplyDeleteChapter 10 fluency. Fluency takes on phonological, word identification, word analysis, and semantic. This chapter breaks down what fluent readers do and don’t do. It gives the readers how to figure WPM. In the first grade classrooms they use an automaticity chart that the children read. I really didn’t realize how much went into the charts, till I read the definition. I see how punctuation can make fluency bad or good. I also like how it said that short phrases can be used to teach fluency because I know long passages can be very intimidating to students.
Chapter 5 is solely about Phonics. How to teach it and how to test children. I found this chapter very informative for myself. Since my focus in tutoring is most likely going to be phonics I found myself looking more in-depth and comparing my children to the book. One part of the chapter that actually helped me with the lesson for my week was the systematic phonics sequence. I looked to this sequence and placed my children at the level I believe they are. This helped me create a lesson around my students more precisely. A lot of the assessments that I saw in this chapter I will be using to assess my students progress. At the end of the chapter there were several activities that I am going to try to incorporate into my lessons. I overall loved this chapter because I can definitely relate to it.
ReplyDeleteChapter 10 was over fluency and I think that the two go together well. Without phonics you will never have fluency. One part of fluency that is incorporated is expression. I'm really glad this is part of the definition because I think it is important for children to read with expression. Fluency is a very big topic and breaks down into many different parts. I think it is going to be hard to find where my students struggle with fluency, because it is so broad. One of the best ways I think to get children to be expressive is through poetry. Poetry can definitely bring an expressive side to a child.
Amanda, I agree with you that poetry is an excellent way to help children learn to read with expression. This is one of the things my group needs to work on as well. I mentioned in my post that I plan to use reader's theater at some point during tutoring. I think the kids will love it, and this is another way to get them reading with expression.
DeleteAs always, these chapters were packed with good information. It's not often that I don't return a book at the end of the semester, but this will be an exception. I know all of this information will come in handy when I have my own classroom and it will always be helpful to brush up on this sort of information. Even if I never read the chapters again, the activities withing the chapters are worth it. Working with kindergarten students has caused me to think a little bit differently about fluency, but the principles are still the same. My students work on fluency with letter recognition and letter sounds. They also gain fluency by repeating what I read. I try to model good rate, automaticity, and prosody, but I sometimes find myself sounding almost robotic to make sure they hear all of the sounds in the words I am saying.
ReplyDeleteMr. Harry Wong taught me to beg, borrow, and steal. This book provides tons of information and activities to use. I also really liked the list of websites at the end of chapter five. I am always on the hunt for good websites for my students. I spent a little bit of time looking at ReadWriteThink.org and it is really pretty neat. You can filter it by grade and/or subject. The only problem I had with it was that some of the age ranges for games seemed a little bit off.
Kyleigh--I completely agree with you. This text is great at providing useful resources that will be very beneficial for us in the very near future. This text is also helpful with writing our lesson plans for our tutoring sessions. I also really liked the provided activities to use to incorporate phonics and fluency in the classroom!
DeleteChapter 5 was over phonics and what teachers need to know about phonics and chapter 10 was all about fluency. I really enjoyed reading these two chapters and was very relieved when I seen what we would be learning about in each chapter. These two chapters came in very handy this week because we were required to choose what content focus we were going to be focusing on throughout our lesson plans. I believe these two chapters did a great job breaking down each skill and telling us how to incorporate each one of them in our classrooms. I liked looking and reading about all the resources we can use to teach in our classrooms, for instance: definitions and computer games. I believe computer games would be a great resources because what student does not like to plan the computer and learn at the same time, sometimes with out even knowing it! They were both great to learn about but I believe chapter 10 was more beneficial for me as of now because one of my tutoring students really struggles with this. As stated before, I am definitely going to have to try out the provided resources in this chapter.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things about chapter 5, on phonics, that stood out to me was the importance of mouth positioning when modeling how to make sounds properly. This is not something I used to think of when I think about teaching phonics. I need to pay more attention to this technique when teaching phonics to students and my own children. When reading about fluency in chapter 10 I noted the section on phrasing and prosody, in particularly the point on teachers potentially interfering with students through the overuse of praise. The example shows a teacher commenting after every single word read which leads to the student waiting for his/her affirmation before continuing. This made it clear to me how important it is to be cognizant of our interruptions no matter how well intended they may be. I really like the activities listed at the end of each of these chapters. I plan on using the reader's theater activity on page 276 in my tutoring group. I love how there is even a list of websites where I can find scripts included.
ReplyDeleteI also love the activities listed at the end of both of the chapters. I found many of them very applicable to tutoring and plan on integrating several of them into my lesson plans as well.
DeleteChapter 5 discusses phonics, which is definitely an area I need more practice in. Because I have spent most of my time in the upper grades, my phonics knowledge is mostly limited to lectures from this class and Reading and Language Arts methods. However, now that I am working with 2nd graders this semester I hope to get a lot more practice with phonics. This chapter definitely has some great information on phonics including definitions, what teachers should know and how students learn. I found the phonics glossary very helpful and will be studying this and referring to it often. I also found the “principles of phonics instruction” helpful and think that this tells me how to get started in my tutoring group. Lastly, I also like the phonics activities in chapter five and will begin to integrate some of these into my tutoring groups.
ReplyDeleteChapter 10 discusses fluency which I am more familiar with. This chapter broke down the different components of fluency and how they affect a student’s ability to read fluently. By knowing the different things that can affect a student’s ability to read fluently I can better identify what I need to do to help them read more fluently. This chapter also gave several fluency strategies that can be used in tutoring settings which I will definitely be using in my future lesson plans for fluency drills. Overall I found both of these chapters very applicable to our tutoring sessions and see myself using a lot of the information and activities from both of them.
Lindsay,
DeleteYou prove a good point. I have spent most of my time in the lower grades and need practice on phonics but have a good understanding of it. Fluency is where I need practice. I do now understand that phonics is very important for fluency.
The relationship between letters and sounds is discussed in depth in chapter 5. I am amazed that phonics is such a broad topic that it has a glossary all to itself! I appreciated that the text spent a paragraph on teacher modeling. The statement that “Effective Teachers Choose Texts that Use Rhyme” is so helpful. Rhyming is an important part of the process of learning phonics. I also found it amusing that the text stated that the “rule” when two vowels go walkin’ the first one does the talkin’ is not a good one to use. I hear teachers say this to the first and second graders and then in the next sentence they say, well the rule doesn’t work on that word. Figure 5.7 will be helpful in tutoring this semester. The activities in this chapter will be very helpful in the years to come! Chapter 10 began with the discussion on fluency! I was excited to see this information as this is what I am working with in tutoring! After reading this information, I understand why so many students struggle with fluency. If our students don’t get the basics in kindergarten, reading fluently is not going to be happening by second grade. Chapter 10 encourages to use echo reading as well as rhyming and poetry.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like we are enjoying the same topics in the readings. I am so excited to start implementing these activities with my guided reading group! Good luck with the new activities!
DeleteI found chapter 5 to be very beneficial, the charts were a great visuals. I like the phonics glossary at a glance because it helps to clarify terms. I also like figure 5.3, I must admit, I tried many different words to identify where I articulate the words. In tutoring, my group of students loves rhyming words; I think they would love making a flip book to create rime families! Fluency, in chapter 10, is an area that my guided reading groups needs a large amount of attention in. This chapter has really good ideas that I want to implement in my next couple of lessons. Like I mentioned before, my students like rhymes and songs, this is why I would love to implement a rhythm walk. I really think they would have a positive response to this activity.
ReplyDelete