Organizing for Literacy

"Every child deserves excellent reading teachers because teachers make a difference in children's reading achievement and motivation to read." - International Reading Association

Excellent teachers are important to students everywhere in the world. Reading may be considered a basic task, but reading instruction is often overlooked. The complexity and details that must be focused on create a challenging, but rewarding job for all teachers instructing reading.

    1. They understand reading and writing development, and believe all children can learn to read and write.
It is so important for teachers to students and teachers to recognize that everyone has the ability to read. It would be very negatively impacting for a child to think of themselves as a "bad reader", because reading is used in all subjects of school and all around in everyday life. Reading is often looked at by students as a chore, and it is important for teachers to try to put this idea to rest and show their students that reading is fun and so important.
    2. They continually assess children's individual progress and relate instruction to children's previous experiences.
In order for children to understand unfamiliar text, it is especially effective to make connections to their personal lives. When students hear something that they have interest or previous knowledge in, new information is much easier to learn.
    3. They know a variety of ways to teach reading, when to use each method, and how to combine the methods into an effective instructional program.
    4. They offer a variety of materials and texts for children to read.
One of the most challenging aspects of reading instruction, is that every child progresses at their own pace. It is imperative for teachers to focus on each child as an individual so that they are not being pushed to fast or kept lagging behind. There are several techniques in reading instruction and different forms can be used for various types of students and readers.
    5. They use flexible grouping strategies to tailor instruction to individual students.
Similarly to above, it is important to gear the reading instruction to the particular students you are working with. Grouping strategies are very successful techniques for group of students who are learning and progressive at a similar rate. These students can progress together and ask each other about their learning processes as they go, giving them something to relate to.
    6. They are good reading "coaches" (that is, they provide helpful strategy).
The best reading teachers are supportive, patient and flexible in their teaching strategies. It is essential for teachers to be able to recognize the different leveled readers, and to push them appropriately, not too fast but not too slow. The best reading teachers know a good balance and serve as a positive and helpful position in the students process of learning to read.

It is important to make reading enjoyable and useful for students. For early readers, it is especially essential to give them a positive outlook on reading, and not become frustrated or disappointed in themselves. A good reading teacher will provide their classroom with appropriate resources and different strategies and techniques for teaching reading.

Assessment

Finding the appropriate level of text for beginning readers is an incredibly important task in demonstrating beneficial reading instruction. Students should be provided with text that is a balance between support and challenge. In other words, a child should be able to develop confidence while reading and understanding through comprehension, but it should be difficult enough to provide a challenge and require the reader to do some "reading work" to improve their skills. Grade-level approximations are frequently not suitable for all children in that perspective grade and should not merely be expected to read at one level across the whole classroom. Each child should be examined to determine the abilities that the student has. Instruction is said to be most effective when the reader can read about 9 out of 10 words and comprehend the meaning of the passage with little difficulty, this puts the students at successfully reading 90-95% of the words. More difficult text is said to be at a child's frustration level, which is not appropriate for learning or reading instruction. Giving a child text that is too challenging for them can damage their reading and their confidence, which would affect them negatively in various ways.

Three important aspects to keep in mind when establishing the correct text for a student are, the complexity of concepts and familiarity of subject matter, the degree of predictability of the text, and the proportion of unique or repeated words to familiar words. Each of these aspects provides different sections of a leveling system including vocabulary, size and layout of print, predictability, illustration support, and complexity of concepts.

Reading benchmarks are effective in early literacy and provide teachers with benchmarks for students to reach in their reading efficiency and success. Standardized tests should not be used for early reading assessment, but it is still important to collect data on the instructional reading levels of first- and second-grade students at two points in the year. The leveling process is improved and extended as research continues to be conducted, which helps teachers and reading instructors to be as successful as they can be for the students' success.

Guided Reading

Three Fundamental Purposes of Guided Reading:
     1. To meet the varying instructional needs of all the students in the classroom, enabling them to
         greatly expand their reading powers.
     2. To teach students to read increasingly difficult texts with understanding and fluency
     3. To construct meaning while using problem-solving strategies to figure out unfamiliar words that
         deal with complex sentence structures, and understand concepts or ideas not previously
         encountered.

Guided reading has been proven to be one of the most effective instructional strategies in teaching and improving reading. According to Anita Iaquinta's Guided Reading: A Research-Based Response to the Challenges of Early Reading Instruction, "It is estimated that one in three children experience significant difficulties in learning to read." It is also said that "a child who is a poor reading in first grade is 88% more likely to remain a poor reading in fourth grade." In order to establish a good foundation in reading, it is important to have effective teaching strategies, which is where guided reading comes in. Guided reading is a beneficial tool for children at all ages and reading levels. It can be used by teachers at various difficulties so that it is geared towards a children's level and they are not struggling to keep up or too knowledgeable for the material. The goal of guided reading is to teach readers to self-monitor, search for cues, discover new things about the text, check sources against each other, learn new words and develop a more thorough thought process with reading. Guided reading provides the necessary opportunity for teachers to teach reading strategies at the students; individual levels, which is a key competent for successful reading learning and comprehension.

Building Vocabulary

How many words do you know?
I was stumped by this question when I first read it in Cunningham and Allington's Classrooms That Work. For what seems like such a simple question, it requires a lot of thought and is actually incredibly difficult to answer. For starters, I couldn't think of an estimate of all of the words I knew, then as stated in the text, what does it mean to 'know' a word. There are thousands of words that I have heard or seen once or twice, but I don't know the spelling or what they mean. I may know something about a word but not its entirety, so do I know those words? These questions are just some of the thoughts that enter which make it difficult to determine the size of someone's vocabulary.

One useful strategy Classrooms That Works describes that is easy and accessible to use for all elementary teachers is "Picture Walks". This strategy helps develops children's vocabulary by going through a picture book before reading the story, stopping on a couple of pages and identifying some new vocabulary words as shown in the images. This will grab the students' attention when they read through the book and will help them remember these new words.

There are several fun games and activities that can be used to promote broadening children's vocabulary. One of these strategies, as talked about in Blachowitz and Fisher's Vocabulary Lessons is a vocabulary "word wall". The idea is to have students add new words to the wall when they came across them in conversations, books, magazines, etc. The teacher can make this into a class contest by awarding the students points for adding a new word, talking about where they saw or heard it, and using the word in a sentence. This activity gives students a positive way to look for new words and learn the context and fully understand them rather than memorizing the definition and spelling.

Vocabulary is a huge part of successful reading, because in order to understand difficult reading levels you must understand the challenging words that are in the text. It is important to increase children's vocabulary in elementary school so that the knowledge translates into their writing and speaking abilities.

Comprehension and Think-Alouds

"For years it seems as we have tested reading comprehension, but haven't taught it."

         - Sharon Ruth Gill

Although there is a significant amount of research and information regarding comprehension, it has been said by teachers that it is hard to find. Maybe the information itself is not hard to find, but more that it is challenging to incorporate the readings into lessons and make sense of the techniques. It is one thing to read about comprehension and its' importance, but it is entirely different to be able to teach this important skill to a classroom full of beginning readers. The Comprehension Matrix provides an accessible framework of major aspects in teaching comprehension. This framework focuses on the three main aspects, the reader, the text, and the situation. Each of these focuses goes into detail explaining activities, techniques, and strategies used during different stages of learning to read, pre reading, during reading, and post reading. For instance, the readers interest, physical state, and emotional state are some of the key interests, therefore during pre reading, it is necessary to help the student attain interest in the text, build background information, and model strategies. This matrix is extremely helpful in breaking down the different parts of reading and what teachers should focus on with each step.

It is essential for teachers to start teaching comprehension from the beginning. Kindergarteners can learn comprehension strategies, and teaching comprehension incorporated with teaching reading helps it to be a natural skill that isn't overlooked. When comprehension is learned at a young age, there is much more room to improve and develop personal strengths and techniques. Making connections is one example of teaching young students comprehension, and is something that children of all ages can do. The idea is to get the readers to connect the text to their individual lives, to spot similarities and differences, giving them things to relate to. Making connections with texts allows for much better understanding. Comprehension strategies and techniques can be used at all ages, and it is imperative that they be introduced sooner rather than later. 

Comprehension

Comprehension is a key factor in successful and meaningful reading, but is a complex skill that is often overlooked when teaching. Comprehension is primarily comprised of overall interest, background knowledge, and strategies of the reader, the style, organization, difficulty, and concepts of the text, and the situation or purpose of the reading. All of these focuses make up the Comprehension Matrix which illustrate effective comprehension in reading. As I stated, the three major factors of comprehension are the reader, the text, and the situation. Good readers are known to adjust their reading in different situations, for different purposes. The comprehension matrix focuses on pre reading, reading and post reading.

Some questions, from a teacher's perspective, that may help guide a student's comprehensive reading are

• What do my students know about this topic?
• How can I get my students interested in this topic?
• What strategies do my students need to learn?
• How can I help my students understand the vocabulary and contexts of this text?

It is important for teachers to preview texts and think about questions like this to help them determine what they want their students to get out of each reading assignment. 

Some strategies found to help students with comprehension strategies are Visualization and Mind Movies, Questioning and "I Wonders", Schema of background knowledge, and Inferring. Questioning and "I Wonders" promote students constantly questioning the text. This technique promotes a creative mind and thinking outside of just the text on the page, they are coming up with their own ideas and scenarios, based on what they have read. 

Working on comprehension at an early age is necessary to help provide students with groundwork to build on when working on more challenging reading situations. A short story is much easier to comprehend compared to a textbook. A student should start young so that they get into the habit of breaking down the text and really understanding it. This habit and formula will help them as they get into more complex reading and will provide the basics of comprehension strategies to help them. 

Word Study

It is a frequent phenomenon for kids learning how to read and write, to make up their own spelling of words. They write exactly what they hear, and because of the complex English language, their spelling generally makes no sense compared to the correct spelling of those words. While some may see this as children being careless or unintelligent, it is proven to be quite the opposite. In Patricia and James Cunningham's text Making Words: Enhancing the invented spelling-decoding invention, it is said that "In general, as children improve in their phonetic sophistication of their invented spellings, their later success in learning to read words becomes much more likely." After doing research, it is seen that children attempting to spell words increases their ability to read those words. Invented spelling seems to trigger something in the brain to recognize the words later and make sense of their phonetics, which will help children understand unfamiliar words in a challenging sentence. Instead of seeing children's invented spelling as simple playfulness and naive, we should recognize this as a step in their learning to become more sophisticated readers and writers. Invented spell in is a beneficial and healthy thing.

Knowing a word, really knowing a word, can be a difficult and thorough process. To fully know a words, in the eyes of Beck and McKeown, "requires a long process that involves multiple exposures in may contexts." There are some words that we know the definition, spelling, usage, etc., while other words we have simply heard here and there and recognize them when we hear them in familiar context. However, those words are not included in the words that we actually know. One extremely useful way to help children discover and learn new vocabulary is the "Ten Important Words" in which a student selects 10 important from a reading. This helps students connect words with a topic, and they then discuss and define the words to determine their meaning. Other beneficial strategies to learn new words are identifying where you might hear a word, listing synonyms and antonyms, draw pictures that depict the meaning, create a semantic map, act out the word, or find other sentences using the same word to figure out the meaning. Each of these strategies gives students exposure to new words, with alternative ways to remember the meaning. It is important to get students to engage with the text and not simply skim over words they are unfamiliar with, but rather, define and explore new words to broaden their vocabulary.