Exploring Literature PowerPoint
In order to increase student word knowledge, it is vital that we increase the amount of time students read on a daily basis to give them more experience with vocabulary. The PowerPoint gives examples of activities we could do that would assist in making our students proficient readers. Activities that involve stretching words, blending sounds and asking the students to say words without specific parts of the word would build phonological awareness. I really liked the phonics activity within the PowerPoint because it was transformed in to a card game. The student was asked to sound out the nonsense words and then whoever's card was higher would get the cards. To increase a student's fluency, you could allow a child to read a passage and write down the mistakes that were made throughout the reading. Once the child has completed the student and the teacher will discuss the mistakes that were made. It is also important to show the students vocabulary in passages in order for the students to get used to using context clues.
Expository Texts PowerPoint
This PowerPoint was very interesting to me because this topic was actually something that I experienced for myself this past semester. The thought that text organization is something that students do not understand blew my mind because in my mind it was something that just made sense. I was very wrong. I quickly realized, much like I read in the passage, that students need to understand the different patterns of expository text as well as their signal words. The students need to be familiar with sequence, comparison, descriptions, cause/effect and problem/solution. Using graphic organizers to teach these to students would be very each beneficial because the students would be able to dissect the passage in pairs or individually. However, when first beginning the lessons regarding each of these aspects it is important that teachers model how to find and recognize them.
Vacca Reading Chapter 14
Before beginning to read Expository Text, it is important that we not only focus on the process in which the students read through the text, but teachers also need to put an emphasis on the content that is within the particular passage. The content in text books can be very complex especially if students do not have any prior knowledge on the topic. As teachers there are specific questions that we need to ask ourselves about the text before we expect our students to understand the content: How difficult is the text to understand? How usable is the text? and How interesting is the text?. Vacca describes "usable" as meaning how well the text is organized and "interesting" means how easy is the text to relate to. There are actually specific formulas that educators will use that base the readability off of sentence length and word difficulty. I know for personal experience that some of the books that I have had to study from in college were vary hard for me to understand due to the proficient vocabulary. Therefore, it is not a far fetched idea that children would experience the same frustration I felt while taking my undergrad classes. However, instead of strictly focusing on textbooks, teachers could also begin to implement the use of trade books. Trade books are texts that focus in on one subject matter and will go in to more depth. Also reading textbooks along with trade books allow the students to see the same vocabulary in a different setting or book which will allow for the students to potentially gain more understanding of the needed vocabulary. Vacca describes the benefits of combining literature and trade books as "intense involvement", "schema building", "abilities and interests", and "vocabulary building".
