Vacca, J. L., Vacca, R.T., & Gove, M K. (2012). Reading and learning to read (8th ed.). New York: Longman.

Textbooks rely on expository style of wringing: Description, classification, and explanation. They are dry and less appealing for students. ELL find complex content nd new vocabulary daunting.

Why are content area text books difficult? Assumptions about vocabulary, prior knowledge, and readability of content areas.

Factors judging difficulty:

1. Difficulty if text- look at source of information:

• primary publisher descriptions, design format organizational structure, grade-level readability designations.
• Your knowledge of students in the class.
• Your own sense of what makes the text useful for learning a subject.

Comprehension depends on background knowledge and logical organization of expository text. Content text books linguistic characteristics are technical abstract, dense, and authoritative in nature. Their sentence structure can be complex and long or short and choppy. The length of reading assignments is another factor in terms of readability or ELL. ELL may have adequate conversation skills but lack academic English vocabulary. Suggestions for ELL:

• As content area text readings are introduced, check ELL learners understanding of key terms
• Consider having ELLs read summaries or shorter subsections text rather than lengthy reading assignments
• Decide whether examples in text will clarify understanding or will create an overload of information
• Supply students with an outline of text prior to reading
• Consider relevance of material to ELL background information

2. Usability: is it considerate and user friendly? Does the table of contents provide good overview? Do subheadings clearly break out the important concepts of the chapter? Are terms in bold or italics?

3. How interesting is the text? Text should appeal to students. Is the writing style appealing to students? Does the book clearly show the knowledge being learned might be used by reader in the future?

Readability: Readability formulas help estimate the textbook difficulty. They typically involve a measure of sentence length and word difficulty to ascertain a grade-level score for text material. The score generally indicates the reading achievement level students would need to comprehend the material. Limitation: This is only an estimate. It does not account for background knowledge, interest, motivation, culture or ability. Teachers can use the Fry readability Graph to measure readability. The graph takes into account number of syllables per 100 words and number of sentences per 100 words. Teachers may decide to use leveled trade books to match students with appropriate reading material based on reading achievement as well. These books consider numbers of words on a page, type size, layout, and how illustrations support the text.

Organizing textbook readings: Use cooperative learning groups/literature circles to teach from a textbook

• Textmaster roles:
  • Discussion director- creates questions for group based on personal reactions and concerns about main ideas of a text that is read.
  • Summarizer- Shares a synthesis of key points.
  • Vocabulary enricher- Jots down key words and defines puzzling words
  • Webmaster- Creates graphic organizer that visually displays main ideas including vocabulary and examples.

Idea sketches: Graphic organizers that students complete in small groups as they read from textbook material. The students focus on main ideas and supporting details.

Trade books: Trade books can provide more enriching reading experience than textbooks, capturing children’s interest and imagination in people, places, events, and ideas. Teachers should weave trade books in content rea learning so that the instructional activities are relevant.

Literature across the curriculum: Using trade books in tandem with textbooks or in units of study around thematic unit. It can provide students with intense involvement in subject and are powerful schema builders. They can also accommodate a range of abilities and backgrounds.

Schema: Intense involvement in a subject generates background knowledge the makes textbook concepts easier to grasp and assimilate. Reading both nonfiction and fiction books about the same topic helps build background knowledge and prepares and motivates them to read a variety of genres.  

Literature web: Falls under single-discipline model in which a theme identified as important for the grade level is the base on standards identified. Either a single narrative or multiple text (text sets) are selected as a primary source of information. The literature web shows students different books related to a theme and categorized into other subtopics.

Narrative informational texts: The author tells a fictional story that conveys factual information.

Expository informational books: Text that does not contain stories. They contain information that follows specific text structure such as: description, sequence, cause and effect, comparison and contrast and problem solving. They often have a table of contents, a glossary, a list of illustrations, charts, and graphs. They don’t have to be read in any particular order.

Mixed-text informational books: Narrate stories and include factual information in the surrounding text. Example: the magic school bus is a fictional story but has factual information in it.  

Strategies before reading: Previewing and skimming help students get a general understanding, how to size up material, judge its relevance to a topic or gain a good idea of what passage is about.

• Previewing: Should help students become aware of the purpose of reading assignment. What kind of reading will they be doing? What is the goal? How much time will the assignment take? These questions prepare students for what is coming.
  • Valuable clues about overall structure of a book or the ideas in a chapter: Point out table of contents (shows theme or structure, can be used to build background knowledge), preface, chapter introduction or summaries, and chapter questions.
• Skimming: This is a natural part of previewing to see what the assignment will be about. Have students read the first sentence of every paragraph (usually the important idea). Have students skim a section of their book in 1-2 minutes and provide a summary to the class.

Organizer: Provides a frame of reference for comprehending text precisely to help readers make connections between prior knowledge and new material. they can be written previews or verbal presentations. There will be highlighted concepts and also explicit links to background knowledge and reading. Guidelines for an organizer: analyze content, identify main ideas, link ideas to students experience, raise questions that will interest students in thinking about the text being read. 

Graphic organizer: Ideas are arranged to show relationships to each other. Graphic organizers can help students understand key concepts about subject matter, organize main ideas, and vocabulary.

Anticipation guides: An activity to help build anticipation for reading in which the teacher asks for oral or written statements before reading a text. Students rely on what they already know to make educated guesses about material to be read. They also make predictions. Guidelines for Anticipating Guides: analyze material, determine ideas where students will interact with, write ideas in declarative statements, out statements into a format that twill elicit anticipation and prediction making, discuss readers predictions prior to reading, assign reading, contrast readers predictions with authors intended meaning. 

Point-of-view guides: Questions presented in an interview format. Students role play, writing in the first person to ensure that different perspectives are being taken. Students contribute their experiences to the role which enhances recall and comprehension.

Idea circles: Small peer-led group discussions of concepts fueled by multiple text sources. They are like literature circles because they are composed fo 3-6 students. Students discuss concepts. They read different books and bring information to the table. They discuss facts and relationships.  

Curriculum-based reader’s theater: Develop scripts that are based on curriculum content. Students read sections of text, work in small groups, and rewrite the main ideas in the form of an entertaining script. Increases fluency, enhances understanding of content, and motivates to read.

I-charts: Created to organize note taking, encourage critical thinking that builds on students prior knowledge and increase metacognitive awareness. Students identify what they want to know, organize the information read, and determine if they adequately answered their questions.

Internet inquiry: Use the internet for learning about contain areas, understand organizational patterns of websites because they differ from text. Teachers must make sure students are able to use information technology to actively learn. Teachers should plan and organize internet inquiry. Carefully orchestrated activities result in creative high-level creative thinking skills.

Webquest: A model that features systematic searching and focuses on supporting students’ learning through synthesis and evaluation and analysis. It involves an introduction intended to motivate students, a task that describes the final project, steps that students take to accomplish final product, list of web-base resources, a rubric for student evaluation, and a conclusion that focuses on reflection and discussion.

Classroom Application

Use literature circles to help teach content text:

• Textmaster roles:
  • Discussion director- creates questions for group based on personal reactions and concerns about main ideas of a text that is read.
  • Summarizer- Shares a synthesis of key points.
  • Vocabulary enricher- Jots down key words and defines puzzling words
  • Webmaster- Creates graphic organizer that visually displays main ideas including vocabulary and examples.

Use strategies for text previewing:

Make use of Point-of-view guides: Questions presented in an interview format. Students role play, writing in the first person to ensure that different perspectives are being taken. Students contribute their experiences to the role which enhances recall and comprehension.

Review and reflect on using Webquest as a tool for internet inquiry in the classroom.

Use Bill Chapman’s Classroom Tools (www.classroomtools.com) to help students validate online information. Also reference this location for motivational easy to engage students in learning.

Vacca, J. L., Vacca, R.T., & Gove, M K. (2012). Reading and learning to read (8th ed.). New York: Longman.

Basal reading program is the core reading program/instructional tool used for reading instruction and should address the needs of the majority of students to assure they are meeting grade-level standards.

Components of a basal:

• Emergent literacy:
  • Big books or big storybooks used to introduce children to shared reading and how reading works. They are used to develop basic concepts of language, liter-sound relationships, sense of context, following directions, and listening comprehension.
  • Organized thematically
  • May include: theme books, picture books, read-around anthology, picture-word cards, literature and music, and an assessment package
• Beginning Reading: New basic sight words are introduced and high frequency words accumulate. Experience charts help with word recognition, vocabulary is not as controlled.
  • Sight words
  • Predictable features about rhyming, rhythm and repeated patterns.
  • Systematic, intensive phonics
  • Decodable text
• Strategy Lessons: Strategies to teach sight words, vocabulary, phonics, structural analysis, context, and fluency.
  • Increased whole class and small group work strategies rather than worksheets.
  • Systematic and sequential exposure to new skills
  • Choral reading to improve fluency
• Comprehension Strand: Stressed during pre-reading and post reading activities. Focus on purpose, motives, and acts of main characters. Encourages higher level questions and prediction making. Literature is comprehensive and multicultural. Teacher manuals offer ideas for integration to other subjects.
• Language Arts: Creating a language environment by integrating derange, writing, listening and speaking at each grade level.
  • learning centers
  • workshops
  • group discussions
  • cooperative learning projects
  • library corners
  • technology and art and music centers.
• Management: Systematic instruction of program includes goals and objectives, plans, and assessment tools.
• Assessment: Teachers are given numerous assessment options
• Differentiation: Resources for small group to workstation and technology are provided. Many offered in tiers in response to RTI.

Lesson framework of a lesson in a basal:

Most programs are designed around directed reading activity (DRA). Basal programs incorporate lessons and activities to promote strategic reading and teach strategies for making informed decisions. The following sequence is suggested:

• Motivation and background building: Getting ready to read
  • Predicting
  • Teacher think aloud to model prediction, set purpose and share prior knowledge
  • Discussion of pronunciation and meaning of new words, review words previously taught
  • Location of setting
  • Development of time concepts
  • Review important reading skills needed for doing lesson

• Guided Reading (silent or oral):
  • Focus on comprehension through questioning
  • strategic reading, explicit comprehension and vocabulary skill instruction
• Skill Development and Practice:
  • Development and practice activities focus on direct instruction of reading skills, arranged according to scope and sequence and taught systematically. May include oral rereading. Activities intended to reinforce skills in onboard areas of word analysis, recognition, vocabulary and study skills.
• Follow-up and Enrichment:
  • An effort to connect language arts to other subject areas through themes. The program offers creative enrichment ideas such as: writing activities, drama activities, mini lessons, podcast topics, reading related stories, and more.

Modifying basal lessons: Teachers will modify basal programs to personalize instruction based off the special needs of students in the class. Sometimes lessons are rearranged or they may be omitted or expanded. Teachers can use Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DR-TA) in conjunction with suspenseful stories to facilitate prediction making and provide alternative lesson structure to the DRA. Alternative instruction was addressed in Chapter 3.

Evaluating reading materials for instruction: There are some good guiding questions to help teachers/districts evaluate and pick materials:

1. What is the overall philosophy of the program? How is reading discussed in the teacher’s guide?
2. What kind of learning environment does the program recommend? Is it child-centered? Teacher centered? Literature centered? Skills-based?
3. Describe the emergent literacy program in detail. How does it provide communication between home and school?
4. Describe instructional program in detail. How are lessons structured to teach phonemic awareness, word identification, voabulary, reading fluency, comprehension, and writing?
5. Describe literature of program: Are selection s unabridged? Is there a variety of genres? Is there nonfiction? Is it culturally diverse?
6. How well does the program integrate into the subject areas?

Here are some guidelines that districts can use to help make decisions about text adoption:

• Create a textbook adoption committee
• Set goals
• Learn about effective reading instruction
• Select or create evaluation tool
• Think through the process
• Order core reading programs to review
• Read and evaluate programs
• Pilot the program
• Make final recommendation to board of education

Classroom Application

Navigate and see how we can use National Geographic for Kids http://kids.nationalgeographic.com

Raised Digital: Check out this website to learn more about integrating and using technology in the classroom. http://brueckei.org

Use the checklist provided in the text to help identify materials for reading program:

Vacca, J. L., Vacca, R.T., & Gove, M K. (2012). Reading and learning to read (8th ed.). New York: Longman.

Literature-based reading program: Instructional practices and student activities that include: independent reading, sustained reading and writing, social iterations, read-alouds using literature, books, novels, short stories, magazines, plays, poems, and electronic books. Students included in a literature based program have increased fluency and comprehension skills. They also have a generally positive feeling about reading.

Community of readers: A classroom where students, friends, and teachers are motivated to read. A community of readers discuss their experiences with reading among each other and recommend books to each other. Interacting with one another helps readers learn from each other and share their confidence in reading.

How to hook students on books:

Selecting a classroom collection of books: Gather a collection of books that would interest students from sources such as: library, personal collection, public library, and paperback book clubs.  E-books can also be included (talking books, CD-ROM stories, interactive books). Choose books for specific reasons. Each title should be connected to others in the collection someway. Such as common authors or genres.

How to choose classroom literature: Become familiar with literature and follow these strategies:

1. Read and enjoy books yourself. Keep some notes about books for future reference and to communicate with other teachers about books you liked.
2. Read books with sense of involvement so you can share them with students honestly.
3. Read a variety of book types so you can help students pick out books that are interesting to them.
4. Read books for a wide range of ability levels.
5. Share how your students respond to books with other teachers.
6. Read good quality books.

Determining good literature: Books in your collection should…

1. Contain modern, realistic literature as well as traditional literature
2. Include a multicultural perspective (See chapter 13)
3. Contain different themes and difficulty
4. Include nonfiction

Multicultural literature: These books tell the story of people diverse groups, religions, beliefs, and cultures over a wide range of genres. Including these books help readers to become connected to diverse people of the world. Providing multicultural books will: affirmation for students cultural background, children see that members of their culture make contributions to society, children enjoy hearing about stories of children like them, offers hope and encouragement for children who face similar dilemmas found in books, students get exposure to varying author tones that become memorable to students. Criteria for selecting books:

1. Cultural accuracy
2. Richness of cultural detail
3. Authentic dialogue and relationships
4. In-depth treatment of cultural issues
5. Inclusion of minorities for a purpose

Designing a classroom library: Should be highly visible with clear boundaries for where it starts and ends, should be a quiet place for 5-6 students to read, have comfortable seating, should hold 5-6 books per child, multiple copies of popular books including a variety of genres, and decorated with literature-oriented displays that boost enthusiasm.

Listening to literature: Use read-aloud to expose children to books they would otherwise not be exposed to. This allows them to get motivated to read more of that kind of book. It can also provide basis for discussion.

Read alouds: Sharing literature should not be used as just a time filler. Reading aloud should be incorporated to all aspects of the curriculum.

1. For read alouds consider: age, backgrounds, interest of students, and connection to other read alouds.
2. Prepare to read aloud: know the mood, plot, characters…etc. Decide how to introduce the story and plan for after reading activities.
3. Set the mood: Teachers set the mood by using a story time symbol such as lighting a small lamp, playing soft music, a magic story box that has the summary of the story within, or deliberate movement towards reading area.
4. Introduce the story: Introduce with objects that could represent something from the book. Have a chalkboard with book questions on it, ask students about the book. Make sure to vary introductions and keep them brief.
5. After reading activities: Encourage students to respond through literature circles, book talks, free response, and journals.
6. Allow others to present literature: have a guest reader such as principal, literacy coach, parents or superintendent read literature to students.

Story Telling: Telling a story without using text. Reason to story tell include: understanding oral tradition in literature, involving children in story telling, the stimulus it provides for children’s story telling. Be sure to select a story you know and are comfortable with and may pertain to a certain topic. Prepare the story to tell (reference page 436 for tips). Set the mood and introduce the story like you would a read aloud.

Helping students choose just right books: Independent readers have the ability to select their own books. Help students find books by talking about authors, provide previews of books, show videos about stories, suggest titles of stories that match student interest, and encourage author searches on the internet. Students should have three different difficulty levels: easy to read, book they are working on, and a challenge book. Students should have books that allow them to read with intention and purpose. Use of book journals can help gauge how students feel about their reading.

Organizing for literature based instruction:

1. Core books: The goal for using core books is to organize reading instruction around teaching reading skills. A curriculum committee assign books that are judged to be at specific grade levels for the students. They are taught whole class and students are given little choice for these readings. Core book instruction includes vocabulary, comprehension, and word identification strategies.
2. Literature units: these are thematic or integrated instruction. Books are related to specific theme and students have option to pick from a specific collection of books.
3. Reading workshops: Allows students to practice reading skills and respond to books among peers. Workshops: spark interest, may include mini lessons, status reports of where students are in their workshops, sustained silent reading, individual conferences, and group sharing time.
4. Literature circles:  These are small temporary discussion groups that meet regularly (recommended size 4-5 students in each group) Students in the group are grouped together because they have chosen to read the same text. While reading, each member takes on a specific role for the upcoming discussion. Each member comes to the discussion with notes based off their responsibility for that discussion. They share their piece with the group. When they complete the book, they share their thoughts with the larger classroom.

Responses to literature: It is important that students have skills to analyze the readings for their personal reactions.

1. Efferent stance: Readers focus on or seek information, want directions, or logical conclusion.
2. Aesthetic stance:  Readers focus on what is being created during rehearsal reading. Reading is driven more by feelings, ideas, and attitudes stirred up by text.

Create responsive environments: Invite all students to react with literature through various modes of expressions including: art, movement, drama, talk, blogs, and writing. Students in primary grades gravitate towards drawing or drama performances about stories before talking or writing about stories.

1. Spark Discussion with book talk: This activity goes beyond the literal comprehension of the story. It helps students relate to prior knowledge, construct meaning, critique related text, and share personal responses.
   • Ask questions about what puzzled them, what feelings they encountered, comparing with their own experiences
   • Talk about the most memorable pieces of the story
   • Talk about the most memorable character of the story
   • Jot down what was going on in their heads during a read aloud segment
   • Ask students to visualize parts in their head. Ask students what it would have looked like if xyz happened.
   • Ask how they feel about characters
2. Free Response: This technique generates respite that is inferential, evaluative, and analytical. Students hear reading and respond in writing. They can be given guiding questions such as: things you liked, things you didn’t like, events from your own life that came to mind..etc.
3. Literature Journals: Allows students to write about their reactions to readings in their own journals. They can write before, during, or after reading.

Read-response theory: the reader is crucial to the construction of literary experience.

Videos from Class

How to Organize your Classroom, from Instructor Magazine

Tables: Kids must be collaborative team members and communicators and having tables set up this way allows them to work on communication skills. The tables are set up with writing materials and individual supplies.

There is a meeting area on a rug where students gather in the morning. There is a job chart for jobs for the week. The teacher sits in a chair while students sit on the rug and listen.

Classroom library: There is space for featured stunt work. Books are organized by topics, author studies, and leveled books. Each grouping is in a separate tote. The teacher has book boxes with a bag of books they have chosen. Then, there are guided reading books that the teacher uses for reading.

Word wall: There is a list of sight words that get added as they go through them. They are in large font so they can be read everywhere.

Vocabulary displays include: Fab Vocabulary, Math Vocabulary, and Social Studies.

How to Chose a Good Fit Book

Questions students can think about when they are picking books for themselves:

• Purpose: Why do I want to read?
• Interest: What interests me?
• Comprehend: Do I understand what I am reading?
• Know: Do I know the words I am reading?

How to Pick a Just Right Book

This video provides examples of books that are too easy, too hard, and just right. She counts words that are difficult for the stunt to read while reading aloud.

• Too hard: 5 tricky words on a page
• Too easy: Student can read the book fast and it is fun but student doesn’t learn
• Just right: Some bumpy parts but not too many

Reading Workshop Links

Rick’s Reading Workshop Overview: Differentiating class by questioning

Reader’s workshop: Overview

• Starts with mini lesson that helps kids to focus on certain aspect of reading
• Read aloud. Ask questions throughout to guide discussion or turn and talk to a partner or act out emotions to make physical and mental connections to their reading.
• Silent reading while the teacher talks to students separately and provide some sort of skill or comprehension work for the day. This also helps for differentiation.

Rick’s Reading Workshop Silent Reading: Tailor individual tasks for students with differing abilities

Format: kids pick book at their level and read silently. But, this is not a silent process because brain activity is happening and that is not silent.

Focus on skills during silent reading: The teacher works with students individually and focuses on a skill they need to work on. He sometimes uses a buddy strategy (paring with another student) to work on skills.

The teacher has a notebook to review skills students work on for each day and keeps track of what each person needs to be a better reader.

Classroom Application

Refer to the image for Hooking Students on Books to get ideas to encourage readers in the classroom. Make use of e-books.

Check to see if the district you work for has a book-reporting system where teachers report on books they used successfully in classroom lessons.

Some good quality books can be found at http://www.ala.org (Newberry Medal and Caldecot Medal award winners).

See Appendix D for listing of multicultural literature options.

If there is room, set up a classroom library as noted above.

Set the mood for reading aloud by using a reading lamp or music.

Internet resources for literature:

1. Book adventure: http://www.bookadventure.com
2. Children’s literature web guide: people.ucalgary.ca
3. Education world: http://www.educationworld.com
4. Kids search tools: http://www.rcls.org/ksearch.htm
5. Poem hunter: http://www.poemhunter.com/poems

Remember: Students in primary grades gravitate towards drawing or drama performances about stories before talking or writing about stories.

Reference information about literature circles and roles (see notes above) to help plan for activity.

Review “How to organize your classroom” video link above for good ideas on classroom organization.

During workshop: an important thing to do during silent reading portion is to circulate the room and offer students some sort of skill or comprehension work for the day.

Vacca, J. L., Vacca, R.T., & Gove, M K. (2012). Reading and learning to read (8th ed.). New York: Longman.

Relationships between reading and writing and what the research states: reading is intended to be read. When children are writing, they are reading. It has been described as two sides of the same process but often taught separately. When children write, they are using and manipulating written language and developing concepts of print.

Research shows that writing and reading abilities develop concurrently and should be nurtured together. Writing can be beneficial to introduce reading because children acquire letter sound knowledge through invented spelling. Research also says that we should focus on the roles reading and writing has in the social lives of people from different cultures. Conclusions that can be drawn from the reading-writing connection

• Reading and writing processes are correlated. Good readers are generally good writers.
• Students who write well tend to read more than those who are less capable writers.
• Wide reading may be as effective in improving writing as actual practice in writing.
• Good readers and writers are likely to engage in reading and writing independently because they have healthy concepts of themselves as readers and writers.

How to create an informal writing environment: Give them time to read and write freely and have the chance to select their own writing topics. They must be given the opportunity to write things that are important to them. Create an environment where students feel they can take risks writing (take mechanics, punctuation, or grammar out of it).

Suggestions to encourage classroom writing:

• Use students’ experiences and encourage them to write about things that are relevant to their interests and needs. Provide opportunities for reading literature, surf the internet and brainstorm ideas before wring. Show students how to plan and explore topics by using lists, jotting notes, and clustering ideas.
• Develop sensitivity to good writing by reading poetry and literature to students.
• Invent ways to value what students have written.
• Guide the writing personally. Circulate the room and offer encouragement.
• Write stories and poetry of your own and share them with students. Show that writing is as much as a problem solving task for you as it is for them.
• Tie in writing with entire curriculum. Writing to learn will help students discover and synthesize relationships among concepts they are studying.
• Start a writing center- a place children can go to find ideas, contemplate, or read other students writing. Have writing paper of various sizes and colors, lined paper wit spaces for pictures, drawing paper of all sizes, tagboard, index cards, pencils, colored pencils, crayons and markers.
• Create a relaxed atmosphere that makes children feel comfortable making mistakes.

 What can students write about: Things that are important to them, their feelings, their personal lives, their ideas, doodles, comments, poems, letters, conversations…etc.

Writing activities 

Dialogue journal: Teacher and child use journal to converse in writing. May include comments, questions, invitations for children to express themselves.

Buddy journal: Encourages written dialogue between two children.

Key pals: The electronic equivalent of pen pals. Correspondence through internet. This is a tool that can be used to communicate with students/classrooms from around the world.  

Double entry journals: Identify text passages that are interesting to the student and explore in writing why. Student folds paper and identifies passage on left side and writes their reasoning or response on the other side. It encourages interaction between reader and text.

Reading journals: More structured than double entry journals. The teacher provides prompts to guide students’ writing after reading. It is often used when the whole class is reading or listening to a core text. Questions include: What did you like? What will happen next? What did you think in the beginning? Did anything confuse you?

Response journals: Little to no prompting by teacher. Allows students to gather their response to the reading freely. May include writing about feelings, opinions, any thoughts the student thinks while reading, or relating book to own experiences. Have students record page number of their reply. Don’t worry about accuracy in writing. Ask questions to help make sense of the book. Talk to characters in the book or put yourself in their shoes.

Writing notebooks: Students gather observations, thoughts, reaction, ideas, unusual words, pictures, and interesting facts that later spur them to write. It is a compilation of ideas for what to write about later. 

Multigenre projects: A collection of genres that reflect multiple responses to a book, theme or topic. Students are given choices about which genre to use and they experiment with writing a variety of ways.  

Plot scaffolds: An open-ended script in which students use their imaginations in playful manner. it includes characters, setting problem and resolution with space for students to write descriptions and problem-solving dialogue.  Seven elements include: the hook, the problem, backfill, a complication, action-reaction, dark moment, and resolution.

Traditional writing process:

1. Brainstorm what to write about: a time to generate ideas, stimulate thinking, make plans, and create a desire to write. It is what writers do to get energized to write.
2. Draft thoughts
3. Revise thoughts after input from teacher or peers
4. Edit writing for errors
5. Publish writing 

Writing process according to authors: Discover, finding a topic and writing preliminary ideas; drafting or getting ideas down on paper; and revising or making it write.

Writing Genres: Response to literature, information organized for following instructions, options and reports on articles, fiction, nonfiction, research reports, poetry, and scripts.

Writing workshop: Provides students with structure needed to understand, develop or use writing strategies. It can also be used for students to plan writing or revise their work.  A writing workshop plan may include: a mini lesson for 3-10 minutes, writing process for 45-120 minutes, and a group share session for 10-15 minutes.

Group share sessions: Part of the writing workshop which allows students to think about their days’ work. They may answer the following questions: how did writing go today? Did you get a lot done? Did you write better today than yesterday?

Guided writing: An instructional framework where teachers scaffold students’ writing as they write. It involves teaching skills that re needed by students based on actual observation, engaging the students in conversations as they write and using prompts to guide instruction. Teachers help students with what they are already working on. Focus on what strategies to use next. Questions include: What do you think you should write next? Can you think of a word to describe what you mean?

How to use technology to teach writing: Provide instruction by helping students recognize significant questions as they search for write topics online and evaluate topic-related information. Teachers can also facilitate community based projects mediated by technology. Teachers must be able to support writing of electronic texts. Using computers to construct electronic texts help students examine ideas, organize and report information and inquiry findings and communicate with others. Technology can help students publish work in a number of creative ways. They can present their ideas via graphic illustrations, sounds, video, photographs and other non print media.

Classroom application:

Start a writing center- a place children can go to find ideas, contemplate, or read other students writing. Have writing paper of various sizes and colors, lined paper wit spaces for pictures, drawing paper of all sizes, tagboard, index cards, pencils, colored pencils, crayons and markers.

Use key pals to connect students from around the world and teach them about other cultures while also practicing writing and reading.

Topics in your pockets: Give students an envelope. Have them jot down ideas or collect pictures of things to write about during their day and put the paper in the envelope.

Generate resources for useful websites. For example, create a table that identifies the grade level or standard, the web site, web address, and the purpose for the resource.

Create a fun and inviting writing center:

Vacca, J. L., Vacca, R.T., & Gove, M K. (2012). Reading and learning to read (8th ed.). New York: Longman.

Scaffolding Instruction: Teacher models step by step strategy and explicitly demonstrates the process of thing before, during, and after one reads. Then, the teacher provides students with guided practice in the strategies, followed by independent practice and application.  Transactional strategies of instruction: use of strategies, gradual release of responsibility, collaborative learning, interpretive discussion.

COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES

Active Comprehension: Students who are involved in posing and answering questions while making connections throughout reading are involved in active comprehension. A common comprehension strategy is asking comprehension questions.

• Literal Questions: Students answer using information explicitly stated in text. Factual.
• Inferential Questions: Students answer by using background information along with information from text.
• Evaluative questions: Students answer by making judgements about what they read.

 ReQuest: Reciprocal Questioning: Encouraging students to ask their own questions. See page 344 for lesson plan using this game.

QARs: Question Answer Relationships: Helps readers identify sources for answers to different types of questions. Students become aware of the relationship between the question, the text, and background knowledge and information at the reader’s disposal. This strategy teaches students to find information needed to answer comprehension questions by teaching them how t find information they need to answer questions.

• Where are answers found? Text and in my head:
  • Text: For example “what color is the house” the color is stated right in the text. Think and search: for example “what characteristics of the house make it haunted?” This requires some searching and thought.
  • Reader: How do you feel?

 QtA: strategy for modeling importance of asking questions while reading. Readers act on authors message. If what the reader is reading doesn’t make sense to them, they ask questions. Questions include: what is the author trying to say here? What does the author mean? So what? Does it make sense with what the author said before? – not comprehending the author is not always because the reader’s fault.

Reciprocal Teaching: The teacher introduces four strategies and gradually encourages independent use of strategies in small groups as students take the role of teacher.  

• predict what the text is about
• raise questions about text
• summarizing text
• clarify difficult vocabulary and concepts

Think-Alouds: Teachers and students share their thoughts and discuss what they wonder about or what confuses them. They make connections as they are reading.  

STORY STRUCTURE

Schema: Students begin to understand the concept of stories and start to develop story schema, thinking about what comes next. 

Elements in a story: Events in the story form a casual chain. Each event leads to the next as the main character moves towards reaching the goal or resolving the problem.

• Beginning or initiating event: Event that sets other events in motion
• Internal response: characters inner reaction to event in which character sets goal or attempts to solve problem
• Attempt
• Resolution
• Reaction

Story Map: Identifies major structural elements, both explicit and implicit, underlying the story to be taught in class. Map relationships that exist among major events in story. When the events are mapped, it forms basis of questions that help students grasp the story parts.

Activities To Build Schema For Stories: (build sense of story)

• Read, tell, and perform stories in class
• Show relationships between story parts: using flowcharts to show relationships of events- focus discussion around the relationships between one event and the other.
• Reinforce story knowledge through instructional activities:
  • Macrocloze stories: Teacher delete parts of the story and students should discuss what is missing.
  • Scrambled stories: The story is separated into parts and scrambled. Students reorder the story.
  • Story Frames: Good for primary grades. Provide students with skeletal paragraph- a sequence of space tied together with transition words and connectors that signal a line of thought: plot summary, setting, character analysis, character compassion, and problem.
  • Circular Story Maps: Use pictures to depict the sequence of events leading got the problem in the story.

DR-TA: Directed Reading-Thinking Activity: Builds awareness of the readers role and responsibility in interacting with the xt. Readers predict, verify, judge, and extend thinning about text material.

• Analyze structure: map story
• Pick stopping points
• Ask predicting questions and why they think so.

KWL: Three steps to guide children as they read and quire new infirmation. It is a chart that asks students to answer the following about the text/concept: What do you know, what do you want to find out, and what did you learn.

Discussion Webs: P 367-368 Requires students to look at both sides of an issue during discussion before drawing conclusions. It helps to involve all students by getting them to think about ideas they want to contribute to discussion. Students work in pairs to jot reasons in no or yes columns. They use key words and phrases to expresss their ideas. They should attempt to have equal pros and cons to both sides. Combine groups and compare answers. Come up with a group decision and select spokesperson to share with class. Followup whole class discussion with individual response to web question.  

Story Impressions: Strategy to help students understand what story could be about. Students are given clue words associated with setting, characters, and events. Students guess what the story will be. 

Text Connections: Help students actively think about their prior knowledge and their reading as they are reading.

• Text To Self: What does the text remind them of personally?
• Text To Text: What other text does this text remind you of?
• Text To World: What world issues does this text remind you of?

Classroom Application

• Make use of student-led questioning so they take ownership of the reading process. Guidelines for teaching questioning: show students how to develop questions that make use of the information stated earlier in the text. model curiosity as you read: “I wonder, what if…” encourage questions that prompt additional questions.
  • Potential guiding questions to help students develop their own questions: “What would you like to know about the setting of the story? The main character? What would you like to know about what happens next?
  • Have students work in groups playing the roles of teacher asking questions and students answering.
• Reciprocal teaching:
  • introduce preceding strategies by modeling how to make predictions and setting a purpose for reading. Additional strategies that can be covered at different times include: asking questions, clarifying difficult words, visualizing, and summarizing.
  • use fishbowl technique, the teacher models the strategy in the center of the circle while rest of class observes
  • students are grouped and the teacher provides substantial support while they practice strategy. Students become leaders of the groups and they are given cue cards: prediction maker, questioner, clarifier, visualizer, summarizer.
  • Students are grouped and teacher provides reduced support while they practice.
  • students grouped and teacher provides less support.
• Make use of story frames, circular story maps, scrambled stories, and macrolized stories to help teach story schema (sense of story).
• Make sure you are interacting with the readings DURING reading and not just after. this encourages readers to be involved with what the author is saying. Use DR-TA:

• Use discussion webs to encourage all-class participation. This is a good way to allow all students an opportunity to be involved and share their thoughts. See page 367 and also notes above.
• WebQuest activity for third graders includes summaries, crossword puzzles, word searches, rebus stories, pictures and diagrams: www2.tltc.ttu.edu/butler/student-webquests/fun_with_charlotte.htm

Vacca, J. L., Vacca, R.T., & Gove, M K. (2012). Reading and learning to read (8th ed.). New York: Longman.

Definitional knowledge is necessary but students must also have conceptual and contextual knowledge of words to fully understand what they are reading.

Relationship between vocabulary and comprehension includes three hypotheses:

1. Aptitude Hypothesis: Refers to intellectual ability.
2. Knowledge Hypothesis: Refers to general knowledge about the topic. Related to the schema view of reading.
3. Instrumental Hypothesis: If comprehension depends in part on the knowledge of word meanings, vocabulary instruction ought to influence comprehension.  

Vocabulary: Vocabulary represents the breadth and depth of all the words we know, use, and recognize. Classified into the following components: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

Principles To Guide Vocabulary Instruction:

1. Select words that children will encounter while reading literature and content materials. Ways to choose words for instructional emphasis: key words, useful words, interesting words, vocabulary-building words (seek clues to find word meanings on their own)
2. Teach words in relation to other words: When words are taught in relation to other words, students are actively drawn to learning process.
   • Four cognitive operations associated with learning concepts and words:
     1. Joining: How are words related
     2. Excluding: Which word doesn’t belong
     3. Selecting: What words fit best
     4. Implying: If-then, cause and effect, analogy
3. Teach students to relate words to their background knowledge: Ask what is it the student already knows that they can build upon this new concept? Students use what they already know to make predictions about learning of the word and then refine the meaning.
4. Teach words in preceding activities to activate knowledge and use them in post reading discussion, response, and retelling: Rereading and post-reading vocabulary activities that connect vocabulary words to content are more desirable than isolated exercises.
5. Teach words systematically and in depth: Students interact with words and generate a product in order to process the vocabulary in depth. Restate definitions in their own words, compare definitions to their own experiences with the concept. Class discussion leads student stop process words deeply by drawing connections between new and known information.
6. Awaken interest in and enthusiasm for words. Model your own excitement for learning new words. Figure out ways students can play with words to make it fun.

Strategies For Vocabulary And Concept Development:

• Relate experience to vocabulary learning. Keep experiences first hand
• Use context for vocabulary growth: context goal should be to teach students to use context to gain information about meanings of new terms.
• Developing word meanings:
  • Synonyms: Words similar in meaning. Helps student associate meaning of familiar words with unknown words. Example: cultivate to change, environment to surroundings.
  • Antonyms: Words that are opposite. May include matching activities and selecting activities. Example: Ask students to change the ad by replacing a word with its opposite.
  • Multiple-meaning words: Provide several examples of how the multiple meaning word is used in different contexts.
• Classifying and categorizing words:
  • Word sorts: Group words into different categories by looking for shared features among their meanings. There are closed where student know what the categories are and there are open, where students don’t know what the categories are.
  • Categorization: students learn to study words critically and form generalizations about the shared or common features of concepts.
  • Semantic mapping: Shows readers and writers the important information. A visual of how words relate to each other.
  • Analogies: compare two similar relationships.
  • Paired-word sentence generation: Students create sentence that demonstrates an understanding go the words and their relationships to each other. It is an instructional strategy for developing word meanings through stories and writings.
  • Collaborative learning exercises

Predictogram: the teacher chooses words from a story that will challenge students. Words and meanings are discussed in class and students relate personal associations with words, students work in groups to predict how the author might use each word in the story (describe the setting, characters, problem or solution).

Self-Selection Strategy: Words can be drawn from basal reading program. Children select the words to study. The students are asked to bring one word they think the class should know. Words are written on the board. Students provide definition from text and consult in dictionary. Students add additional wording as they see fit. They work as a class to agree/disagree on a vocabulary list.

Word Knowledge Rating: Children analyze how well they know vocabulary words. Words chosen by teacher or student. Words written on worksheet. Students rate words according to Dale’s continues (p.305).

PowerPoint

Notes from Powerpoint Presentation are embedded in text notes above.

Classroom Application

Rereading and post-reading vocabulary activities that connect vocabulary words to content are more desirable than isolated exercises.

Use classification strategies provided in text. Also noted above.

A word a day: students share words and word play with a community of readers learning new vocabulary. http://wordsmith.org/awad/about.html

Wacky web tales: students use vocabulary knowledge to create stories. http://www.eduplace.com/tales

Discovery School’s Puzzlemaker: Use this to create word puzzles with vocabulary terms: http://www.puzzlemaker.com

Daily Buzzword Game: Use Word Central website to play vocabulary game with students. http://www.wordcentral.com

Word Play: http://www.wordplays.com Has word games, problem solving tools, and a dictionary on the site.

Vacca, J. L., Vacca, R.T., & Gove, M K. (2012). Reading and learning to read (8th ed.). New York: Longman.

Fluency: Reading easily, with accuracy, intonation, expressively and at appropriate speed. It includes automaticity and prosody. skills in word recognition, appropriate pacing, phrasing, intonation which supports comprehension. Fluent readers read 100 words per minute.

• Word decoding
• Automatic processing (using little mental effort to decode text)
• Prosody: refers to intonation, pitch, stress, pauses, and duration placed on syllables

Effective fluency instruction:

• Instruction: Incorporate basic skills such as phonemic awareness and phonics
• Practice: Use of decodable text and independent-level text
• Assessment: How long it takes student to read a passage WPM

Mediated word identification: Readers need more time to retrieve words from long-term memory. Use strategies when they don’t have a well developed schema for a word. Repetition is important in learning to recognize words.

Automaticity: Focus little attention or mental effort on the act of reading or identifying words as they read.

Predictable text: Text where setting is familiar or predictive to most students. Pictures support text. Common language patterns are used. Story line is predictable. Good for 1-2nd grades.

• Chain or circular: Ending leads back to beginning
• Cumulative story: Each time an event occurs, all previous events are repeated.
• Pattern story: Scenes are repeated with some variation.
• Question and answer: The same or similar questions are repeated throughout the story.
• Repetition of phrase: Word order or phrase repeated
• Rhyme: Rhyming words throughout
• Songbooks: Familiar songs with predictable elements.

Strategies for Groups to assist with Fluency: 

• Choral reading: Reading aloud in unison with the whole class after hearing the teacher model the reading with expression. Good for developing reading with expression, building confidence, improve vocabulary, motivation, and enjoyment.
• Echo reading: Model oral reading by reading a line of the text and students echo imitating intonation and phrasing. Select 200 words that are above reading level. Read the first line, students read the same line after. This is good for small groups and individuals. 
• Fluency-orientated reading instruction (FORI): For whole group with basal readers. A basal reading is read to students, followed by discussion. They review vocabulary and participate in comprehension activity. The story is brought home to read to parents. Second day, students read with partners. Third day, students may read text together and fourth day they may partner read. Incorporates repeated, assisted reading with independent silent reading within a three part classroom (teacher-led, repeated oral reading and partner reading, free-reading period, home reading.
• Readers’ theater: This refers to oral presentation of drama, prose, or poetry by two or more readers. Students take on the roles of characters and read their scripts. These readings have a lot of dialogue. Steps to conduct readers theater: introduce piece and read through it once chorally, direct students to add in things like feelings and expressions, ask to model suggestions to enhance text, practice piece together phrase by phrase, read entire piece as a class, assign parts to students, practice parts, perform theater, ask students to self asses, offer suggestions and confirm comments.

Strategies for Pairs and Individuals:

• Repeated readings: Reading short passages of text more than once with different levels of support to develop rapid fluent oral reading. See page 283 for instruction sequence.
• Paired readings: Students read short passages more than once with a partner. Receive different levels of support. See page 284 for instruction sequence. 
  • Peer tutoring: tutee chooses book that was read during direct instruction within tutors readability level, they discuss the book, tutor and tutee read together aloud, tutor helps to say words correctly, tutee signals when he/she wants to read alone, pair discusses story together. See page 287.

Fluency development lesson (FDL): Instructional framework designed to develop oral reading fluency. incorporates use of repeated reading techniques such as choral and paired reading activities. See page 285 for lesson.

Automated reading: students listen individually to audio recorded stories while reading along with written text. 

Oral recitation lesson (ORL): The lesson uses direct instruction with student practice. It includes choral reading into daily activities. 

Support reading strategy: It incorporates fluency into three day period. first day- teacher reads story to small group of students. Teacher asks for clarification throughout the reading. The students echo read the story. The second day the teacher pairs readers and they reread. The third day, the students read independently to the teacher. 

Cross-age reading: Includes four phases: preparation, preceding, reading to kindergartners, and post reading collaboration.

What parents can do at home to help their student become a fluent reader: Read to their children, read aloud, reread familiar text, echo read, and use predictable books.

Assessing fluency:

• Timed samples of student reading: obtain WPM or WCPM
• Prosody: measure smoothness, phrasing, pace, and expression. Informal observation and National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) can help provide assessment targets.

PowerPoint

Notes from the powerpoint were embedded into Chapter 8 notes above.

Classroom Application

• Use predictable text for 1-2 grade. Monroe County Public Library http://www.monroe.lib.in.us/childrens/predict.html has a comprehensive list of predictable books divided into categories based on their types:
  • Chain or circular: Ending leads back to beginning
  • Cumulative story: Each time an event occurs, all previous events are repeated.
  • Pattern story: Scenes are repeated with some variation.
  • Question and answer: The same or similar questions are repeated throughout the story.
  • Repetition of phrase: Word order or phrase repeated
  • Rhyme: Rhyming words throughout
  • Songbooks: Familiar songs with predictable elements.

• Use readers’ theater: This refers to oral presentation of drama, prose, or poetry by two or more readers. Students take on the roles of characters and read their scripts. These readings have a lot of dialogue. See above for sequence of conducting readers theater in class. Also on page 283.
• Navigate Aaron Shepard’s Homepag http://www.aaronshep.com for scripts to download and resources for storytelling.
• Use New Literacies: Speakaboos at http://www.youtube.com/user/speakaboos. Celebrities read folktales, fairy tales, nursery rhymes and songs with colorful illustrations. Text is at the bottom of screen and is highlighted as the story is read. Great way to practice repeated reading, automated reading, and choral reading (p.284).
• Automated reading for ELL. See page 288.
• Use support reading strategy on page 289. Read story in small group, read in pairs, read to teacher.
• Cross age reading allows students to work with younger kids while practicing their own reading skills. See page 290.
• Use NAEP to help assess fluency.

Vacca, J. L., Vacca, R.T., & Gove, M K. (2012). Reading and learning to read (8th ed.). New York: Longman.

Word Identification is putting a name or label on words that are encountered in print. It encompasses multiple cues to identify unfamiliar words such as: word attack, word analysis, word recognition, and decoding. They are often used interchangeably.

• Word recognition: immediate identification, words retrieved rapidly from lexical memory. Also called sight-word recognition or sight vocabulary. This task includes letter-sound knowledge and understanding of spelling, pronunciation, and meaning.
• Acts of translating words to speech through analysis of letter-sound relationships: word attack, word analysis, and decoding- PHONICS

Phonics: Brings attention to parts of words: syllables, single letters, phonograms.

Phases of Children’s Ability to Identify Words

• Pre alphabetic phase: Also called visual cue. Children recognize words at sight because visual and context clues around the words. This could include reading cereal boxes, logos, and other environmental print. Typically preschool.
• Partial alphabetic phase: Develop some knowledge about letters and letter-sound relationships. Example: 4 year old remembers ‘s; looks like a snake and has a hissing sound. Typically K-2 grade.
• Full alphabetic phase: Children match all letters and sounds to identify words. They can read unknown words by segmenting it into sound units and blending it. Some students enter this phase in 1st grade.
• Consolidated alphabetic phase: Focus less on individual letter-sound relationships and more on letter patterns and predictability. They look at chunks of letters in words. It allows students to recognize multisyllabic words. Generally starts in 2nd grade. They use onsets and rimes:
  • Onset: initial consonant and consonant patterns at the beginning of syllables
  • Rime: vowel and consonant at the end of a syllable

To teach phonics, it is important to know content language and vocabulary associated with phonics:

Traditional Approaches to teaching Phonics: This includes analytic, synthetic, linguistic, systematic, phonics, linguistic instruction and decodable text.

• Analytic phonics: whole to part approach to word study. The student is taught a number of sight words and then relevant phonics generalizations that are applied to other words. It relies on workbooks and practice exercises.

• Synthetic phonics: part to whole word study. The student learns sounds represented by letters and letter combinations, blends sounds to pronounce new words, and identifies phonics generalizations that apply.

• Linguistic instruction: beginning reading approach based on regular sound-symbol patterns. Emphasizes decoding words through sound patterns. For example, fish, dish, wish. It includes reading books that repeat letter sound relationships. Use of decodable text.

Decodable text: text written with a large number of words that have phonetic similarities and typically match between text and phonic elements that the teacher taught.

Contemporary Approaches: Do not rely on drilling, memorization, or worksheets. It is rooted with constructivist principle of learning through meaningful engagement with reading real text.

• Analogy-based instruction: children use their knowledge of letters representing onsets and rimes in words they already know how to pronounce. Children learn to read better by reading words in context rather than out of context (p.234). Chunking words by letter patterns is beneficial. We look more at patterns to read.
• Spelling based instruction: Based on word study development stages of word learning and spelling (emergent, letter name-alphabetic, within word, syllables and affords, derivational)
  • Embedded Phonics Instruction: learn phonics skills in the context of stories that make sense.

• Guidelines for contemporary approaches to phonics:
  • Must build on foundation of phonemic awareness and the way language works. After students can segment sounds, they need to know blending process. This must occur in meaningful print. Teachers can have students cut words apart and sort words and letters.
  • Phonics must be integrated into a total reading program, where more time is spent on reading and 25% or less spent on phonics instruction and practice.
  • Focus on reading print rather than rules.
  • Teach onsets and rimes instead of rules. Know the phonograms and teach them.
  • Must include spelling-based strategies. Encourage writing and invented spelling.

Cloze sentences: a strategy for teaching context. Leave fill in the blank spaces in either sentences or passages and students use surrounding words to fill in the blanks.

Strategies to help combine letter-sound and meaning information to make sense while reading:

• Cross-checking: rereading a sentence or two to confirm or modify pronunciation of the word.
• Selfmonitoring: Students know what to do when they come to a word they don’t know.

Structural analysis: Identify words through meaningful units such as prefixes, suffixes, and root words.

Inflected endings: Suffixes that change the tense or degree of a word but not its meaning. Strategies to teach these include:

• Word study notebook: List prefixes and suffixes and what they mean. For example: re means again.
• Word chart carousel: Large pieces of paper are taped to the walls in the room. Written largely on each piece is a prefix. Students work in groups to quickly brainstorm as many words which have the given prefix or suffix
• Compound word cups: Make compound words by writing one part of the word on one cup and the other part of the word on the other cup. Students put the cups together to make the words.
• Contraction search: Find as many contractions as you can in magazines

High Frequency Words: Reference pages 258-259 for high frequency words.

Strategy for teaching high frequency words:

• Incremental rehearsal: flashcards: one unknown word to 9 known words
• Language experience: Example- after students explore outside, the teacher guides them by having them complete the sentence: I saw___. I saw____.
• Word walls
• Environmental print: find words in junk mail
• Word games
• Literature and poetry: students are encouraged to find sight words in text. Highlight the words and write on a chart.

Organizing Word Identification Instruction Principles:

1. ID words doesn’t mean sounding them out. There are other skills used: sight, using parts of words, context clues.
2. Use assessment and kid watching to group students for mini lessons.
3. Teach and reinforce word identification in meaningful text. Use what they know to build their understanding.

PowerPoint Notes are embedded within the text notes.

Classroom Application

Word games to use for developing word identification: Scrabble, Boggle, Scrabble Slam, Crossword puzzles, Upword, Wheel of Fortune, Buzz Word, Taboo (p.226)

Because it is rooted in constructivist theory, utilizing contemporary approaches for phonics education is ideal. Using analogy based phonics lesson would be helpful.

Recommended progression to teach phonics: initial and final consonant sounds, short and long vowels by picture sorting, blends, word families, then digraphs (233).

“Letter-sound correspondences are more stable when one looks at rimes than when letters are looked at in isolation. Children generally find it easier to read words by using rhyming phonograms” (p.237) Knowing 37 common phonograms will allow for 500 primary grade words (p.397).

Reference pages 258-259 for a list of high frequency words.

Pages 238-262 has numerous activity ideas for the classroom:

1. Consonant-based strategies:
   • Letter actions: create an action for each letter and have students act out the letters. For example, jump for j.
   • Favorite foods
   • Consonant substitutions
   • Flip books
   • Making words (pick a rime and have students use consonant letter cards to make their words, use magnets, write in shaving cream, create pocket folders)
   • Word ladders: students add, delete, or replace letters in words to crete new words that are prompts by clues. Students start with one word and are guided through making new words.
   • Cube words
   • Digraph and blend actions and food associations (like letter actions but with digraphs)
   • Digraph tongue twisters
2. Analogy-based strategies:
   • Comparing patterns of known words with similar onset and rime and applying similar pronunciation to a new word.
   • Rimes in nursery rhymes
   • Making and writing words using letter patterns
   • Hink pinks: explore rimes and discover creative combinations and record their findings.
3. Spelling-based strategies:
   • Word banks: boxes or collection of word cards that individual students are studying. students are word cards from words in their stories. they study them.
   • Word walls: when students find words that rhyme but are not spelled with the same pattern (do, too, blue) they are written on a word wall. Write the word too, then find other words that are spelled similarly below it like tool or fool.
   • Word sorting: students look for similarities in words including letter pattern.

Vacca, J. L., Vacca, R.T., & Gove, M K. (2012). Reading and learning to read (8th ed.). New York: Longman.

High-stakes testing: We are in a standards-based education system which relies on high stakes testing. State and Federal agencies established laws such as No Child Left Behind, requiring students to pass these tests. Promotions and/or retention decisions are based off the results of this testing. They supposedly guarantee to the public that students are ready to function in a society and workforce. High-stakes testing has its negatives such as replacing learning time with time preparing students for test, added pressure for teachers, and more.

Authentic assessment: Teachers are asked to be involved in the design and administration of assessment procedures. Students do reading and writing tasks that look like real-life tasks and students are knit control of reading or writing tasks. Students develop ownership, engage thoughtfully, and learn to assess themselves.

Retelling: Students learn to summarize the story. It encourages children to think about stories and begin reasoning skills. Students can discuss their favorite parts or move on to more specific details. A successful retelling of a story would include: characters, sequence, challenge, solution, and presentation (see page 186 for example rubric of retelling).

Formative assessment: Information gathered is used to adapt instruction to meet student needs. It is ongoing to determine strengths and learning progress. It helps identify learning needs. It includes noticing details of literate behavior, interpreting student understanding and perspective and knowing what the reader knows.

Self-assessment: Thinking about ones own learning strengths and weaknesses so students can take ownership in their assessment process and broaden their view of literacy development.

Formal assessments: Formal tests used as a means for assessment and may be norm-referenced or criterion-referenced. Standardized tests are a formal assessment.

Standardized tests: Norm-referenced test. A machine-scored instruments that sample reading performance during a single administration. It is useful for comparing students at the local, state, or national level.

• Norms: Represent an average scores of sampling of students selected for testing according to age, sex, race, grade or socioeconomic status. They are the basis for comparing the performance of individuals or groups to the performance of those who were in the norming sample. The sampling population should reflect the general population. Tests are graded according to a bell-shaped curve or normal. Students are judged based off the standard deviation.
• Reliability: Refers to stability of test. Does it measure consistently over time?
• Validity: Refers to how well the test measures what is designed to measure. A test should have construct validity, content validity, and predictive validity.

• Types of test scores:
  • Raw (obtained) score: Total number of correct items
  • Grade equivalency score: a raw score converted to this score so the score can be compared with other groups or individuals. It provides information about reading performance as it relates to students grade. This type of score can be misinterpreted and should not be used for placement or identifying reading material.
  • Percentiles: Refers to scores in terms of percentage of a groupp the student has scored above. It is developed by observing students within a specific grade level. They are easily interpretable.
  • Stanine: Sta (standard) nine (nine) a nine point scale to report results with five being in the middle. Stanine is a raw score that has been converted into a common standard to compare. Student results can be compared across tests and subtests.
• Types of tests
  • Survey test: Measure of general performance only and can be used as a screening in the beginning of the year.
  • Diagnostic test: a formal assessment to indicate students strength or weakness

Criterion-references tests:

Reading should be assessed in relation to specific instructional objectives. Performance is measured against specific criterion for each of the objectives. It measures what a student can or cannot do with regard to skill objective of the test. Test taker is not compared to others. Some believe that testing has not been validated and/or is not reliable.

Informal assessments: These are used to gauge students success.

This type of assessment does not compare students to normative population. They can be given throughout the year for specific purposes. They can include: reading inventories, miscue analyses, and running records.

Informal reading inventory (IRI): Individually administered reading test consisting of a series of graded word lists, graded reading passages, and comprehension questions. This helps teachers prepare and plan for appropriate instruction with confidence. They can also help determine starting point for reading and get an indication of students sight word proficiency. they can also be used to identify students knowledge of letter sound relationships to attack unfamiliar words.

Three steps for creating IRI:

1. Duplicate 100 to 200 word passages from basal stories. Select a passage for each grade level (from middle of basal textbook).
2. Develop five comprehension questions for each passage.
3. Create an environment conducive to assessment. Explain why test is administered to take mystery out of it for student.

Administering IRI: Teachers may estimate grade passage, choose passages (some at, below and above where you think they are), oral reading, followed by silent reading. Ask student to recall what they read. May use aided recall questions. The teacher notates reading errors.

Errors in oral reading:

1. Omissions
2. substitutions
3. Mispronouncuation
4. Insertion
5. Repetition
6. Reversal (order of a word or words is transposed)
7. Pronunciation (word is pronounced for reader)

Corrections in oral reading:

1. Successful correction
2. Unsuccessful correction
3. Abandoned correct form (was first read correctly but then changes it to be incorrect)

Reading Levels:

1. Independent reading level: Student reads fluently with excellent comprehension. 95-100% correct for running records.
2. Student makes progress in reading with instructional guidance. Where we should teach at. 90-94% on running records.
3. Student is unable to pronounce many of words and unable to comprehend material. Below 90% on running records.

Miscues: Oral reading errors, difference between what reader says and what is actually in the text. They are “cues” to the thought process of the reader who is trying to instruct what the author is saying.

• Significant miscues are errors that affect the meaning of the passage. They are significant if: meaning of sentence is changed or altered and the student doesn’t correct miscue, when a nonword is used in place of the word in a passage, when only a partial word is substituted for the word or phrase in the passage, when a word is pronounced for the student.
• They are not significant if: meaning doesn’t change much, they are self corrected, they are acceptable in student dialect, when they are later read correctly in the same passage.

Miscue analysis: Teachers can use miscue analysis to determine the extent to which the reader uses and coordinates graphic-sound (how similar the oral word is to the text at beginning middle and end), syntactic (does it sound like language), and semantic information (does it make sense) from the text. Miscue analysis can determine a students following:

1. Reading level
2. Inadequate decoding
3. Use of contextual clues

To analyze miscues, ask these important questions:

1. Does the miscue change the meaning? If it doesn’t it is semantically acceptable.
2. Does the miscue sound like language? If it does, then it is syntactically acceptable. A syntactically unacceptable miscue would be saying carefully instead of reach.
3. Do the miscue and the text word look and sound alike? For example, saying going instead of getting or run instead of ran.
4. Was an attempt made to correct the miscue? This shows a student is attending to meaning and is aware of the word not making sense.

Types of miscue analysis

1. Quantitative: Counting the number of errors. Used to determine reading levels. Tallying different errors helps identify strengths and weaknesses.
2. Qualitative: Each miscue carries equal weight regardless of the contribution it makes to a child’s ability to understand the material. It assesses what children do when they read and not based on deficits but rather differences between the miscues and the words on the page.

Running record: An assessment used to determine development of oral reading fluency and word identification skills and strategies. The running record calculates words that re read correctly and analyzes issues for instructional purposes.

Analyzing running record: See previous chapters and ENGED370 coursework file for Field Experience for more detailed information about running records.

Words per minute: Children reading aloud for one minute while teacher crosses incorrect words out. The teacher calculates number of correctly read words, records it, and then graphs the score in order to track changes in rates and accuracy over time.

DIBELS: Dinamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills. It includes oral reading skill assessments. Note: It is important that teachers don’t just focus on reading speed and accuracy. That comprehension is essential.

1. Letter naming fluency recommended for kindergarten and begining first grade
2. Initial sound fluency recommended for preschool through middle kindergarten
3. Phoneme segmentation fluency recommended for mid-kindergarten through first grade
4. Nonsense word fluency recommended for mid-kindergarten through first grade
5. Oral reading fluency recommended for mid first grade through third grade

Portfolios: Students are involved in reviewing and evaluating their own work while they help to create their own portfolios. It is a collection of evidence of their literary development at various stages. The students identify pieces that they feel proud of and represent growth. It helps teachers and students meet goals such as taking risks, taking responsibility for learning, making decisions about how and what to learn, and feeling in control using the language arts to learn.

• Elements may include: work completed over time, written and artistic responses to reading, writing in several genres, teacher-assigned and student generated work, decision making between teacher and student, notes in a reading log, list of books read, students’ self reflection.

Anecdotal notes and checklists: Writing down important events or incidences on a record that the teacher finds significant in the child’s progress. These can also be called field notes. This information can be used in conferences. Checklists can be used for diagnostic purposes. They vary in length, and can guide teachers to noticing what a chid can do in terms of reading and writing strategies.

Interviewing: The teacher can discover what children are thinking and feeling by asking them questions periodically. How do they perceive their own strengths and weaknesses? How do they perceive processes related to language learning? What are their reading interests and attitudes?

Powerpoint Presentation

FORT Preparation- See the powerpoint for practice.

Decoding difficulties include: Decoding common vowel digraphs (reading boats boots), common consonant digraphs (reading ck for ch), and complex consonant clusters (reading crucked for crunched). A sight word difficulty would be saying throw instead of through.

Testing: Norm-referenced tests are designed specifically for the purpose of comparing students’ performance. Norms are statistics that describe the performance of a representative sample group.

In general, a vocabulary development test and a reading miscue inventory are designed to measure the degree to which students meet specific objectives (i.are criterion referenced)

A diagnostic portfolio is individually administered and would most likely contain a comprehensive battery of reading assessments designed for diagnostic purposes.

Validity: Degree to which a test measures what it is intended to measure

Criterion referencing: studnets performance related to objectives

Norm referencing: How an examinees test performance compares to others

Reliability: Whether test results are likely to be repeatable with similar test groups. Also the degree to which a test yields consistent results over successive administrations.

Reliability vs. Validity video

Reliability refers to consistency. Validity is about measuring what it says its going to. Example: you step on a scale and it is always off by 5 lbs. The scale is reliable because it is consistently off by 5 lbs. It is not valid though because it adds 5 lbs to your true weight.

Assessments in Education video

Formative: Quick check for understanding like thumbs up/down or brain storming. It informs the teacher.

Summative: Long term goals- midterms, uint tests, finals, projects.

Diagnostic: Get prior knowledge on students and plan instruction. Example: pre-course tests not graded.

Formal: Testing procedures and rules such as standardized tests like SAT.

Informal: Lack supporting data and no procedures. Think pair share or exit ticket.

Behavioral: FBA

Rating scale: Guage understanding, used for professor evaluations.

Emotional: Simple observations may include checklists or questionnaires.

Screening: ID students who are failing, found in RTI.

Authentic: Assessment looks like real-world tasks. They are designed to take place in authentic setting. May include report, speech, project. Students are primarily in control of their own work.

Performance based: ability to complete work in academically related task.

Group/individual: who you administer test. IEP often require individualized testing for students.

Criterion referenced: Students based on mastery of content. Created by teachers and used as simple class assessments.

Norm referenced: Based on comparing student with similar demographics.

Video: Informal vs. Formal assessments

Diagnostic vs. Formative vs. Summative video

Criterion vs Norm Referenced Assessment: Examples & Evaluation video

Norm referenced created by state or national level. Criterion created by teacher.

Classroom Application:

Utilize retelling rubric on page 186 to identify key skills students should encompass for retelling.

Use of aided recall questions for text comprehension (p.193).

Use of notations on page 194 for assessments.

Use and understanding of the differences between significant and non significant miscue circumstances as detailed above.

Using the four important questions while assessing students miscues:

1. Does the miscue change the meaning? If it doesn’t it is semantically acceptable.
2. Does the miscue sound like language? If it does, then it is syntactically acceptable. A syntactically unacceptable miscue would be saying carefully instead of reach.
3. Do the miscue and the text word look and sound alike? For example, saying going instead of getting or run instead of ran.
4. Was an attempt made to correct the miscue? This shows a student is attending to meaning and is aware of the word not making sense.

Interview questions on page 215 will help gain a better understanding of what the child is thinking or feeling in regards to reading.

Implement a portfolio in the classroom (p.209):

1. Introduce notion of portfolios and the concept
2. Explain the model of assessment
3. Decide what items to include
4. Consider ways to communicate expectations to others such as parents or principal
5. Develop possible contributions for the portfolio such as writing samples, projects, quizzes…etc.

Cereal box portfolios: Students bring in an empty cereal box and decorate it. They will use this as their artifact collection box. It will reflect who they are as learners. The boxes can be placed neatly on a shelf in the room.

Go to Richer Picture website at: http://www.richerpicture.com to determine if implementing a digital portfolio would suite my classroom needs. It also offers professional development opportunities.

Vacca, J. L., Vacca, R.T., & Gove, M K. (2012). Reading and learning to read (8th ed.). New York: Longman.

Notes from Chapter 5 Text

Emergent literacy:

• Theoretical perspective: Children are in the process of becoming literate from birth and are capable of learning what it means to be a user of written language before entering school.
• Acquisition of skills and strategies: Children learn to use written language and develop as readers and writers through active engagement with their work. literacy develops in real-life situations in purposeful ways
• relationship of reading to writing: Children progress as readers and writers. Reading and writing are interrelated and develop concurrently.
• Functional-formal learning: Children learn informally through interactions with and modeling form literate significant others ad explorations with written language.
• Individual development: Children learn to be literate in different ways and at different rates of development.

Storybook experiences: Includes read-aloud, readalongs, interactive writing, readings of favorite text, and independent reading and writing. It helps with the following instructional goals:

• motivates beginners to want to read and write
• interest them in listening to, reading and writing stories with an emphasis on predicting , sharing, and extending personal meanings
• understand the purpose of reading
• construct meaning through pictures and illustrations
• respond to stories by drawing, writing, dramatizing their exploration of texts
• teach about directionality of written language (left to right)
• teach alphabetic principles
• teach the meaning of words
• predict what words come next
• recognize interesting or frequent words

Interactive “shared” writing: Provides opportunity for explicit instruction where teacher demonstrates early writing strategies. Students can work on conventions of print, spelling and grammar together. Children say the words, the teacher writes them. Good for word-by-word matching, left-to-right directionality, use of spacing for word boundaries, and other print conventions.

Linguistic awareness: Being aware that words are language units. Words are created to better represent spoken language in print and facilitate reading of written language. It also includes understanding that spoken words are made up of smaller sounds (phonemes), written words are made up of letters, and that in a written word , there is a close approximation between letters and sounds. Students must also understand the language of reading instruction and technical terms and labels to talk and think about reading.

• To assess linguistic awareness: obtain short story dictated from child, print three or four nouns or verbs from story on index cad, print two sentences from the tory on a different piece of paper, have separate letters available, ask child to complete al or any of the tasks below, record responses, results should provide an idea of print awareness.
  • Tasks: ask the child to identify a word, ask child to match word in story to words on flashcard, ask child to match sentence with its counterpart from the story, show child a card with letters necessary to write a word and ask if he knows the difference between the letters, point to letters she can name in the story.

Concept of print: A child’s knowledge and understanding of print.

Assessing concept of print: Concepts About Print Test includes knowing “to what degree do young children possess reading-related concepts and linguistic abilities considered to be essential in learning to read?”

Alphabetic principle: suggest that letters in the alphabet map to phonemes (sounds). It includes association between speech sounds with letters.

Phonics: The smallest sound unit that is identifiable in spoken language is known as a phone. phonics is used to refer to the childs identification of words by their sounds.

Phonemes: minimal sound units that can be represented in written language.

Phonological awareness: Most activities can be done eyes closed

Ability to hear, recognize and play with sounds in our language. Sounds can be broken down into small and smaller parts: Sentences, words, rimes, and syllables. Most activities can be done with eyes closed!

Phonological awareness includes knowing that:

• Sentences can be segmented into words
• words can be segmented into syllables
• words can be segmented into individual sounds (phonemic awareness)
• Individual sounds of words can be blended together
• words can begin or end with the same sound
• individual sounds of words can be manipulated (added, deleted, or substituted)

Phonological awareness includes the following skills:

• Rhyming: Matching the ending sounds of words, called rimes (cat, hat, sat).
• Alliteration: Producing groups of words with the same initial sound (two tall trees)
• Sentence segmenting: Understanding sentences are composed of separate words (the pig is fat- has four separate words)
• Syllable blending and segmenting: Blending syllables to make words and segmenting words into syllables. /mag/ /net/
• Phonemic awareness: The most complex phonological skill. It allows children to understand how spoken language maps to written language so they can coordinate letter-sound relationships to read and spell new words. Most children develop phonemic awareness in the middle of first grade.
  • Ability to hear and manipulate sounds in spoken words
  • Understanding that spoken words consist of sequence of speech sounds and an awareness of individual sounds (phonemes).
  • Act of manipulating sounds into words
  • The word cat (spoken) is made up of a series of sounds /C/ /a/ /t/
  • Activities include:
    • Phoneme isolation: First sound in dog (spoken) is /d/
    • Phoneme identity: Same sounds in different words: six, sun, sat (spoken) start with /s/
    • Phoneme categorization: What word doesn’t sound like the others? Dot, dig, doll (spoken)
    • Blending: Blend a series of orally presented sounds to form a word: Teacher- /c/ /a/ /t/ student- cat
    • Segmenting beginning and ending sounds in a word: teacher- what sound do you hear at the beginning of the word pig?
    • Segmenting separate sounds in a word: the most difficult phonemic awareness task. Teacher- tell me the sounds you hear in cat. Student: /c/ /a/ /t/.
    • Phoneme deletion, addition, substitution. Teacher: take the /s/ off stack. what is the new word?

Phonological awareness continuum: –> Rhyming –> alliteration –> sentence segmenting –> blending and segmenting syllables –> phonemic awareness.

Orthographic system: This written system of the English language is based off the alphabetic principle. Children must understand how spoken language maps to written language. Phonemic awareness helps a child grasp this understanding.

Elkonin boxes: a phonemic awareness activity that focuses on phonemic segmentation strategy. They are also called sound boxes. They support reading, spelling, and writing development.

1. Give child picture of familiar object. A rectangle is divided into the number squares according to number of sounds in the word. (example, boat has three boxes /b/ /oa/ /t/.
2. Say the word slowly.
3. Ask child to repeat the word.
4. Continue to model the process.
5. walk the child through the procedure several times by doing it together.
6. show another picture and then the word. Ask child to pronounce the word and separate sounds by placing the counters in the squares.
7. Phase out counters and images. Ask the child to do this without assistance from teacher.

Classroom Readings and Videos Notes

Tutoring and Assessments video: Students may end up getting one wrong in the comprehension, therefore they are placed in the frustration level. If this is the case, try to focus more on the running record scores. We want to be in the instructional level based off the running record. Also, be sure to reference Jen Yaeger’s FORT guide for FORT preparation.

Chapter 5 Powerpoint: Chapter 5 is a review of EngEd 275 and is based off Module 1 and Module 2 of the FORT. The powerpoint summarizes key vocabulary in Chapter Five (as described in Chapter 5 notes).

Classroom Application

Address each phonemic awareness activity listed in above notes to be sure students learn about phonemes.

Use of big book activities: These activities allow all children to participate in the reading.

Sources for online story books (p146): http://www.starfall.com; http://www.magickeys.com/books; http://enchildrenslibrary.org; http://www.meddybemps.com; http://www.abctech.com.

Use podcasts to share interactive writing creations with parents. Creating podcasts will include skills for planning, preparing, recording, and broadcasting. An example of a school doing so is at http://apsva.us/jamestown/site/default.asp

Activities for recognizing letters:

For kindergarten and first grade instruction: capitalize on letter knowledge and letter recognition. Using flashcards does not provide meaningful experience for young children (p.164). Having children see letters in meaningful context is better: see letters in their name, on signs, or titles of books. The purpose of letters is obvious in that context.

Phonemic Awareness Activities:

• Play with language through read aloud: Read nursery rhymes, riddles, songs, and poems. Ask questions as you read- did you notice how those words rhymed? Which words start alike? What sounds do you hear at the beginning of all these words? Look at Appendix C (p.535) for read-aloud books geared for phonemic awareness
• Create games to extend children awareness of sounds in words:
  • clapping number of syllables in a name or word
  • use riddles so they become sensitive to sounds in words
  • guessing game: say I am thinking of a sea animal, what am I thinking of /k/ /r/ /a/ /b/
  • Tongue twisters for building awareness of first part of words
  • Sound matching: anyone whose name starts with the sound /b/ line up.
• Accept and encourage invented spellings
• Phonemic segmentation strategy and Elkonin box (as noted in text notes above)

Assessing Phonemic Awareness: It is important that children can manipulate sounds in words. A way to assess their ability is on page 72.