I did not observe any new language arts/reading instruction this week.  The children are not learning anything new; they are continuing to work on sight words.  I was able to observe shared reading and a read-aloud.

Have you done any teaching in your internship? What have you taught? Have you worked with a child or a group of children? What did you do with them (e.g., picture/word sort, DRTA, Text Talk)?

Our last day was too busy for us to actually teach anything.  The only thing I was able to do with my students was play one game of alphabet “Go Fish”.

Comment on any interesting things that you have noticed about your school, the teachers, the students, or the curriculum.

I am slightly shocked by the amount of students in my kinder class that are still struggling with letters this far into the year but they all pretty much have their phonics down.

-Thursday especially Mrs. Snipes class did a lot of activities in language arts. I got to pull kids out in groups of three and play alphabet “Go Fish”.  Additionally I got to pull kids out one on one to work on their three letter sight words.  I would tell them the word and they would have to find the plastic letters out of the tub and spell the word.  Mrs. Snipes also did a text talk with a book about dandelions because they are focusing on spring vocabulary and literature.  The children also got to work on their sight words as a whole class.  They have a baggie full of sight words and they all received two new ones today.  They had to spread their cards out in front of themselves with the word facing up so they can read it and then Mrs. Snipes had the students classify and separate them out according to what she asked them to do.  An example would be “Find the words that begin with the sound ah” and they would pull out “at” and “an”.  Additionally they did a choral read as a class and acted out parts of The Springtime Rock and Roll.

What connections have you seen between what you observed and our readings and/or class discussions.

-They have been doing a lot of work with sight words, which is something that we really focused on in class.  I enjoy seeing her ideas to teach them as well because it increases my bank of knowledge to pull from when it comes time for me to teach my own class.  Additionally It is good to see text talks and choral reading performed in a real classroom with the age group I hope to teach.

Have you done any teaching in your internship? What have you taught? Have you worked with a child or a group of children? What did you do with them (e.g., picture/word sort, DRTA, Text Talk)?

-The only thing I have gotten to do one on one with my students out side of the required interviews are the activities Mrs. Snipes and her assistant have us help them with.  This week, as I said in the first question, I taught small groups of students how to play alphabet “Go Fish”.  I also worked with individual students on 3 letter sight words but most students didn’t need any help with the spellings.

Comment on any interesting things that you have noticed about your school, the teachers, the students, or the curriculum.

-The teacher I am working under seems to put a lot of emphasis on language arts and the students really love the choral reading time of the day.

There has not been any new activities or method of instruction used.  Mrs. Snipes has continued to use the text talk method.

Have you done any teaching in your internship? What have you taught? Have you worked with a child or a group of children? What did you do with them (e.g., picture/word sort, DRTA, Text Talk) ?

I had 4 children read their independent reading books to me. I had them retell me the story without reading it to ensure they went passed memorization.  Additionally I worked briefly with a view students on site words using  flash cards.  The teacher also works on rhyming words with her students through reading books aloud and having the students fill in the last word on a page.

Comment on any interesting things that you have noticed about your school, the teachers, the students, or the curriculum.

I noticed that it has been the same students every time that have an independent reading book to pass off to me and that the lower achieving students have not passed one off since I’ve been there.

Post any questions that you have about teaching/learning.

What grade level do you start using DRTA?

The teacher definitely practices text talk to read to the students.  Additionally they do a book check out program.  The students are given a book to take home and if they can read it to the instructor 2 days later they can take another book home.  The students also act out big book stories.

What have you taught in your internship?

We do not really teach in this internship.  I have practiced consonant sounds, rhyming words, sight words and reading with the students.

Comment on any interesting things that you have noticed about your school, the teachers, the students, or the curriculum.

I love seeing how excited the students get when the teacher pulls out a big book.  They look forward to being able to be involved in the story whether it be acting it out or answering questions about it.

- Accuracy in word decoding : Calculate the percentage of words a reader can accurately decode on grade level material.

- Automatic Processing: Have the student orally read a grade level passage for 60 seconds and then calculate the number of words read correctly.

- Prosodic Reading: Listen to the student read a grade level passage and then judge the quality of the reading using a rubric that scores a student on the elements of expression and volume, phrasing, smoothness, and pace.

2.     Rasinski refers to fluency as a “bridge” between decoding and comprehension. What does he mean by the “bridge” metaphor?

As the student goes through the three dimensions and gain fluency they will no longer read the words as just words but be able to hear them all together and understand the story.  As Rasinski said “if they ignore most punctuation, blowing through periods and other markers that indicate pauses, then it is unlikely that they will fully understand the text.” (46)

3.    What instructional methods does Rasinski suggest for students with difficulties in automatic and prosodic reading?

The teacher should assist the reader by reminding them that they should use their voice to tell the story and other advice while the student is reading.  Including repeated reading along with coaching from the teacher students’ accuracy, reading rate, and prosodic reading can be monitored.

4.     Multidimensional Fluency Scale (MFS) is used to measure prosodic quality of oral reading. List components of the MFS and describe briefly what each refers to (p. 49).

1. Expression and Volume: 1. Reads words as if simply trying to get them out, 2. Reads in a quiet voice, 3. Makes text sound more natural in the better parts of the passages, 4. Reads with good expression
2. Phrasing: 1. Reads in monotone, 2. Reads in two or three word phrases, 3. Reads with a mixture of run-ons, 4. Generally reads with good phrasing
3. Smoothness: 1. Makes frequent extended pauses, 2. Experiences several “rough spots”/extended pauses, 3. Occasionally breaks smooth rhythm because of difficulties with specific words, 4. Generally reads smoothly with some breaks, usually uses self-correction when struggling with a word.
4. Pace: 1. Reads slowly and laboriously, 2. Reads moderately slow, 3. Reads with an uneven mixture of fast and slow pace, 4. Consistently reads at conversational pace, appropriate rate throughout reading

He is in third grade.

2. What was the flash score for words at: first-grade level? second-grade level? third-grade level?

1^st: 75%

2^nd: 50%

3^rd: 20%

3. What was the accuracy score at: 1-2 level? 2-1 level? 2-2 level?

1-2: 97%

2-1: 90%

2-2: 84%

4. What was the rate score at: 1-2 level? 2-1 level? 2-2 level?

1-2: 65 wpm

2-1: 44 wpm

2-2: 36 wpm

Look at the spelling scores in Table 5.2 on page 172.

5. What was the percentage correct score for: first-grade words? second-grade words?

1^st: 95%

2^nd: 75%

Consider the following expected scores, then compare those expectations to the scores Curt produced. With the Word Recognition Test, flash scores are generally interpreted as follows: 90-100% indicates Independent Level; 60-85% indicates Instruction Level; Below 50% indicates Frustration Level.

With oral reading accuracy, scores are generally interpreted as follows: 98-100% indicates Independent Level; 95-97% indicates Instruction Level; Below 92%   indicates Frustration Level.

With oral reading rate, expected grade-level ranges are as follows:

Grade–Words per minute

1^st–45-85

2^nd–80-120

3^rd–95-135

With spelling scores, around 50% correct indicates Instruction Level.

6. Which grade-level flash score is the best choice for Instruction Level? (*Note: 92-94% accuracy is marginal; take a close look at Rate.)

First grade.

7. Which grade-level accuracy score is the best choice for Instruction Level?

Second grade.

8. What do Curt’s rate scores indicate about his grade-level reading? Where is he instructional according to rate?

1^st grade.

9. What do Curt’s spelling scores indicate about his Instruction Level.

He is just entering the With-in Word stage.

10. Put all of these scores together, and what do they indicate Curt’s reading level to be?

They indicate that Curt is 1-2/2-1 reading level.

Students need to assess accurate, relevant knowledge, managing mental processes, during reading within the confines of a limited working memory, and constructing a coherent mental representation through pruning and organizational processes.

2. Specify the effect that background knowledge may have on constructing mental representations from informational text. Why should teachers be concerned about activating prior knowledge?

Naïve beliefs may are difficult to change because true scientific concepts are abstract and commonly counterintuitive to daily experiences.  “High level questioning by the teacher, self-explanation and explanations to peers by students, and negotiation of meaning were the necessary components of discussions surrounding science concepts with older readers.”  Prior knowledge is important because it will help the child make specific connections to texts.

3. What are the three instructional approaches that can be used to help primary-grade students comprehend informational text? Describe their common (p. 365) and distinctive features (p. 363-5).

Picture Walk (PW):

Teacher and student have a discussion every few pages.  The pictures of the book are used to predict what is occurring in a story.  It is used to promote fluency.  Additionally 2 or 3 vocabulary words are introduced.

Know-Want to learn-Learn (KWL):

Helps a teacher assess a student’s prior knowledge and help them find their own reasons for reading expository texts. The teacher creates a discussion with the student and uses a worksheet to record the students answers to what they know, what they want to know, and after reading the text, what they learned.  KWLs allow for a more open discussion than the other methods. One down fall is that the open-endedness of the discussion can lead the child far away from the focus of the text.

Directed Reading-Thinking Activity:

This method views reading as a problem solving process.  Students are responsible for creating their own predictions, justifying their predictions, reading on their own, and correcting their predictions after discovering they were wrong.  DRTA differs from the other 2 methods because it does not include a build-up of the story before reading it.

4. What is the purpose of the experimental study reported?

To explore how the PW, KWL, and DRTA may influence the developmental reading abilities and content acquisition when used with informational text in the primary reading group context.

5. Who were the subjects?

They used 31 2^nd grade students from 2 different, but demographically similar schools.  The students were all struggling.  They created 8 groups of 4 students.

6. Describe the reading materials used during the intervention.

They were exposed to a total of 12 books; all texts used were on the students’ instructional reading level.  The texts consisted of informational texts on topics that were familiar to the subjects such as spiders, the moon, how water changes form, and insects.  Each week 3 different informational texts were used that contained common information about the same topic.

7. How long did the experiment last?

2 four week cycles but data was collected over a span of 10 weeks.

8. What were the experimental conditions?

Pre-experimental screening was conducted, a 45 minute orientation session was given to each group, there was 12 days of intervention in each cycle, and each group received treatment for 3 days straight with data only collected on the third day.   On the day following the intervention, students were interviewed about the comprehension strategies and instructional preferences.

9. Describe the procedures specific to the Picture Walk, KWL, DRTA, and the Control Group conditions.

PW: New vocabulary was presented before the reading of the text.  They conducted discussions based upon the images and previous knowledge before reading the text.  Students then mumble read the text individually after reading it with the instructor and then they discuss whether their predictions were right.

KWL: On day 1 and 3 they made a KWL chart.  A group discussion followed and the students’ input was then put in the “know” column of the chart.  On day 2 and 3 each child wrote what they knew on an individual chart.  Children then generated questions that were placed in the “what I want to Learn” column. The instructor provided the same brief overview of the text, which he had presented to the other groups.  After the pre-reading discussion the children mumble read the text.  After the reading they had a group discussion deciding whether or not their questions were answered.  If their questions were answered the instructor would place the answers in the “what I learned” column.

10. What measures were used to determine the relative effectiveness of the treatments? Describe the measures briefly.

VRT, Maze, Free Recall, Post-intervention interview:-assessment of knowledge of the 2 common strategies—activation of prior knowledge and prediction, students asked to reflect on their preferred approach for enjoyment and helpfulness.

11. Which treatment(s) were found to be more effective in increasing students’ vocabulary knowledge and maze performance (p. 381)?

The small group settings were essential and the 3 methods worked equally well.

12. Students’ comprehension of the texts was greater under the DRTA condition than KWL and the control conditions. What do you think explains DRTA’s advantage over the KWL condition (p. 382)?

Teacher guidance during the DRTA tended to direct the children’s attention to the important ideas and assist with difficult text concepts in a way that was not provided for in the other interventions.

13. It was found that the treatments did not differ in the quality and quantity of students’ retellings (p. 384). In other words, students were not differentially affected by the treatments in the way they integrated textual information with prior knowledge. What does this finding mean in terms of the different emphases employed by experience-based (KWL) vs. text-based (DRTA) treatments?

Cognitive organization was very important for the retelling of a story.  Good organization makes retrieval possible.

Answer the following question AFTER you read the article.

14. In light of the findings from this study, what conclusions can you draw about the role of teacher support in children’s construction of mental representations from informational text?

Teacher mediation is important for students to effectively organize prior knowledge and what they learn from the text.

Reading and writing at this age is often thought of as ‘pretend’.  The child will scribble or write random letters that have nothing to do with the word they are attempting to represent.  When they “read” familiar books it is because they are quoting from memory with the images as their cues.  Children in this stage may also recognize logos and call out the name of the place it is depicting.  Children can also become attached to letters that they associate with such as a letter in their name.

2. How does a Letter Name-Alphabetic speller read and write?

In this stage the child would be considered a ‘beginning reader’.  They have transferred from pretend reading to actual reading.  They use systematic letter sound matches to identify and store words in memory.  They still have a limited knowledge of letter sounds.  Additionally they will take cues from the first letter and may say a word different than what is in the text but still makes sense such as interchanging the words cake, cookie, or candy.  As they approach the end of this stage, students will start including vowels but often still use them incorrectly.  Students in this stage need to read aloud and hear the sounds they are making while trying to say the words to actually be reading.  The reading in this stage is often disfluent.

3. How does a Within Word Pattern speller read and write?

Students begin to understand word patterns.  They focus on the vowels in words and what follows them.  Once students learn rimes they begin to appear in their writing but students frequently confuse the various long vowel patterns.  In this stage children transform from needing support with reading to picking up texts and reading independently.  Their sight word increases dramatically allowing for more fluent reading along with faster reading and writing abilities.  Additionally finger pointing is no longer needed and they can read silently.

4. How does a Syllable and Affixes speller read and write?

Students in this stage enjoy writing persuasive essays, editorials, poetry, or their own versions of fantasy or fiction.  In reading they often enjoy tackling series of books such as Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings.  They typically read texts with good speed and accuracy.  Understanding is related to their familiarity with the topic being discussed.  They prefer fantasy or fiction.

5. How does a Derivational Relations speller read and write?

These students chose to read a variety of reading styles to suit the text and their purposes for reading.  They strive to integrate their knowledge with the knowledge of others.  Additionally students in this stage master a variety of writing styles.

6. What is the existing research evidence on the relationship between spelling and reading? Briefly describe research findings discussed on page 20.

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The hypothesis tested was that students will learn the pronunciations and meanings of new words better when they see spellings of the words during study periods than when they do not.

2. Who were the subjects?

The first experiment involved a group of 20 second graders enrolled in a urban school with a large minority population whose vocabulary level was below average.  The second experiment performed was with a group of 5^th graders from a lower SES school.

3. What were the experimental conditions?

Second Graders:

Each student was taught the pronunciations and meanings of two sets of six concrete nouns.  Spellings were shown as students learned one set.  Spellings were not shown as students learned the other set.  The particular word set was counterbalanced across conditions.  The order that students completed the conditions was counterbalanced across students.

Fifth Graders:

They were split into two groups, one with higher orthographic knowledge and one with a lower orthopedic knowledge.  They also differed in their spelling ability. The words used were low-frequency nouns that were longer, consisting of two and three syllables.  10 words were taught with a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 8 trials.

4. What did the treatment involve?

Second Graders:

First, the six words, their spellings, and their meanings were introduced to the subjects.  For each, a card was displayed with a drawing of the object named and a spelling printed beneath the image.  The experimenter pronounced the word and told the student the definition and the student repeated them.  The remaining trials tested students’ recall of the words’ pronunciations and meanings.  Students were given a minimum of six trials and a maximum of 9 trials to learn pronunciations.

Fifth Graders:

Meanings were taught with pictures, defining sentences, and clarifying sentences as before.

5. Which group (spelling-present vs. spelling-absent) gained more in vocabulary learning?  How were the groups’ recall of pronunciations affected by the treatment?

Second Graders:

The “spelling-present” group gained more in vocabulary learning.  The results showed that recall was “superior” when spellings were seen.

Fifth Graders:

Again the group with spelling aids had better recall.

6. Why do you think that fifth graders who were high on a word reading task benefited more from the spelling aids than their peers with less orthographic experience and knowledge, even though the two groups did not differ on receptive vocabulary knowledge?

It can possibly be contributed to the fact that they had better knowledge of larger syllabic spelling units than lower readers; therefore they had an advantage in forming connections to store multisyllabic words to memory.

7. What general conclusions were derived from the study findings by the authors? What implications were offered for vocabulary learning and instruction?

General conclusions include that when students are exposed to the spellings of new vocabulary words, grapho-phonemic connections are activated and this better secures pronunciations of words in memory.

Implications that are offered are that teachers need to become aware of the importance of spellings for vocabulary learning.  Teachers need to take time to display the spellings of the words.  Additionally teachers should not rely on silent reading as a means to teach children vocabulary.

Curt is in the Letter-Name stage.  I picked this development stage because he has got his short vowels down and is including letters for all of the sounds he hears but he is not regularly adding the extra vowel were needed to change the vowel from a short to long therefore showing that he does not fully grasp the pattern.  Since he only occasionally shows characteristics of the word-pattern stage I would not classify Curt as in that stage currently.

2. Describe partner reading.

Simply put, partner reading is when a tutor and the child equally share the task of reading a story aloud.  It starts with the tutor reading the first page and then the student will read the next.  The fact that the tutor can be seen as an equal partner can make the child more comfortable. It also continually models for the student what fluent reading looks like.  The tutor should also ask comprehension questions as they read.

3. Which is harder for a student, partner reading or DRTA?

Partner reading is difficult for a student because they have to personally read.  DRTA requires more thinking and comprehension for a student; therefore I would say that DRTA is harder.

4. In planning a DRTA, what is important about selecting places to stop?

The most important thing when choosing where to stop in the text is for the tutor to plan his/her stops in a location that allows for a lot of questioning and conversation.

5. In planning a DRTA, what is important about deciding questions to ask? What kind of questions? How many?

The amount of questions and what is asked depends solely on the story and child that is being read to.  It is important to try to include at least one or two prediction questions.  Additionally it is important to omit all questions that deaden a dialogue.  The questions being asked need to be used to determine the child’s comprehension of the story.