Tompkins Chapter 6

Fluency begins with high frequency words then continuously develops as children’s word bank expands through practicing word recognition via guided readings and various creative activities generated by the teachers that are listed on page 193 and 194 of the text. The components of fluency involves “accuracy, reading speed, and prosody” (page 208), and by reading fluently, the readers can comprehend and speed read through various texts during their educational years. Hence, fluency seems important for students to begin practicing in order to enhance their reading speed and comprehension of the different levels of texts.

There is more to fluency than just reading; writing fluency is also essential in literacy. It almost seems logical to think that being fluent in reading, a student can fluently write, I also believe it is chronological, but there are different developmental processes in writing fluency. Writing involves understanding to decode a word specifically involving irregularities in which becomes more challenging compared to learning reading fluency.

I have yet observed reading or writing fluency in the placement since the kindergarteners are now learning the syllables and sounding out the letters. Even though they have yet completely learned to read, the kindergarteners are also learning to write in which seems to help by relating to what they are currently learning in literacy. I believe their practices are going to lead these students into becoming fluent readers and writers.

Tompkins Chapter 9 Facilitating Comprehension

Tompkins depicts various text factors for different genres in the chapter. The detailed factors for each genres, there is much to learn myself in literature. Moreover, I would like to point out the chart they provide on page 305, which involves different graphic organizers that are suitable to use according to different patterns of text structures.

One of the structures I would like to mention is the ‘Elements of Story Structure’ where it focuses on the beginning-middle-end of a story. I have facilitated this structure in my literacy lesson in the kindergarten classroom. Surprisingly, the students did extremely well in coming up with a story on their own concerning the beginning, middle, and end. Obviously, the drawings explained the most of their stories but the available word lines provided on the paper certainly gave them a chance to try writing using the word wall in the classroom. The step-by-step process of learning about the text seems to give great value for students to inherently comprehend the diverse texts that are valued in education.

New Literacy Project – Reflection

When the New Literacy Project was introduced to us in the classroom, numerous questions arose in my mind concerning the types of new literacies and new technologies. There were various programs we could use in presenting our new literacy in which lots of exploring were needed to be done. Furthermore, this project was a chance to get familiarized using new technology and learning new literacy.

I chose scrapblog to present my New Literacy Project after exploring and listening to peers’ opinions on the ease of its usage. I experienced the simple and easy ways in creating a scrapblog including short steps and basic ways of uploading pictures. Moreover, there are available free themes already designed for not so creative scrapbloggers like myself. However, if more decorative stickers, backgrounds, and frames are desired, it is not too expensive to purchase them. Scrapblog is a perfect technology to use in creating a memorable presentation for the classroom to create as a whole and observe after completing them.

My reasons for choosing scrapblog are my all time interest in making scrapbooks. I have always been creating scrapbooks for special occasions and it always took a long time to create as to all the cutting, decorating, and putting them together. I have never heard about scrapblog until it was introduced in the class to us for this project and I’m glad it did since now, it made my scrapbooking time a lot shorter and more productive. I can share so much with the students through this program and the time consumption is a lot less than scrapbook. It is a great source to create and share with the students in the classroom as well as in keeping and creating one for yourself apart from school.

For my New Literacy Project, I chose emotional literacy as the new literacy I wanted to explore and learn. My placement in the kindergarten classroom, I observe numerous emotional struggles and conflicts within peers in which some of the students have difficult times controlling angers in which they burst out crying for not getting what they want. Further with emotional literacy, I chose a specific part of emotional literacy, motivation. I wanted to emphasize the importance in students’ motivation to do work and accomplishing assignments and be engaged in doing assigned tasks for internal learning.

Other than all the positive aspects of this project, I had some struggles in doing the New Literacy Project. When creating a scrapblog, the site did not have a full description on how to start a scrapblog in which I had to ask a friend (Heather) who already had experiences with scrapblog. She instructed me on what I should click to find free scrapblog creator and the steps I needed to follow in completing one. However, the scrapblog itself is not difficult to complete once you know where the links are listed since it directs you back to the scrapblog you were creating when logged into your account. In addition to some of the struggles in creating a scrapblog, I was not sure on the specifics of emotional literacy as I was never introduced to the topic. Therefore, I had to do some research in understanding the purpose of teaching emotional literacy towards the students. Overall, the New Literacy Project supported me in introducing me to a new method of how I can incorporate technology into teaching literacy to the students, and I am for sure planning to use scrapblog to enhance students’ learning in a classroom someday.

Weinstein Chapter 7 Motivation

My kindergarten classroom is full of enthusiastically motivated students who crave for teacher’s attentions. Unfortunately, not all students are motivated in doing activities and learning new materials. This one particular student is absent most of the times and rarely participates in the discussion even though our CT calls him several times to express her care of all students. Even though this student dislikes the force of doing assignments, he tries his best to complete one when one of the TE 402 student sits next to him and explains slowly. This way, I thought he liked the attention of having one of us sit next to him in completing an assignment. However, there are moments when he drops everything and does the total opposite of getting the assignment done when we are next to him.
I have no clue where his behaviors are coming from or whether he still has the motivation to learn and complete what are assigned in the classroom.

I have observed that lower grades are more motivated in class participation where as grade level rises, the students’ motivation decreases. The motivation equation of expectancy x value is a delicate equation in which the teachers will need to continuously monitor in the classroom. Teacher’s compliments and positive attitudes in students’ works encourages students’ motivation and this is what I wish to continue practicing in my field placements, hoping it truly supports all students in level of their motivation.

Self Assessment Midterm

For me, the blog has been helpful, but I find myself interacting and communicating more with the people in class during actual class time. I have enjoyed though reading different perspectives and also found it beneficial to reflect on the readings and think about what I read and try to make the connections and write them out. I really think about what I post because I feel that it is a way to peer communicate and I know how much I benefit from other's post, I want them to learn from mine as well.

I have seen my thinking really changed from the class and others points of view. Have it been through the New Literacy Project and opening my eyes to a whole new way of teaching, or many helpful tips from the Tompkins reading, all of this together has added to my teacher tool box. I really think that I am gathering a bunch of new ideas and hearing from my peers certain techniques they have tried and either succeed or failed with. It has been a great learning experience so far.

The noteblog is a great tool to just say how I feel and what I think in a comfortable setting and get feedback from my peers. It is also helpful being on a blog, that I can go back and refer to it as many times as I need it.

I have to admit the New Literacies Project has to be one of the most beneficial assingments I have done in my four years of TE. I am not the most tech savvy and yet I learned and feel so comfortable with a whole slew of new tools to use. And with having the blog, I can read about others that were different from mine, and if I have a questions, post one, and have confidence that someone who knows what to do will answer it for me.

Learning from others has always been something I have tried to do in whatever setting I am in, and it is no different when it comes to this class. The only thing I wish is that we had access to all the blogs because I know how much I have learned from Yoon, Jen, Kelly, and Kristin that I can only imagine what everyone else has to offer.

I think that overall I have gotten so much out of this blog and I only hope that others have learned what I have, and at this point I would say I have earned a grade of an A-. I know that there were a few times in which I was confused and didn't post on time, but I made sure to go back and make those up.

Tompkins 6

Tompkins 6- Fluency
Developing Fluent Readers and Writers.

This chapter was particularly interesting to me because when I think of fluency I automatically think of reading. I always leave out writing, and feel that many of my teachers in the past did as well. When I look at my own literacy skills, I know that my reading fluency is excellent, but I do not think as highly of my writing skills. I do not know if it is because I never learned to be a fluent writer, or if it is simply because writing requires coming up with new ideas.

This is not something I see often in the classroom. I am in a second grade classroom and rarely see students creating their own writing work. A fair amount of the time the students are simply copying down ideas that were written on the board. If students do create their own work, it is usually only two or three sentences long. How can we teach students to be fluent readers AND writers?

Motivation

Motivation, how do you do it? This is one of the biggest problems I see in the classroom. Scare tactics and external motivation only go so far. How do we make students want to learn? How do we create value in learning? This is something that is easy for us as college students to understand, but how do we convince small children that focusing and learning really does matter? This reading took me back to the expectancy x value framework we learned about during TE 301. How can we show students that the effort they put in will payoff in the end? I decided to pull out my literary reference project I created last year to see what I thought about it at the time. What I wrote about the model was; expectancy(does the student expect to be successful) x value (why is it valuable for the student to complete the task?) I think that this is an excellent representation of how motivation actually works. Even when I want to try new things or push myself, I must first believe I can accomplish the task. If I am down on myself from the beginning then it almost is not worth trying. But once again HOW do we teach our students to believe they can be sucessful. As for value, teaching young students the value of education is often difficult. This is often covered up with grades, stickers, and staying out of trouble. These things might be enough for awhile, but eventually students will have to understand the real reason it is important to accomplish the task at hand.

Comprehension strategies

This chapter brought up many good points on the importance of teaching comprehension strategies to students. Without comprehension skills, decoding and fluency mean nothing. Being able to read the words without picking up the meaning defeats the purpose of reading at all. Until a student comprehends what they read, they are not learning from the material they read. This is a chapter I would like to refer back to while I am teaching literacy.
In my current classroom I have noticed that the majority of the students have decent fluency and comprehension skills. I would like to know more about how they were taught, and how students in general learn to go from decoding to comprehension.

Weinstein Chapter 7

This chapter will be one that I refer back to a lot I think. Motivating students to learn is such a refined skill, and one that I feel only comes from learning what doesn't work. I have such a hard time getting some of my first graders motivated, especially the low achieving ones. I really enjoyed reading the Provide Opportunities for Success. When it comes to low achievers this is so often the case, they do work that is too hard so they give up. But if we as teachers can give them work that is level appropriate to avoid their frustration. If they feel they can do something the next time something is hard, they are more likely to work instead of quit right off the back.

I also liked how they discussed trying to get the students to see the correlation between effort and outcome. Progress reports seem to be a great way to keep this up. I think that if we as teachers don't provide any feedback, then this is more difficult, and I think the more feedback the better. I know from personal experience that it is so hard to know if my effort is paying any divends without getting any feedback.

Chapter 6 Tompkins

This chapter took me back to TE 301, and all the material we covered in class. The biggest thing that jumped out to me in this chapter was on page 201 with Visual Learning Software. As we move towards a new way of teaching and learning I find myself at times dragging my feet in regards to the new technologies. But talking to my students and exploring the different advances I see that it will be a useful and benefical tool for not only my students but myself as well. I do think that there need to be some balance of 21st-century technology as they put it in the readings, and the traditional sense of learning. Although as I type this blog, I find myself questioning why I feel that way. People say that imagination and creativeness has declined, but I think that it has taken shape in new ways. It is so vital for us never to forget that we are going to be teaching in a society that is ever changing and we as teacher's really don't have the luxury to drag our feet. Something that comes up in my placement is in regards to first graders and fluency. I looked at the list of characteristics of Dysfluent readers on page 208. I went through the list and it was interesting to have it seem like a personal handbook for the students in my placement that struggle with reading. There is a group of five students who are very behind and a specialist comes in several times a week to work with them. I had the chance to sit and learn some of the tools that she uses to help them and it was great! A big think she stressed to me was they need to hear and act out the sounds in the word and then blend them together. I even went through a lesson with the kids and acted out all the things they had to do which really was an eye opening experience!

Tompkins Chapter 9

I know that I must have said this a lot already, but I love this book. My favorite aspect of this book has to be all the charts in it. Each chart takes main points and highlights what it is we as teachers should either look for or how to use what is discussed in the readings. I really took a lot away from the Assessing Students' Knowledge of Text Factors portion at the end of the of the chapter. I liked having example of different ways to get at what our students learn. I love how they present mulitple examples because it is important that we keep that in mind,

I have seen a lot of the example in my placement similar to The Five Expository Text Structures. I never really understood why we would make Comparison charts until I saw it being done in my class. This is a great tool to get the students engaged in readings. They love looking for differences and I see them listening more intently and actively.

On page 301, the Narrative Devices are a great explanation of each and really help clarify what it is we should be looking for when we use that terminology in our classrooms. On page 300, I bookmarked because I admit sometimes still get confused on Point of View and this really helped me. Like I said earlier I really love reading this book and will use it so much when I teach.

Developing Fluent Readers and Writers

Scaffolding in teaching students to read makes perfect sense; children understand word-to-word reading, and then, as they recognize more and more high-fluency words, then begin to use syllabic and morphemic analysis of unfamiliar words. This poses one question: does the lack of reading comprehension in my classroom result from not enough reading in earlier grades, as Tompkins submits? Indeed, “children become fluent readers through a combination of instruction and lots of reading experience,” (p.188) so where is the disconnect that happens in low-fluency readers like the ones that make up half of my at-risk class? Evidence shows that support from home greatly influences a student’s ability to read fluently, but how do we as teachers compensate for homes that do not spend time on this crucial step? Motivating a student to read, too, is another factor; we can pick out all of the exciting books, but the students have to have home support to really keep them motivated outside the classroom, don’t they?

As for some of the low-fluency students in my classroom, I feel that it would be worthwhile to take them aside and really work on word recognition (introducing words in context, having children chant and clap words, having children practice reading and writing particular words) and would greatly increase their confidence and ability to read aloud in class.

Facilitating Students' Comprehension: Text Factors

March 16

Talk about a detailed chapter – Tompkins’s chapter 9 goes into intricate depth about text factors (narrative genres, story elements, and narrative devices), informational book text factors (nonfiction genres, expository text structures, and nonfiction features), and poetic text factors (book formats, poetic forms, and poetic devices). What particularly interested me, however, was the thought that as teachers teach students about the text factors, the students’ comprehension of the text as a whole increases (p. 311). After considering the thought longer, however, it makes sense that spending time on these factors leads to a better understanding of literacy because these steps are showing children the many different ways to look at their books. It’s as if they give them a new set of eyes to look through when reading a piece of literature – sharper eyes.

In my own experience in the classroom, it seems as if the students merely read to read and fail to truly grasp the meaning behind their literature. We give them a social studies assignment, consisting of reading a 3-page chapter and answering questions at the end of it, and they cannot focus long enough to truly understand and respond. To take Tompkins’s advice, I think it would be a great idea to use think-alouds to “help students internalize the information and apply it when they’re reading and writing.” (p.312)

Motivation: A Teacher's Problem.

February 23 – Weinstein 7

I found this particular chapter on Enhancing Students’ motivation extremely interesting and practical for my classroom. I could relate to the chapter as soon as it opened up with a student teacher’s sentiments about her unmotivated 5th graders, and found one point in particular especially intriguing: “motivation is an acquired disposition amenable to change. It can also be situation to specific, varying with the nature of the particular activity. According to this… perspective, teachers are responsible for trying to stimulate students’ engagement in learning activities.” (p.202) I suppose I had always realized that this was the nature of motivation, but failed to put that perspective into practice when dealing with my “unmotivated” 5th graders. I sounded a lot like the opening student teacher, complaining about how I could threaten them with calling parents, taking away recess, or using any other bit of leverage I could find to make them understand the importance of taking school seriously. To realize that students’ motivation lies in my hands, though, and to put that to action, is almost a foreign concept to me. How can I take steps to implementing that? Does expectancy x value framework really work?

Comprehension

In my classroom I rarely see comprehension tasks given. Every Monday when I am there we split into reading groups and I am in charge of one group. We read small texts out of a book that it at their reading level. At the end of each text there are comprehension questions. There are about 5. Usually the students answer them at a bare minimum. The students are not excited to answer the questions and depending on the group it is only a few students that answer these questions. I think this is because when the class reads any books in general my CT asks for 3 comments or questions after the book and they do not have to relate to any comprehension. I think because of this the students do not feel that in small groups they have to answer comprehension questions. I think the students are comprehending the text it is just they are never pushed to answer the questions that they do not think it is important to pay attention to important plot details. From our class discussions I think my class could benefit from using the different comprehension strategies. Things that I think would be useful would be as simple as having one student from the group tell one thing that they remember from the text and having each student say something different. This would help the students remember parts as well as hear from other students. Then I think my CT or another teacher should ask additional questions about comprehension and call on students even if they are not raising their hand to see what they are thinking.

new literacies project

The New Literacy that I have picked to investigate is emotional literacy. Emotional literacy consists of recognizing your individual feelings as well as recognizing others feelings and emotions. Part of that literacy is to be able to communicate those feelings in a productive manner. It is important to be able to relay your emotions and recognize those of others to be able to get support and to understand. It is important to be aware of all the different emotions that one can have. Being able to express how you feel is so important to build relationships. It is also a tool that can be used for ESL learners. Emotions are universal and something that everyone everywhere can recognize. Even if you don’t speak the same language or have the same culture emotions are still the same throughout.


The technology that I decided to use is through a Wiki. Throughout TE 401 and 402 we have been exposed to and used wikis. Before this year the only time I had heard the word Wiki was in relation to Wikepedia on the internet. By exploring a Wiki I am exploring a part of technology that is becoming more and more relevant in today's society. Wiki's are a useful space to put a lot of information in a easily accessible space. Unlike a file folder or a drawer this Wiki makes it easy to store a lot of information.


What I need to be successful is exploration is to be able to have some time in class as well as out of class to work on it. I would like to be able to converse with my peers and be able to ask questions to make sure that I am on the right track.

comprehension

What I got out of today’s readings were that it is important when making a lesson to have questions that will prompt student’s comprehension. One technique that I got from the Tompkins chapter was to have a chart of text-to-text, text-to-world, and text-to-self. I think making these connections is important because even I read books and just “read” the words. There are a lot of strategies that can help with comprehension. On page 261 on Tompkins there is a chart of various methods you can use to help students with comprehension. In my placement one of the methods that I have seen a lot is having a set of comprehension questions at the end of the book that they read. There are so many strategies that can be used and I don’t think my CT does a good job of implementing more strategies. When the students are asked their questions they seem to give one word or use minimal effort to answer the question. I struggle with this because when I try to get them to expand they don’t understand because my CT does not have them expand on comprehension questions. Some strategies that I think the students would benefit from would be to activate background knowledge, connect, determine, summarize, and determine importance.

jen

USEing comprehension strategies

I think one of the most important points brought up in this particular chapter of Tompkins' is summed up in the review box on page 283: teachers teach students how to use comprehension strategies and skills. This is crucial; in fact, I would say that it is the foundation on which all literacy should be based. If a student does not know how to comprehend what he/she is reading, skills MUST be taught to the student AND utilized by the student as a next step. It starts at teaching students how to read words, follows through teaching them how to comprehend, and does not stop until the student fully understands the text that they are reading. Otherwise, reading is of no worth.

In my classroom, most of the students know how to read with a fair amount of ease (how sad it is that I can only say "most" -- some STILL struggle with basic reading in 5th grade!), yet a vast majority of them do not comprehend what they are reading. It is a familiar practice in the classroom that texts are read once silently by oneself, then out-loud by alternating classmates, yet as soon as questions are assigned to the reading, hands shoot up all over the room, accompanied by fits of "I need helllllp!" and "I don't understsannnnd!" It is quite possibly the most frustrating thing.

I feel that if I could get the students to not only understand comprehension strategies but actually use them on their own motivation, they would be much more self-sufficient in assignments and reading in general. It's just a task to actually get them to that point.