Module 4: Instructional Challenge

Marcus is a student who very frequently miscues by substituting words that start with the same letter or first few letters of the word in the text, but his substitutions often are not syntactically or semantically acceptable (they neither sound right grammatically nor make sense). What possible teaching strategies would you suggest to help Marcus?

      What Marcus needs is to work with a peer or teacher in order to help him "catch" these miscues. Allow him to participate in guided reading experiences, where he will be able to follow along with the text as the text is being read out loud for the class to hear. As either a class or small group, have the students, including Marcus, predict what the text is going to be about using the title and pictures throughout the book. Throughout the guided reading it would also help Marcus if you were to stop frequently to ask questions about the text, so that he will understand that the text is supposed to make sense. Marcus could also be apart of listening and reading along with tape-recorded books because he will have the same experiences with the text and its meaning. It will also be important that while Marcus is following along, that his teacher be pointing to each word being read so that Marcus "can begin to make connections between the spoken words and the written words" (Weaver, 2002, p.245). Along with guided reading, it would be helpful if Marcus participated in guided writing so that he can focus on the letter sounds and patterns found throughout words. 

      While working one-on-one with Marcus, the teacher could tape him reading a specific text, and then allow him to listen to it as he follows along in the text. With Retrospective Miscue Analysis,  he can see where he has messed up, and understand that what he said did not make sense within the passage.  Throughout the reflection process, it is important to allow Marcus to pick out his miscues, particularly the ones that change the meaning of the sentence. This will also allow for discussion between Marcus and the teacher as he begins to explain why specific spots were an issue and then together talk about different strategies that may be effective. Along with retrospective miscue analysis,  the teacher can use a "think-aloud" strategy where the student is able to read aloud while verbally talking through the student's reading strategies. "This procedure in effect placed the highest emphasis on meaning and the lowest on whether the miscue looked and/or sounded like the word in the text" (Weaver, 2002, p.226). There are also four questions that Marcus could answer either by himself, with a teacher or with a group that will assist him in truly understanding his miscue: "1. Does what the read said mean the same as what is in the book? (semantic similarity) 2. Does what the reader said still sound like language? (syntactic similarity) 3. Does what the reader said look like what is in the book? (graphic similarity) 4. Does what the read said sound like what is in the book? (phonic similarity)" (Weaver, 2002, p.226). 

Module 4: Reading Reflection

    As I was reading through the chapters, I feel as though I at least recognized the term used for some of the aspects of the comprehensive literacy program. The one that I feel as though I have the most experience with are the literature groups. During my student teaching, my host teacher had decided that she was going to try this technique and group the students by their reading ability. There were three groups and each group would be reading a different leveled-reader book and would complete different tasks throughout their reading calendar. Each group had something called an Independent Reading Contract which had various activities that could be done with any book that would further the student's understanding of the plot or specific characters.  For example, one of the activities had to do with creating a shopping list for one of the characters if they were to go to the store. This activity made the students think about the characters likes, dislikes, and general personality. Along with the Independent Reading Contract, the students within the groups would also have different jobs they were required to complete such as "bridge builder", "discussion director", "word watcher", "passage picker", and "artful artist". These jobs were a wonderful tool to get the students looking deeper in to the text, and then allowing them to discuss their jobs with their group members in their weekly meetings. However, there was only one group that read along with the teacher during a small group meetings, and that was the "lower" reading group. All of the other groups followed their weekly calendar where they read independently and then would come together to discuss and complete their tasks. If I had had more say in the literature circle make-up, I would have wanted all of the groups to have a chance to meet with the teacher in order to see where each child stood in the reading and to clear up any misunderstandings.

      Within my classroom, there were plenty of guided reading and sustained reading opportunities, however I wish that there had been more opportunities for shared reading. It is very important that as teachers we model good reading with different read-alouds. Children of all ages can grow in their reading and word knowledge through listening to a teacher read fluently and proficiently. Therefore, this is something that I will implement more within my classroom because I want to make read-alouds a daily things that the children will come to look forward to.

        Writing (such as write-aloud, shared writing, guided writing and sustained writing) was almost non-existent in my classroom because it was not something that our school put a lot of emphasis on. The children went to a writing class throughout the specials rotation along with P.E., music, art, and technology. I do not feel as though I am experienced enough with writing as I should be going in to my first year of teaching, so this chapter began to enlighten me on activities that would help my students in their literacy experiences. In order for students to become proficient readers, the students also need to have a lot of focus on writing, so in my new classroom writing is going to become a priority. Especially because it is something that can be integrated into ever subject. Students will become involved with group and individual writing experiences as they will be working hand-in-hand with the various reading experiences I plan on implementing within my classroom.

Module 3: Activity 2

     I have heard negatives and positives of teaching students phonemic awareness through the use of nonsense words. However, one of my teachers last year was very against using nonsense words because she thought it was a waste of the students' time and I feel like I agree with her reasoning. If our end goal is to teach children to read fluently and to perceive the text, then we do not need to be asking students to pronounce nonsense words if they are not words the student is going to actually need to know. In order for our students to gain the comprehension skills they need it is necessary that we expose them to actual words and their meanings as much as possible. I understand why people use nonsense words, and its so that the student can get the hang of specific phonics rules, however, why can't we expose them to the phonics rules with actual English words?  In "Reading Process & Practice", Weaver talks a lot about the importance of focusing on comprehension instead of perfect reading especially when he states, "the time spent on learning phonics terms would be better spend reading, which, among other benefits, would give children the opportunity to read more and more words by analogy with the parts of words they already know, to come to recognize many of these words automatically after several exposures, and to internalize more and more of the frequently occurring letter-sound patterns in our language" (2002, p.103).

Module 3: Mock Memo from a Reading Specialist

             Erica may be reading at an accelerated fluency rate, but she is unable to comprehend the information she should be absorbing. This most nearly means that her reading career has been strictly focused on the pronunciation of words and not necessarily discovering the meaning behind the words and sentences. “But the students also need help themselves in understanding the nature of proficient reading, effective reading strategies and good miscues, and the fact that they need not the word-perfect readers in order to be good readers. They need to understand that the purpose of reading is to construct meaning and gain understanding from what they read” (Weaver, 2002, p. 216). She has been able recognize the visual cues, but is lacking in the semantic knowledge needed to understand the meaning in passages. If Erica is reading at a rate of 177 words correct per minute, then it is evident that she can “process unfamiliar words by analogy with familiar letter patterns, and to do so in syllables and/or smaller units like onsets and rimes” (Weaver, 2002, p.99).

            Therefore, with Erica, we do not need to be focusing on word identification, but word meaning. Something that would be helpful for her would be to implement a “Think-Aloud Strategy” which is a “procedure [that] can be used with students who have difficulty comprehending texts and typically do not realize that the purpose of reading is to understand” (Weaver, 2002, p.226). With this strategy, she will be able to see more meaning in the text through read-alouds because she will become actively involved with the context of the story or passage. As Weaver (2002, p.215-216) suggests, we need to “revalue” Erica’s reading strategies by helping her focus on the meaning within the context rather than putting the emphasis on reading the words perfectly as they are written.

            Even though the other students may not be reading at the approximate rate as Erica does not mean that they are “struggling readers”, it simply means that they read a little slower in order to gain the knowledge they need from the text. It is vital that we put more emphasis on comprehension rather than on the speed at which our students read. “Fluency must not replace a focus on meaning as the goal of reading” (Weaver, 2002, p.215).

References

Weaver, C. (2002). Reading process and practice. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books.

Module 3: Reading Response

         

          I do not agree with Marilyn Adams who claimed that “skillful readers of English thoroughly process the individual letters of words in their texts” (1990, p.108)  because further research has determined that “skillful readers” process words in letter chunks much like syllables and are able to correctly identify words with specific letters missing. Due to proficient reader’s ability to use their prior knowledge and surrounding context to help identify words as well as through the use of their parafoveal region, readers do not need to focus on individual phonics rules when they are more likely to read the word as a whole through analogy with familiar letter patterns. “Clearly, fluent readers do no process words letter-by-letter. Just as we do not comprehend sentences merely by combining the meanings of individual words, so we do not perceive words merely by combining the perceptions of individual letters” (Weaver, 2002, p.96).

            I completed the activity on page 96 that was a replica experiment from Edmund Huey’s The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading (1908/1968, p.100) where I was to read a list of letters, four-letter words and eight-letter words where I timed myself on each. It took me ten seconds to read the column of letters, eleven seconds to read the column of four-letter words and sixteen seconds to read the column of eight-letter words. I also asked one of my friends to complete the same task so that I could compare our results. He was able to complete the letter column in seven seconds, four-letter word column in eight seconds and eight-letter word column in thirteen seconds. My results of the experiment verified that of Weaver and contradict Marilyn Adams claims because if it were true that we read every letter in every word then it would make sense that it would “take nearly four times as long to read the column of four-letter words as it took to read the column of single letters…[and] eight times as long to read the column of eight-letter words” (Weaver, 2002, p.95), and this was not the case in either attempt. Because we were supposed to identify the words as fast as possible,

“it should not be surprising that words can be identified under conditions that make it impossible to identify individual letters. More than a century ago, Erdmann and Dodge (1898) determined: (1) that words can be recognized lying too far from the eyes’ fixation point to permit recognition of individual letters; (2) that words can be recognized when they are constructed of letters so small that the letters cannot be singly identified; and (3) that words can be recognized from distances at which the letters exposed singly, cannot be recognized” (Weaver, 2002, p.96)

References

Weaver, C. (2002). Reading process and practice. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books.

Module 2: Activity 1 & 2

3. We can often get the meaning from context (even though we may never pronounce the word correctly). Try it:
c. Try essentially the same procedure again. Write down the definition for these words:
    creech-a way to silently creep from one place to another
    droogs-an animal that tends to excessively drool
    glazzies- being glad to do something
    goloss- a type of water shoe
    malenky- a form of bad behavior
    messel- a large amount
    millicents- a very small amount of money
    poogly- another word for cowardly
    razrez- something used to shave oneself
    skorry- an apology
    spatted- past tense of spit
    zoobies- people who are obsessed with zoos

      After about the third word, I realized that I was making up these definitions based upon words I already know. Usually, whatever familiar word came to mind the instant I read the unknown word was what stemmed my definition. Along with an common initial word, I also thought about how that word would be used in a sentence to determine its part of speech. Without context, it was not difficult to think of a definition, not that my definition is right by any means, because I would simply relate it to something I already knew.

After reading A Clockwork Orange I formulated different definitions:

    droog- a friend
A droof is a friend because the character Alex mentioned talking to them about what their plans were for the night.
    skorry- fast or quick
Alex mentioned that people may not remember what "mestos" were like because "things are changing so skorry these days and quick to forget". The "and" in the previous sentence lead me to believe that the two phrases were correlated and with "quick" being a familiar word I determined that the two words were similar.
    glazzies- eyes
Three girls with brightly colored wigs with matching make-up. The make-up was "rainbows round the glazzies", which led me to believe that their surrounding eye make-up was rainbow colored.
    spatted- dated 
The girls had male names attached to their clothing which meant they had "spatted" with those men before the age of fourteen. So, this led me to believe that the names were spatted on them because it was the first guy they dated.
    messel- feeling or emotion
Alex explained that after you drank the moloko that you would have a messel that everything was in the past. This reminded me of the word feel because you could feel like something was in the past.
    goloss- voice
He said that the singer's goloss was essentially filling the room. When I think singer, I think of their voice. So, their voice, or goloss, filled the room.


7. Pronounce the words aloud quickly, without struggling over them.

a. I did not try to sound out the words letter-by-letter because if i was to read the words quickly as the directions said I would not have time to spend significant amount of time on each letter. Also, if I did do it this way, the word I was trying to say would not necessarily sound like a word, but a broken up mixture of sounds.

b. I tried to read the words in syllable chucks because even though I did not recognize the words, I was able to identify or recognize the majority of the syllables.

c. I tended to try to read the words all in one with longer words, because I would start by breaking it up into syllables, but by the end of the big words I would just glance at it and say something they would have been similar. However, when I did that I noticed that I added or omitted several letters within the word.

d. I do not think I know the full definition of each of the words, however, by looking at the prefixes and suffixes I could possibly determine a partial meaning. For example,  the word "submandibular" begins with the prefix "sub" which most nearly means under or secretly. The word "extravaste" begins with "extra" which reminds me of extracurricular which indicates to me that "extra" means to go beyond something.

e.Yes, pronouncing them allowed me to identify the recognizable prefixes and suffixes that I mentioned above.

f. When I encounter words I am unfamiliar with in daily readings, I usually relate it to other words that sound the same. After I have determined similar words, I usually reread the sentence to figure out its context to see if my idea of the word would make sense. If not then I simply rely on my surrounding context clues.

g. The experiment is to give us an idea of what it is like to see a word that is completely unfamiliar to us and expected to orally sound it out. This is how are students feel when they are reading a text and come to a word they have never seen before, but expected to say it correctly with the phonic patterns they have previously learned. My first instinct was not to think about the phonemic patterns within the words but to relate them to words I already know combined with the context of the word's surroundings. When teaching children how to identify unknown words, it is important that we teach them multiple ways of identification because simply sounding the word out will not allow us to determine its meaning. The student should see if the word may relate to another known word, and compare that to the rest of the sentence. Allow the student to guess and check and they go through this process until they determine a word that most likely fits within the sentence.

Module 2: Instructional Challenge

Take a look at the following examples of children's dialect-based miscues while reading and the difference between the child's original response (OR) and expected reponse (ER). Then answer the questions that follow.

1.	OR: It my little monkey here.	ER: Is my little monkey here?
2.	OR: We got to tell.	ER: We've got to tell.
3.	OR: Frog look at Toad calendar.	ER: Frog looked at Toad's calendar.
4.	OR: A word what sounded good.	ER: A word that sounded good.
5.	OR: hisself	ER: himself
6.	OR: I can come to your party?	ER: Can I come to your party?

Are these children's miscues evidence of proficient or non-proficient reading?  Explain. If you were teaching children who made these miscues, what, if any, assistance or teaching would you offer? 

       The children's miscues are evidence of proficient readers for various reasons. Examples two, three, five and six seem like they would stem from "at-home" or cultural dialect. From personal experience and after reading the text, it is evident in readers of varying dialect that they are apt to leave off contracted endings,a s in example two; leave off tenses, as in example three; pronounce words differently, as in example five; and say a statement as a question, as in example six. I actually had a friend who was born and raised in the heart of Louisiana and when she asked a questions like "can I come to you party" it would be in the structure of a statement, but because of the question infection at the end it was obvious she was asking not making a statement. Therefore, things of that nature are dialects that may effect the reading process. 

       Examples one and four may seem like trivial mistakes that had to have been made by a less-proficient reader, however, that implication would be wrong. These mistakes would also be made by a proficient reader because the reader is beginning to read for meaning through anticipation of what will come next in the sentence. With that, proficient readers tend to make the majority of their miscues in pronoun and basic words because of their subconscious instinct to predict upcoming words. 

       I would not offer these children any assistance throughout their oral reading because as Weaver states, "evidence that understanding usually precedes oral verbalization and in light of the evidence that proficient readers make miscues that reflect their predictions, their prior knowledge, and even their preferred language structures" (2002, p.74). If however, I did think that the oral language was effecting their understanding, I would simply allow the student to reiterate what they just read in their own words because that would show true comprehension. "When reading aloud, our understanding is usually ahead of our voice" (Weaver, 2002, p.76). There was another study done where Kenneth and Yetta Goodman focused on student miscues as well as their overall comprehension. It was determined "that there is 'no evidence that inability to cope with Book English is a general problem for any group' (1978, p.3-5). The students' dialect or interlanguage influence was evident in their reading, 'but it is not in itself a barrier to comprehension' (p.3-22)" (Weaver, 2002, p.76). 

References

Weaver, C. (2002). Reading process and practice. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books.