Thoughts By Emily

Student at THE University of South Carolina, future teacher, animal lover (especially dogs!), and musician.

[bentlymarie]

A Dixie flower

[bentlymarie]

Miller Chapter 5

"When readers create mental images, they engage with text in ways that make it personal and memorable to them alone. Anchored in prior knowledge, images come from the emotions and all five senses, enhancing understanding and immersing the reader in rich detail" (p. 96). 

Thinking Aloud: In the Beginning

Millers gave really detailed examples of the images that she saw when reading the page about the train. My teacher in my practicum class asks students to do a similar thing when she reads chapter books to them. She turns off the lights and lets them lay down if they want to as she reads. She asks them to imagine what is happening in the story and to think about times when they have felt the same way. You can see the when the images are in their heads because they are smiling and laughing to themselves as she reads. 

Anchor Lessons

Using poetry and picture books, children practice creating and adapting images in their minds and make them concrete through artistic, dramatic, and written responses. 

Images are created from readers' schema and words in the text (artistic response)

Readers create images to form unique interpretations, clarify thinking, draw conclusions, and enhance understanding (dramatic response)

Readers' images are influenced by the shared images of others (artistic response)

Images are fluid and readers adapt them to incorporate new information as they read (artistic response)

Evoking vivid mental images helps readers create vivid images in their writing (artistic/written response)

[bentlymarie]

Miller Chapter 6

Book Clubs for Primary Kids?

I LOVE that Miller got parents together and made a book club to show her students how they worked. I never knew how important it was to model what you want children to do until this year in my practicum. I was assuming that they would catch on as soon as I gave directions. But that doesn't even work for me! I have to be shown exactly what to do before I am asked to do it myself. Having parents as members of the book club is a great idea too because the students are probably already familiar with them and their children will love seeing them actively engaging in their class. 

Inferring

Inferring is the heart of meaning construction for learners of all ages. When readers infer, they use their prior knowledge and textual clues to draw conclusions and form unique interpretations of text. 

Anchor lessons: 

"Readers deterring meaning of unknown words by using their schema, paying attention to textual and picture clues, rereading, and engaging in conversations with others" (p. 125).

Books that have opportunities for making clear-cut predictions that can be confirmed or contradicted in the text are useful for teaching children about prediction.

When we focused on making predictions with our kids in the after-school class, ours wasn't really sure about them at first. While reading the book and making a few predictions myself she eventually started making her own. We checked to see if our predictions were confirmed or contradicted and she stated that it was okay that her prediction was not correct. It was a fun activity to do and I was surprised it worked so well.

Asking Questions

"Questioning is an essential thinking skill, learning skill, and democratic skill. There is no set of "right questions," but rather, everyone needs the opportunity to figure out the questions that are the right ones for them to ask. Questioning is at the heart of becoming an independent thinker and a self-directed learner."

By asking questions aloud as you read you are teaching the children to do the same. Ask questions that matter to you and that you are actually curious about and they will do the same.

[bentlymarie]

Books and Materials

What makes a book good for literature circles? 

Start by choosing children's books that you love. 

Read books aimed at the age group you teach.

Listen for titles recommended by colleagues or discussed at conferences, tack them down, and read them.

Buy titles for multiple-copy sets. Trust major prize companies. 

Levels of Books:

Have multiple-copy sets of books at a wide range of reading levels. While creating these choices for students, remember that literature circles are independent or recreational reading. We are not working at kids' instructional level but their fluency level. 

Having books on display for flip-throughs, hearing the teacher give a brief "book chat," or reading the posters or book reviews prepared by circles who've already read the book gives children the opportunity to pursue a book before committing to it. 

Reading Response Logs:

Open-ended reading response logs are a place where kids capture and save responses while they read, or immediately after they read. Students bring these to lit circles and can be reminded of feelings, connections, questions, visions, hypotheses, or predictions that occurred to them while reading. 

Line of thought - something that you find yourself noticing and you will want to keep track of as the rest of the book unfolds. This is a powerful and sophisticated organizing question for kids' reading logs and their discussions.

Clipboards - they can have symbolic properties - it implies an organized, businesslike approach that the younger ones will enjoy. Having these makes it possible to jot notes no matter where you are sitting. 

I can't help but visualizing the first and second graders in my practicum with their clipboards sprawled out across the room. They use them throughout the day and it makes it so that they can write on worksheets or in their work journals while sitting on the floor. They're so darn cute.

Four basic roles

The connector embodies what skillful readers most often do - they connect what they read to their own lives, their feelings, their experiences, to the day's headlines, to other books and authors.

The questioner is always wondering and analyzing. Sometimes they seek to clarify or understand; at other moments, they may challenge or critique.

When we take the literary luminary/passage matter role, we return to memorable, special, important section of the text, to savor, reread, analyze, or share them aloud.

The illustrator reminds us that skillful reading require visualizing, and it invites a graphic, nonlinguistic response to the text. 

Encourage readers to develop their own new roles, but be wary of some:

the "process checker" monitors and rates the other members of the group on quality of their participation at each day's meeting. 

[bentlymarie]

Three Cueing Systems

Graphophonic system

Explicit phonics - learning to read is primarily a matter of learning what sounds go with each letter or combination of letters and then blending them together

Holistic words - readers who begin with repeated of whole texts can eventually abstract out how phonics works without much conscious awareness of it, or formal instruction.

Syntactic system - the patterns and constraints that make up a language's sentence structure.

It is important to know that different languages have different syntactic systems. Knowing this can help teachers understand the difficulties that students just learning english, or another language, may be having. Learning a whole new say to structure sentences along with new words is HARD! 

Function words - words that don't have definitions in the same way as other words do but rather illuminate relationships between words, or provide information about tense, number, and other grammatical categories. (ex: prepositions and pronouns)

Semantic system

Words in their arbitrary uniqueness, linked with what they represent, are the core of the semantic or meaning system of language. 

"Learning vocabulary is a huge part of learning a language, and it's quite impressive to realize how adept children are at learning so many words." 

Uh.. yeah! I am always amazed when I think about how many words kids know. I am even more impressed when second language learners know so many words. 

"This language system is a big part of what makes particular books readable for some people but not others." 

Reading a lot will help you learn and know many more words than people who do not read as much because a lot of words occur only rarely in oral language.

As you learn about new areas of knowledge, you will acquire the vocabulary that goes with them. This could be through school, via a social activity, or as part of learning a job. 

This is a perfect example of why it is so important for children to be read to at early ages and have many social experiences. They learn vocabulary and communication through these experiences. 

The environment of reading

Children expected to plow through stuff that is too hard for them has an emotional impact, and it doesn't help them become readers if it is so difficult that they are focusing on getting through the words rather than the meaning.

Reading that we choose ourselves and is exciting is the kind of reading that makes us become better readers. We can do a lot to help children develop their ability to find books that they can read and will enjoy. Even more importantly, we can make sure that they have time in school to read them. 

Pleasure or information: Do we help students have the opportunities to read and understand both fictional and informational texts? Do we help them see how much they can learn from a novel, and how delightful a good nonfiction book can be? 

"However, you don't need to have met an author to have a certain kind of relationship with her, in the sense that as we read more books by an author we come to know her writing, understand how she thinks, see ties between one book and another, and so on." 

This is so true and it made me think of the relationship that Paley felt with Leo Lionni after reading so many of his books. This was also felt by the students in her class and they felt like they were friends with him. 

[bentlymarie]

Miller Chapter 2

Reading aloud gives teachers the opportunity to:

model thinking strategies, fluent reading, and reading behaviors

build background knowledge for different types of text

build community

enhance vocabulary 

share with kids our love of reading and learning 

Mini-Lessons

A first lesson on reading behaviors can be don't by asking students what they see readers they know doing. Post these observations on a wall or door so that we can all see them and remember them. This shows that the children already know a lot about reading by observing how and where people read. 

Sticking a note to the white board and waiting on the teacher to come to you is something that is done in my practicum class! students have their names on magnets and on the white board is a spot labeled "question, check, bathroom." The students put their names in these boxes so that the teacher knows they need something and they don't have to interrupt her. 

[bentlymarie]

Miller Chapter 1

Gradual release of responsibility

This is all about reducing the amount of scaffolding across time, and lessons, as students gain independent control of applying what they have been taught. Doesn't have to be linear. Four stages that guide children toward independence:

Teacher modeling and demonstration.

Guided practice, where teachers gradually give students more responsibility for task completion.

Independent practice accompanied by descriptive feedback.

Application of the strategy in real reading situations.

Community

"Real classroom communities are more than just a look. Real communities flourish when we bring together the voices, hearts, and souls of the people who inhabit them." 

[bentlymarie]

Miller Chapter 4

Proper planning prevents poor performance!

Planning with the end in mind sets goals for children first.

"When students self-reflect, track, and share their learning, long-term retention and motivation increases. These student actions help children see their growth over time" (p. 73)

agency - the sense that if children act, and act strategically, they can accomplish their goals

Authenticity matters

Book selection is key. Even if someone tells you a book is great, it won't be the best book for you unless you connect with it and put your personal stamp on it.

Use precise Language

Say what you need to say clearly and concisely then move on. 

Articulation is key for 21st century learners

"One, two, three, eye-to-eye, knee-to-knee" (p.75)

Active readers make connections to construct meaning

"When you use you schema, it helps you use what you know to better understand and interact with the text" (p. 79)

When reading to children, stop and demonstrate thinking out loud.

"Charting hold thinking - it makes our thinking public and permanent, and traces out work together" (p. 81).

Thinking through text together

Record connections that students make while reading and transfer to a chart.

The next day go over the chart, re-read the book, and decide as a group whether to put a 1 or a 2 next to each connection

1 - responses that helped understand more about the story

2 - responses that didn't help or led minds astray

Small-group work

Are children making meaningful connections that enhance understanding?

Are they listening to each other and responding in appropriate ways?

Do they understand how making connections help them grow as readers?

Are children making connections when the text is causing them difficulty?

REMINDER: Children can use a strategy without fully understanding it, and that they will gradually gain control of it through continued modeling and authentic practice. 

[bentlymarie]

Making the Most of Media

" Cutting literacy learning off from students' media-immersed lives makes school an alien and unappealing place. For schools to effectively teach literacy, they should work with, not against, the cultural tools that students bring to school" 

- Newkirk, Media and Literacy, p. 64

I really like this quote because I agree that school and home lives should be intertwined and children should not feel like coming to school is boring. What better way to make school interesting than to use things that you do at home?

Some instructional strategies that tap into popular media are:

Allow students to write about media-based plots

Encourage students to improvise within media-based plots

Encourage multimedia stories

[bentlymarie]

What's good?

Newkirk, Media and Literature, p. 63

It's as simple as asking that question to keep boys into literacy. What positive cultural, artistic, and linguistic resources can we tap into to improve literacy instruction for boys?

[bentlymarie]

4 Approaches to Using Popular Culture in the Classroom

One approach views popular culture as being detrimental to you children's development. In presenting popular culture as a degrading form of entertainment, teachers are sending the message that students are losing valuable time that could more profitably be spent in developing their minds and tastes for better.

Teaching students how to critically analyze various forms of popular culture texts. Popular culture becomes an object that is useful primarily for the lessons it can teach. 

Using popular culture emphasizes the pleasure students take in various forms of media-produced texts (ex. magazines, lyrics, videos, raps, TV, movies). These teachers shy away from asking students to critique what they find pleasurable in these texts. The underlying assumption is that everything is relative, and thus everyone is entitled to his or her own pleasures. 

Involves developing students' ability to be self-reflexive in their uses of popular culture. These teachers provide opportunities for students to explore issues.

[bentlymarie]

What is popular culture? Does it cross generations? Is it not fleeting - here one day, gone the next?

Alverman & Xu, Children's Everyday Literacies, p. 146

I remember loving Junie B Jones books when I was younger and the teacher in my practicum reads these books to her class. I was so excited and realized that characters, books, and shows that I liked when I was younger have been passed down to the next generation. I wonder if a similarity could be seen over several generations.

[bentlymarie]

When we know the theory behind our work, when our practices match our beliefs, and when we clearly articulate what we do and why we do it, people listen.

Miller, Reading with Meaning, p. 10

Hopefully I will be this confident as a teacher someday. I just love the way Debbie Miller writes. 

[bentlymarie]

Cumulative Folders

Cumulative folders provide a place for the teacher to keep a record of the child's literacy learning history, and ti is passed along with the student during his or her school career. The folder includes

profile sheets that show in-depth analysis of the child's reading and writing miscues

anecdotal records and informal notes

lists of books and other materials to document the child's silent reading

retellings, responses, and other presentations (drawn and written)

reading interviews

interest inventories

test score data

beginning/mid/end-of-year self-evaluations

the child's reading and writing goals

the parents' goals

[bentlymarie]

One of the most powerful results of miscue analysis is learning how to listen to children read by staying on the sidelines rather than immediately giving them words or telling them what to do when they get stuck

Owocki & Goodman, Kidwatching p. 68

So. Hard. To. Do. But I understand how you would get the best results but doing this.

[bentlymarie]

We have mistakingly believed that if teachers do not correct, errors will be reinforced and students will continue to make them forever. Careful miscue analysis, however, shows that we should trust children's learning process: miscues change over time even within the sane story, and they reveal readers' abilities to learn from the text as they read.

Owocki & Goodman, Kidwatching p. 63

It is hard for me to not correct children when they read sometimes but I try to hold off most of the time because I know that it is better to see if they can correct themselves before I do. 

[bentlymarie]

Implications for Teachers

Children can begin to learn to read as soon as they are read to. Learning to listen to stories, learning to participate in their reproduction, and learning to retrieve them through reading-like behavior, are all legitimate, entirely appropriate, and vitally important learning to read strategies. 

Teachers need to acknowledge fully the crucial importance of children's home experience with books. Not only should they continue to encourage parents to read to their children, but they need to explain why, how, and what they should be reading to them. 

Young children can begin to learn to read by being immersed in rich and memorable written language. Every classroom should have a library of predictable books, the language and story structure of which, children rapidly gain control over because of their rhyming, repetitive, and cumulative pattern. 

Teachers in the kindergarten and primary grades can explore ways to bring the features of the shared book experiences of the home into their classrooms. (for example, big books)

Shared book experiences of the type outlined should be associated with an active program of "learning to write by writing" where the same principles of experimentation and approximation prevail.