Module+4

TE 846: Module 4
wallleis@msu.edu wilkiesa@msu.edu

Readings:
 * Week of July 16 **
 * All read: Adams (2011) in Samuels & Farstrup (2011), chapter 1: “The Relationship Between Alphabetic Basics, Word Recognition, and Reading” (p. 4-24)
 * Adolescent reading: Learned, Stockdill, & Moje (2011) in Samuels & Farstrup (2011), chapter 7: “Integrating Reading Strategies and Knowledge Building in Adolescent Literacy Instruction” (p. 159-185)
 * Read Rasinski & Samuels (2011) in Samuels & Farstrup (2011), chapter 4: “Reading Fluency- What It is and What It Is Not” (p. 94-114)

(1) How does the relevancy of word recognition and fluency show up in your classroom? (2) How do/Do you currently address word recognition and/or fluency instruction in your classroom? (3) What new ideas did you glean from this week’s readings? How applicable were they to your teaching situation/content area/age group? Do they relate at all to your case study for the final project? (4) Discuss the pre-discussion task (the “creation” above), reflect on each others’ “creations” and whether you think this task was helpful and/or applicable to your practice, how it related to the readings, and if it gave you any ideas you might use in the future.
 * Preparing for Live Chat:**
 * And share any other thoughts, comments, experiences, insights from the readings, etc. **


 * Discussion**:**

wallleis@msu.edu

Chapter One in Samuels & Farstrup...
The one key idea that stood out to me was listed on page 13 when they said... "English spelling-sound correspondences are notoriously complex and inconsistent. Beyond schwas, there are long and short vowels (both unreliably signaled), digraphs, unruly letter doubling (pepper vs. paper, common vs. comic, demon vs. lemon), silent letters (comb, knit, gauge), and irregular words (colonel, island). Samuels & Farstrup, p. 13. Being a former first grade teacher where teaching my students how to read was a main focus, I completely agree with this statement. In trying to teach students how to read, it can be very difficult for young learners to read more challenging books based on the rules listed above. The texts that they learn to read from are very basic and follow a specific pattern, one that is easy for them to follow once they know the 'rule' or vowel pattern being focused on. Once a student gets into more difficult texts, they have a hard time figuring out unknown words because they are heavily relying on previous knowledge of other rules that they have learned but they do not fit based on the above rules. This is why reading instruction has to be explicit and thought out. It also reminds us the reading is a complex thing and we, as teachers, have the difficult job of figuring out what each of our students need based on where they currently are at in their independent reading levels.

Another idea that stood out to me was when they were discussing the teachers approach to teaching the 8 year old boy how to read. I think that one idea that gets confused in the reading world is the idea of decoding a word and sounding out a word. I think this disconnect between these ideas is between the teachers and the parents. As teachers, we teach our students how to decode words based on numerous rules (listed above) and strategies that we teach our students. We teach them about long and short vowels and how the addition or deletion of letters in a word can change the word. When I would work with my first grades and they would come across a word that they did not know, I would ask them what strategy could they use to figure out this unknown word. Nine times out of ten they would tell me to sound out the word... my first response was.... ARE YOU KIDDING ME, I HAVE NEVER TAUGHT YOU THAT!?!?!?! When I asked them where they had heard that, they said their parents told them to do this. This reminds me of one of the readings last week and how important it is to communicate with the parents that are in your classroom. They need to know what is going on... they need to be able to best help their child and we need to help them so that they can help their child. This idea of working together to help the parents out is very important when they have a child learning how to read.

(1) How does the relevancy of word recognition and fluency show up in your classroom? Teaching fifth grade for the past two years, I have noticed that students who struggle with reading usually have a fluency issue. This goes hand in hand with word recognition. If they do not recognize a word, then their fluency is affected because they have to stop and figure out the word. I have also noticed that sometimes students get too focused on getting as many words read as they can that they do not pay attention and carefully read each word. They might make numerous mistakes, just looking at the first letter of the word and putting a word in there that makes sense to them when in fact, it does not make sense and it can drastically change the meaning of the story.

(2) How do/Do you currently address word recognition and/or fluency instruction in your classroom? My school district tests for fluency three times a school year and compare the students in my classroom to the students across the district. We take that data and use it to determine who needs to work on their fluency. By the time that the universal screening has taken place in the fall, I already have a good idea of who has a fluency issue. Once I have identified who needs to work on their fluency, I then put them on the Read Naturally Program. This is a computer based program that keeps track of their reading of short, nonfiction passages. At the beginning of the week, I have them read the story to me out loud for the first time. The is considered to be their cold read. Throughout the week, they listen along to the story, while whisper reading so that they can hear what an acceptable pace is. They also make predictions, answer questions, and write a brief summary of the story as well. At the end of the week, they read the same story to me while I time them. This is their hot read. When progress is being made, we see that their cold read scores are increasing. Read Naturally is done in my classroom five days a week, during the intervention block.

(3) What new ideas did you glean from this week’s readings? How applicable were they to your teaching situation/content area/age group? Do they relate at all to your case study for the final project? The first thing that stood out to me was the heading on page 97... Fluency is Not Fast Reading. I am trying to tell my students this all the time!!! They are aware of what a fluency test is and they know whether or not they are fluent readers. As I mentioned above, some students think that if they can read all the words on the page really quickly, then they are fluent. That is not the case. "A reader can actually be disfluent by reading too fast, at a speed that does not reflect comprehension or that gives evidence that the reader is not attending to the meaning of the text (Rasinski and Samuels, p. 97).

I also agree with the section on Fluency is Not Just for the Primary Grades. This idea has changed for me over the years. When I first started teaching fifth grade, I assumed that since all of my students could read, that they were fluent readers. That was definitely not the case. What I found was that some of my higher level readers had fluency issues because they were not reading out loud to anyone, ever. I had to make it a point to tell them that they needed to practice reading out loud each night so that they could build up their fluency.

An idea that is newer for me is fluency is both oral and silent reading. I never thought about if a student had silent reading fluency issues. How would you test for that?

The ideas of modeling fluent reading for students and assisted reading for support are not new ideas to me. I have done/ do these things with my students now to help them with fluency. I think that one of the key things that we have to do for our students is to model, model, model! I am constantly modeling my fluency for my students on a daily basis when I read aloud to them and when I read directions or portions of a text to the class. I am also doing this with my case study student. We have been doing a lot of assisted reading in the book that he is currently reading right now.

Practice Reading, Wide and Deep... this idea is something that is new for me. While I never discourage a student from rereading a book, I do not encourage it but I think I might need to start doing that. The research provided in the text backs up this idea. This is something that I am going to do with my case study student. We are going to repeat reading a text so that he can read is deeply and get the most out of it.

Overall, this chapter has given me some new ideas (wide and deep reading, synergy to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts) and it has validated for me some things that I do in my classroom on a daily basis... modeling fluent reading and assisted reading. I thought this was a great chapter to read!

(4) Discuss the pre-discussion task (the “creation” above), reflect on each others’ “creations” and whether you think this task was helpful and/or applicable to your practice, how it related to the readings, and if it gave you any ideas you might use in the future.

Here is my fluency passage... One day a girl went for a bike ride. She loved to ride her bike. She wanted to ride to the park to see if her friend Sally was there. She took her bike out of the garage, put her helmet on, and took off towards the park. One her way, she saw a dog running in a yard, a man mowing the lawn, and some kids running through a sprinkler. When she got to the park, her friend Sally was on the swings. She got off her bike, took her helmet off, hung it on the handlebars and went to join Sally on the swings.

wilkiesa@msu.edu

(1)How does the relevancy of word recognition and fluency show up in your classroom?

Word recognition as addressed by Farstrup & Samuels is not something with which my students need a great deal of assistance. By the time they reach our class, most have reached the Consolidated Alphabetic stage. I believe this is, in large part, due to the fact that many of our teachers in the lower grades are explicit in their teaching and include the students as integral players in the process. More specifically, they discuss the stages with the students and share open conversations about their progress and development in reading, their individual goals, the stage at which they are currently reading, as well as the strategies they will be working on to progress toward the next stage. It is not uncommon for students to share great insight into their own development and progress as readers, or to speak to their personal stage of development (only in “student-friendly” language).

What I tend to see more of are the issues with fluency. This section really resonated with the experiences I’ve had with students, especially those who firmly believe they have “arrived” and/or are “fluent readers”, simply because they can accurately pronounce each word in a passage or text. The challenge for some is they generally do this with little or no regard to proper automaticity and prosody.

(2) How do/Do you currently address word recognition and/or fluency instruction in your classroom?

What I find interesting is that the formal definition of fluency, “reading with speed, accuracy, and proper expression” (NICHHD, 2000, p. 3-1), is actually something that can work against when taken out of context. Many of my students read for speed and accurate pronunciation of words and stop there, believing they have accomplished their goal as fluent readers. It isn’t until I slow them down, quite literally, and we deconstruct the finer elements of fluency that they begin to understand that it’s about much more than speed and pronunciation…that it’s about reading for understanding.

One way we have addressed this is by implementing what we call “Two-Minute Tweets”. This is where I will stop the kids after they’ve been reading for a certain amount of time and ask them to “tweet” a summary of what they’ve read. The benefit of using a Twitter approach, which is limited to 140 characters, is that it challenges students to succinctly state the meaning of a given passage. We then use these to discuss the meaning behind the words and the context of the reading. Using Twitter has “hooked” some of my rather reluctant students, and has really brought the whole class on board – working to see who can best summarize the passage of the day. It only takes about two minutes (after some practice, of course!) and it offers me immediate insight into who is gleaning what from the text. It also offers me a chance to look for patterns in my readers over a relatively short period of time.

What was really interesting about this was that the kids took it to another level by studying the tweets to see if they could combine parts from a range of them to create the best “tweet summary” of the passage. This speaks to the motivation we discussed in earlier chapters.

In addition to formal assessments, I also have students record themselves reading aloud every 4-6 weeks and post it to their learning portfolio. This documentation not only allows students to self-monitor and assess over time, it offers parents a window into their child’s reading development over the course of our year. We can also use this when discussing reading progress and levels at conferences, using the audio recordings to call attention to specific elements of each child’s word recognition and reading fluency.

(3) What new ideas did you glean from this week’s readings? How applicable were they to your teaching situation/content area/age group? Do they relate at all to your case study for the final project?

This week I was able to draw specific connections to my case study around the development of reading fluency. My student is one who falls under the category of believing he is a fluent reader simply because he can read with speed and pronounce words with a great deal of accuracy. What I have found, however, is that he has little understanding of the material he has read.

I was interested in the strategies offered for developing fluency, but wonder where questioning might fit in. I have learned that with my students, questioning plays a critical role when determining understanding. Much of this can come from book talks and literature circles, as we’ve discussed in previous chapters/modules, but I wonder where it might fit with informational reading, as well.

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