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Readerly Exploration #7

Park (2012), “A Different Kind of Reading Instruction: Using Visualizing to Bridge Reading Comprehension and Critical Literacy”

Emma Slocum

5/1/19

Big Takeaway: Reading comprehension strategies such as visualization can be used as a tool for critical literacy to encourage students to engage with both written texts and the texts of their lived realities.

Nugget: There are two definitions of critical literacy: One is “The capacity to “speak back” to written texts” considering the perspective it was written from. The other is “The capacity to “read the world” and question the basic assumptions of society” (p. 629)

For this readerly exploration, I chose to create a concept map that represented the major concepts of the reading. This reading had a lot to it and so organizing my thoughts in map format really did help me better comprehend the text. Since some of the terminology such as the types of reading comprehension, and the idea of critical literacy are relatively new to me, this map kept me accountable for my comprehension of complex concepts. I really like drawing connections between concepts so to put the main ideas, visualization and critical literacy and then to expand on them and connect them side by side was exciting and enlightening for me. Through engaging in this task, I definitely feel like I more fully understand the reading. My map helped me see that:

·      visualization is just one of the many reading comprehension strategies.

·      There are two definitions of critical literacy used hand in hand in the article.

·      The author believes that comprehension strategies should be  used not only to explore written texts but the texts of students’ lives

·      So the strategy of visualization can be used as a tool for critical literacy

·      Visualizations reveal the readers identity and worldview and can be used to teach students about how they see the world from a particular perspective based on their social and cultural identities.

My comprehension concept map was very helpful in deepening my understanding of this reading. 

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Readerly Exploration #6

Tompkins, Chapter 12, “Reading and Writing Across the Curriculum”

Shanahan & Shanahan, (2014), “Does Disciplinary Literacy Have a Place in Elementary School?”

Emma Slocum

4/15/19

Tompkins Ch. 12 Big Idea: Teachers should integrate literacy instruction with content area study. To do this, teacher can develop thematic units of study that integrate a variety of texts across the curriculum including textbooks.

·     Nugget: In these thematic units, students should be encouraged to read and write to learn. Instead of focusing on the specifics and mechanics of reading and writing, have students focus on the main ideas of what they’re learning.

Shanahan & Shanahan Big Idea: Elementary teachers should teach young students specialized ways of reading specific to each academic discipline.

·     Nugget: Elementary teachers can introduce disciplinary literacy by using a great deal of informational text, using texts other than stories to teach vocabulary, and by paying attention to the disciplinary standards for the upper grades.

For this exploration, I decided to document my initial response to these reading right after finishing, here is what I wrote:

I was excited to do these readings because I recently encountered the idea of disciplinary literacies for the first time when I was doing my inquiry project. One of my sources was an article entitled: “What are Disciplinary Literacies in Dance and Drama in the Elementary Grades?” As I read this article I admittedly became increasingly confused about what the authors meant by “disciplinary literacies.” I tried doing a bit of research to learn more about it but could not get a super clear definition. The content of the article was still helpful in my inquiry but I walked away from reading it still unclear about disciplinary literacy. These readings really helped clarify my understanding of what disciplinary literacy is, “the idea that we should teach the specialized ways of reading, understanding, and thinking used in each academic discipline” (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2014, p. 636). The Shanahan article talked about teaching explicit strategies for comprehending science and social studies text, but the article I read for my inquiry took it a step further and looked at strategies for helping students comprehend dance and drama as disciplinary literacies. It talked about teaching vocabulary specific to dance and drama just as you would with science, social studies, or literature. The Tompkins chapter focused a lot on creating thematic units of study where the teacher introduces a wide variety of texts to integrate literacy across many disciplines. I think that it would be really cool to include dance and drama as well as other art forms as texts in thematic units. Doing these readings gave me a much fuller understanding about disciplinary literacies and got me excited about how I can integrate dance specifically as a disciplinary literacy into thematic units of study into my future classroom.

This is the opening paragraph to the article on dance and drama as disciplinary literacies. The citation for this article is: 

Frambaugh-Kritzer, C., Buelow, S., & Steele, J. S., (2015). What are disciplinary literacies in      dance and drama in the elementary grades? Journal of Language & Literacy Education /           Ankara Universitesi SBF Dergisi, 11(1), 65-87. Retrieved             from http://ezproxy.messiah.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.messiah  .edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=129618596&site=ehost-live&scope=site

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Readerly Exploration #5

Four Practical Principles for Enhancing Vocabulary Instruction

Emma Slocum

4/8/19

Big Idea: Excellent word-meaning instruction alone does not always guarantee effective, efficient vocabulary instruction. Four practical principles can enhance vocabulary instruction so that students are learning new words in the best way possible.  

Nugget: The four principles are:

·     Establishing Efficient yet Rich Routines for Introducing Target Words

·     Providing Review Experiences that Promote Deep Processing

·     Responding Directly to Student Confusion with Anchor Experiences

·     Fostering Universal Participation and Accountability

As I read this article, I thought about the vocabulary instruction I have seen and experienced and realized that it was not similar to the instruction written about here. In my own school experience and observation experience, vocabulary instruction is quite limited to worksheets and quick definitions. Reading this article and learning about creative and effective ways to enhance vocabulary instruction has challenged the way I think about vocabulary and led me to a few questions about literacy classrooms:

1.    Do a lot of classrooms implement vocabulary the way the article describes? (I have mostly seen spelling tests and worksheets)

2.    What does it look like to create and utilize a Vocabulary Word Wall?

3.    What are some creative ways teachers can promote universal participation?

I looked into my third question because I thought it was particularly valuable to ensure universal participation for all students when teaching vocabulary. The article mentioned that teachers could use random-turn nomination, pair-shares, and formative assessments as strategies to promote universal participation during vocabulary instruction. However, I wondered if there were more ways I could promote this in my own future classroom. I did a bit of research and found that one middle school teacher uses “total physical response” to engage students in vocabulary instruction. In the video I found, this teacher has students connect a motion to a vocabulary word and brief definition during transition times. I thought that this was helpful and would allow the teacher to see that all students are participating in reviewing vocabulary. Engaging in this task of asking and answering questions based on this article deepened my understanding of what effective vocabulary instruction can look like and how I can be creative with the ways I engage my students in vocabulary instruction.

https://www.teachingchannel.org/video/total-physical-response-vocabulary

Link to the video I found about a teacher who uses TPR to engage all students in vocabulary instruction. 

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Readerly Exploration #4

Emma Slocum

3/25/19

Gill (2011), “The Comprehension Matrix: A Tool for Designing Comprehension Instruction”

Big Takeaway: This article helps teachers determine how to use comprehension strategies based on the factors that affect reading: the reader, the text, and the situation and where the strategy best fits in the reading process.

Nugget: schema theory, transactional theory, and constructivist theory all emphasize the importance of the reader’s prior knowledge which helps them actively construct their comprehension.

Because this reading was all about comprehension, I decided to track my personal comprehension struggles and successes while reading this article. I made a chart based off of the three factors that affect comprehension: the reader, the text, and the situation. Within these three factors there are categories that affect comprehension such as background knowledge and purpose for reading. I identified these categories as a success or a struggle and described why I did so in my chart. As the reader, I was interested in the article because I know that it is important for my future in teaching and for this class, however, I knew it would be an academic reading and so it would be a little more dry. My background knowledge of literacy helped my comprehension of this text, but my lazy emotional state (due to spring break) did not help. Overall the text was organized and laid out in a way that made it easier to read, especially for an academic article. However, I realized that there were very few illustrations which usually make comprehension easier. I had a clear purpose for doing the reading (for my readerly exploration and literacy class) so that made comprehension easier. But, my situational distraction from my energetic new puppy made staying focused and comprehending the reading a struggle. I think that analyzing my comprehension of the reading was a really helpful exercise in better understanding how I best comprehend things myself. I think that as a proficient reader it can be easy for me to forget the strategies I use to comprehend texts and the factors that influence my comprehension. If I know how I comprehend best I can extend that to helping students discover how they comprehend best.

My struggles and successes chart and a picture of my distracting puppy!

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Readerly Exploration #3

Emma Slocum

2/25/19

Tompkins Chapter 1: Becoming an Effective Literacy Teacher

Big Idea: Effective Literacy teachers use their pedagogical and content knowledge about literacy to ensure that all students achieve their full literacy potential.

Nugget: Effective Teachers Scaffold Students’ reading and writing through five levels of support (we talked about this in Literacy 1 but it was a really helpful review for me and I hadn’t thought about it explicitly as scaffolding, just as different aspects of the balanced approach)

1.    Modeled Reading + Writing- done by the teacher to model the habits of readers and writers

2.    Shared Reading + Writing- teacher and students read or write together, still more teacher led

3.    Interactive Reading + Writing- teacher and students take turns reading and writing to build more student independence

4.    Guided Reading + Writing- teacher supports small groups of students by targeting specific skills in minilessons

5.    Independent Reading + Writing- students do this on their own

For this readerly exploration, I decided to interview my boyfriend about his experience with literacy teachers in his elementary education. I shared some excerpts from the reading with him specifically about different learning theories and the balanced approach to literacy. I discovered that I had to do a lot of explaining before I asked him questions because the excerpts I read him used very specific education terminology. This made me realize that I have learned a lot over the past year about literacy instruction! Having to teach someone else about what I have learned helped me comprehend this reading much better because it allowed me to review many of the significant concepts we have covered even from last semester. After reading him the excerpts about learning theories and a balanced approach I asked him about what elements he experienced in his literacy education and what his teachers were like. He specifically remembered that in the intermediate grades through high school there was a lot of whole group, teacher-led, explicit instruction. The small private school we both went to growing up used a lot of teacher centered instruction and he remembers having basal readers in class in older grades as well. However, he did say that he remembers specifically in first grade participating in many aspects of a balanced literacy approach. There were lots of read alouds and tons of time to read. He loved independent reading time but was very motivated to move up through all of the reading levels before the rest of his classmates. He also talked about working with his teacher in small groups and having to read for her independently in order to move up a reading level. It was interesting to get this perspective from him because I remember very little from my early years learning how to read and I came to the school in fourth grade whereas he was there starting in kindergarten. It seems like there was a balanced approach in the primary grades and then as students matured instruction became more focused on content and teacher led instruction.

Josh after his interview, he said he feels more informed about literacy education!

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Readerly Exploration #2

Emma Slocum

2/18/19

Tompkins Chapter 2: The Reading and Writing Processes

·     Big Idea: The five similar and reciprocal stages of both the reading and writing processes are ways that readers and writers make meaning and communicate ideas.

o  Nugget: the writer’s craft involves specific techniques that are used to capture readers attention and convey meaning (p. 58). The six techniques or traits are: Ideas, Organization, Voice, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, Mechanics

Tompkins Chapter 6: Developing Fluent Readers and Writers

·     Big Idea: It is important that by fourth grade, students develop the ability to read and write quickly, accurately, and with expression so that they can effectively comprehend and express information.

o  Nugget: I thought the last section on Obstacles to Fluency was really helpful. The six obstacles and ways to help students facing them are:

1.    Lack of Automaticity-focus of high-frequency words

2.    Unfamiliarity with word-identification strategies- develop background knowledge about unfamiliar words before reading, teach strategies, provide more opportunity for reading and writing practice

3.    Slow reading speed- provide a combination of teacher guided- and independent reading practice

4.    Slow writing speed- provide time for lots of writing through quick writes, reading and learning logs, and journals

5.    Lack of prosody- model, help readers break sentences into phrases and read them expressively

6.    Voiceless writing- provide opportunities for lots of reading, give minilessons on strategies, and let students participate in informal writing activities

As I was reading both of these chapters I just kept thinking about the students I have in my current placement. I am in fourth grade, which seems to be the point at which students are expected to be fluent readers and writers and go through the reading and writing processes independently. However, most of the students in my class cannot do either of these things. I am in a low-income, low-performing school district and so I wanted to look at how the reading and writing processes and fluency are affected by socioeconomic status. Just based on what I have observed, most of my current students struggle with at least one of the six reading fluency obstacles listed above. The overarching theme in the solutions to those obstacles is for teachers to just provide more time for students to read and write in the classroom and encourage them to do so at home as well. For my students reading and writing at home is not a huge priority due to bigger concerns such as taking care of younger siblings or themselves while their parents are at work. However, there is also little to no time built into their school day for them to just read and write and get practice doing those things. Many programs (including the PA department of education) come into their school trying to help and make things better but they just end up breaking up their day into chaotic and random chunks. While the intentions of these programs such as one on anti-bullying are good, they are reducing the time the students have to overcome these obstacles to become fluent readers and writers. As a result of this the data on the students shows that many of them are below grade level and not even reading close to 100wpm accurately which according to the book most students read by 3rdgrade. Reflecting on the reading through the lens of socioeconomic status allowed me to understand how the reading and writing processes and fluency are vital parts of students’ literacy education and need to be prioritized, especially in low SES schools.

the DIBELS oral reading fluency scores for my current class. The goal is 103 words correct per minute, only one student is above that. 

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Readerly Exploration #1

Emma Slocum

February 11, 2019

Tompkins Chapter 3- Assessing Literacy Development

·     Big Takeaway: This chapter looked at the four steps teachers use to assess student’s literacy development: planning, monitoring, evaluating, and reflecting and how these are used to integrate assessment and instruction.

o  Nugget: Portfolio Assessments are really good ways for teachers to evaluate student progress in an authentic way. They allow students to highlight their strengths and engage in self-assessment. Teachers can use portfolio share days to allow student to share what they have been working on and what they are proud of with others.

Tompkins Chapter 11- Differentiating for Success

·     Big Takeaway: This chapter acknowledges that students differ in important ways and so it is essential for teachers to differentiate the content, process, and/ or the product of instruction so that all students can be successful in the literacy classroom.

o  Nugget: Teachers can create tiered activities in several ways: by changing the complexity of the thinking involved, the level of reading materials, as well as the way students express what they have learned. However, it is important that the tiers remain as invisible as possible.

These two chapters both talked a lot about how students are different. Chapter three talked about assessing students and leveling students so that they can receive appropriate reading instruction that is not too easy but not too frustrating. Chapter eleven talked about differentiating instruction so that each student can be successful whether they are advanced, on-level, or below-level and despite  differences in background. I think that because we are differentiating and grouping so much in classrooms now, it can be hard for students not to compare themselves to one another. As teachers, differentiation can also seem like an impossible and cumbersome task. In this exploration, I wanted to connect this idea of student differences and differentiation with a different genre of literature so I read a picture book called “Elmer” by David McKee. In this story, a colorful elephant named Elmer feels very out of place among the other plain-colored elephants. He tries to cover up his uniqueness by painting himself like the others but in the end he realizes that his differences are what make him special.  This made me think about how as teachers we should also celebrate our students’ differences. While this may sound cliché, I think we say it a lot without thinking about what it really means. What if we saw differentiation as an opportunity to celebrate the uniqueness of our students and not just an impossible and cumbersome task? Like in the story of Elmer, we should encourage our students to celebrate and use their unique gifts and abilities and we should cater to these to the best of our ability.  

The story of Elmer ends with all of the elephants celebrating being colorful and different! 

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Readerly Exploration #8

Emma Slocum

11/28/18

Pennington (2018), “Should we teach reading comprehension strategies?”

Miller (2013), Chapter 5, “In November and December”

Pennington Big Takeaway: Reading comprehension strategies should be taught as part of the reading process not as isolated skills that students need to repeatedly practice.

·     Nugget: reading involves things that we can’t directly and explicitly teach/assess such as self-monitoring, thinking, and making connections to prior knowledge

Miller Big Takeaway: Helping young readers learn how to create mental images while they read allows them to comprehend texts on a deeper level by making them personal and connecting them to their prior knowledge.

·     Using drama and drawing can be amazing ways to help students create mental images while they read and enhances their writing as well. Also having a Coffeehouse poetry night allows students to further engage in texts and share their own writing.

For this readerly exploration I wrote down three questions I had about literacy classrooms as I read these two texts. The Miller reading really intrigued me and made me wonder how common some of the practices she used for enhancing reading comprehension and teaching about poetry are. The three questions I asked were:

1.    What are some of the most common reading comprehension strategies taught in literacy classrooms?

2.    Have Coffeehouse Poetry Days been done in other literacy classrooms? How is poetry commonly approached?

3.    What other strategies to support vivid writing to teachers use

The question I chose to do some further research on was the second: Have Coffeehouse Poetry Days been done in other literacy classrooms? How is poetry commonly approached? I found that, yes coffeehouse poetry days have been done in other classrooms and found four articles about different elementary classrooms that had integrated them into their poetry units.

https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/blog-posts/beth-newingham/poetry-cafe/

https://www.sandiegounified.org/newscenter/classroom-becomes-coffee-house-poetry-reading

https://www.parentmap.com/article/the-poetry-cafe-teaching-poetry-to-kids

https://www.heraldbulletin.com/community/teachers-set-up-coffeehouse-for-students-poet-readings/article_468dce15-40da-5373-9792-6408c372c7d1.html

I also found a resource that approached teaching about poetry/comprehension the way Debbie Miller approaches it in her classroom: through drawing and drama, although the term “metal images” seems to be more unique to her.

http://www.nea.org/tools/lessons/bringing-poetry-to-the-classroom-grades-K-5.html

On the other hand, I found a source that did not approach poetry the same way and looked at it more technically focusing on how to write poems instead of meaning-making (this is the way that I learned about it in school).

https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/kids-poems/

Doing this additional research has allowed me to think about how I want to approach comprehension instruction in my classroom. I really think that allowing readers and writers to take ownership of what they are hearing and doing is essential. Giving them the tool of “creating mental images” while they read is something that they can use for their entire lives. It makes reading and writing engaging on a deep and personal level and exemplifies reading comprehension strategies that are taught as part of the process of reading, not as isolated skills that need to be drilled.

Some Poetry Cafe Resources and Inspiration I found online! 

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Readerly Exploration #7

11/14/18

Rasinski (2012), “Why Reading Fluency Should Be Hot!”

Applegate, Applegate & Modla (2011), “She's My Best Reader; She Just Can't Comprehend’: Studying the Relationship Between Fluency and Comprehension”

Rasinski Big Takeaway:  Fluency should be at the center of reading instruction for comprehension because it is the bridge between accuracy and comprehension. The two essential components of fluency: automaticity and prosody can be developed through wide and deep reading.

·       Nugget: Authentic performance reading such as readers theater can motivate students to practice repeated readings which will in turn help to develop their automaticity and prosody.

Applegate Big Takeaway: In fluency instruction there is an overemphasis on rate and accuracy as opposed to comprehension.  Accuracy and comprehension are intertwined and separating them can be detrimental to students.

·      Nugget: A lot of students are recognized as strong readers solely based on pacing, accuracy, and prosody. However, this study showed that many of these strong readers struggled a great deal with comprehending what they read.

As I was doing these readings I thought about how important comprehension is for me as a college student and how if I just focused on doing my readings quickly, it would defeat the purpose of doing them. I realized that I had witnessed the timed testing of fluency in the classroom I am currently placed in and thought about the effects that it must have on students. Comprehension and fluency are commonly separated in classrooms across the country, however these articles emphasized that they are intertwined. I decided to test this out for myself. I sat down 3 of my friends and had them each read a passage from a book that none of us had read before. I considered giving them an education book like Debbie Miller but figured that might be a little unfair since they would have no prior knowledge on the subject of reading instruction in an elementary classroom. I told them that I wanted to see how fast they could read and how many words they could read in a minute and timed them as they read. Afterwards I asked them to tell me what they read about. The first said she had no idea and then tried to explain and elaborate. The next, was actually able to give a really good summary of the page she read. And the last friend I tested this out on had no idea what she had read afterwards. Interestingly, the last friend I interviewed had experienced tests like these throughout school and she anticipated that I would be asking her what the text was about afterwards. However, this still didn’t help her comprehend what she was reading because she was so focused on getting the words out. This was such a fun exploration to do! It was really impactful to see firsthand how just focusing on rate and accuracy does not support comprehension. Fluency isn’t just something that is important during the primary grades, it is a lifelong skill that is used by readers every day. This makes it so important to see fluency and comprehension as intertwined.

Here are videos of my friends reading and their responses!

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Readerly Exploration #6

Emma Slocum

11/7/18

Silverman & Crandell (2011), “Vocabulary Practices in Prekindergarten and Kindergarten Classrooms”

Williams, et. al. (2009), “Word Study Instruction in the K-2 Classroom”

Silverman and Crandell Big Takeaway:This study added to the research on vocabulary instruction practices by looking at how the effects of teaching practices can differ based on whether they happen during read-alouds or not, the child’s initial vocabulary knowledge, and how vocabulary is measured.

·     Nugget:Silverman and Crandell identified 17 practices that teachers they observed used for vocabulary instruction and condensed them into 5 practices: Act/Illustrate, Analyze, Contextualize, Define, and Word Study. The most used practices were contextualize and define.

Williams Big Takeaway: Word Study is an effective approach to spelling instruction that leans away from memorization and requires students to focus on the patterns in words and make connections between what they have learned and their writing.

·     Nugget: One of the tips given in this article was to teach children word knowledge, not just words. This means that students learn about words in a way that allows them to apply their knowledge in multiple contexts. However, with sight words, that don’t follow a pattern, you may just need to explicitly teach them and have them on a word wall.

Since these readings were all about vocabulary, I chose to focus on my own vocabulary knowledge in this readerly exploration. First I skimmed the readings and picked out terms I did not know. I looked those up and added them to vocabulary lists for myself. I also added to my vocabulary lists as I did each reading and encountered words or phrases that I was unfamiliar with. As I read I looked up these new words and this really helped my comprehension of the texts. I will say, this definitely slowed my reading down a good amount. Focusing in on vocabulary is time-consuming, but it is very important sometimes. Most of the words I wrote down were “tier three” content specific words in the context of education or statistics. Many of the education terms I looked up, such as “Title I” and “Orthography” were words/phrases that I had heard before, but didn’t feel sure about the meaning behind them. Many of the words I looked up, especially for the Silverman and Crandell article, were related to statistics because they were discussing the results of their research. Even the definitions that I found of these terms such as “correlational study,” and “iterative” process were confusing to me because I have no background in statistics. This made me think about how one of the five vocabulary teaching strategies that Silverman and Crandell write about is “Contextualize.” If students can put the vocabulary words they are learning into context, they can understand them in a deeper way. So in my case, because I have a context to put the educational terms in, they were easier for me to understand and remember, but because I haven’t taken any statistic courses, the words and their definitions still didn’t make a lot of sense to me.

https://quizlet.com/_5ksr7a

I made a quizlet of all of the vocabulary terms I recorded for this readerly exploration!

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Readerly Exploration #5

Emma Slocum

11/2/18

“Watching Young Writers” by Glenda Bissex and “Phonemes in Use: Multiple Activities for a Critical Process” by  Patrick C. Manyak

“Watching Young Writers” by Glenda Bissex

Big Takeaway: Young writers should be allowed to approximate and naturally develop their writing skills. As teachers we need to see our students as learners instead of mistake makers and allow them to reconstruct the written system and make it their own.

·     Nugget:Children explore multiple hypotheses before they discover that the writing around them is alphabetic in nature.

“Phonemes in Use: Multiple Activities for a Critical Process” by  Patrick C. Manyak

Big Takeaway: Instruction that is focused on segmenting and blending phonemes with a focus of the letters that represent them has been found to be successful in helping student develop the alphabetic principle.

·      Nugget: You can use the tune of “Are you sleeping Brother John” to teach students how to pick out the beginning middle and end sounds of words and map these sounds to their corresponding letters.

For this readerly exploration I decided to create a concept map as I read both of the texts. I started by writing both of the titles in the center of my page and trying to think of anything I already knew about the topics to write down. For the Bissex article, I wrote the six steps of writing development that we learned earlier in the course. For the Manyak article, I wrote the definition of phonemes that I learned in my ELL class. As I started reading the Bissex article, I took notes on what I learned in a different color on my concept map. It was cool to see how some of the things Bissex emphasized in her article matched up with my previous knowledge about the six stages of writing development. She discussed how children as young as three years old can differentiate writing from drawing, that children use space and patterns to create letter-like writing before they begin drawing symbols, and how young writers use their knowledge of spoken language to write (partial-phonetic). She reinforced that we should be using a developmentally appropriate “bottom up” approach in our writing instruction by seeing early writing errors as a demonstration of knowledge and growth, similar to how we see early speaking errors. I also created a concept map for the Manyak article about phonemes in use and this really allowed me to expand upon my limited previous knowledge about phonemes and how they are taught. Using the concept map, I took notes on phonemic awareness and the alphabetic principal and how the five activities Manyak suggests support those concepts. It was exciting to read something so practical and I found myself thinking of how I could possibly integrate the phoneme activities into my interventions. Once both of my concept maps were done, I could clearly see how much my understanding of both the articles and the topic were expanded. It was a really helpful and fun way to take notes that mapped my understanding from beginning to end.

My concept map of the readings! 

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Readerly Exploration #4

Emma Slocum

10/19/18

Sipe (2002), “Talking Back & Talking Over: Young Children’s Expressive Engagement During Read-Aloud Storybooks”

Big Takeaway: Children’s expressive, oral responses to read-alouds should be encouraged by teachers because they allow them to make stories their own and promote pleasure as well as engagement in the literacy classroom.

Nugget: There are five types of expressive engagement: dramatizing, talking back, critiquing/controlling, inserting, and taking over. The degree of students’ active participation increases from the first to the fifth form of expressive engagement.

Exploration:

For this readerly exploration, Lynsey and I agreed to discuss what stood out to us in the reading and how our reading processes compared. We started by both reading the article separately. We discussed the five categories of expressive engagement and how we had never thought of student oral responses to reading as something positive. Lynsey pointed out that although she’s seen students exhibit all of these responses, she never thought they indicated engagement and learning. This moved our discussion to wondering how we can allow these important responses in our classrooms without losing control. We recognized that in this context we needed to reframe what we saw as “off task” behavior, but what happens when students completely diverge from the reading at hand? We concluded that deciding when students are truly off task would be largely up to the teacher’s discretion in each specific situation.

Another aspect of the reading that stood out to us were the five forms of expression and how they increase in their “carnivalesque” nature from the first to the fifth. The word “carnivalesque” was a new one to both of us and we discussed how we understood it. We determined that it represented a wild, unbridled form of expression. As students take ownership of stories their expression in relation to these stories becomes increasingly “carnivalesque,” unmonitored and almost involuntary. As pointed out in the article, children can become so immersed in stories that the lines between the plot and reality are blurred.

Finally, Lynsey and I discussed how the ways in which we each read the article compared. We both read the article on our laptops and took physical, written notes on paper. However, the way in which we took notes differed. Lynsey focused on writing down what she though was most important from the article. I focused on writing down what I believed the big points the author wanted me to know were. Both methods were effective for each of us in the end!

Lynsey and I after our discussion! 

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Readerly Exploration #3

Emma Slocum

10/10/18

Miller (2013), Chapter 4, “In October”

Worthy, et. al. (2015), “What Are the Rest of the Students Doing? Literacy Work Stations in Two First-Grade Classrooms”

“In October” Big Takeaway: We can grow students understanding and independence as readers by teaching them how to think aloud and utilize their existing schema.

·     Nugget: We can teach students about making meaningful connections by evaluating whether the connections they are making help them understand their reading on a deeper level or not. For example does pointing out that you have the same name as a character deepen our understanding of the text overall?

“What Are the Rest of the Students Doing? Literacy Work Stations in Two First-Grade Classrooms” Big Takeaway: Literacy work stations should be supported by the teacher and closely tied to the reading students do with the teacher in groups so that students, especially those who are struggling, can  have purposeful and meaningful experiences in the literacy classroom.

·     Nugget: Even in the most thoughtful, well-planned classrooms, guided reading and work station time was unproductive if unmonitored by the teacher. In fact, the lack of effectiveness of literacy stations when designed this way was comparable to the effectiveness of students simply sitting and doing worksheets.

In my Exploration, I took the time after each reading, just to type out my initial response. Whatever I felt or whatever came to mind after reading is what I put on the page. It was cool to see the connections I made to my own life after reading them through and it made the readings feel even more relevant and meaningful.

Initial Response to Miller Chapter 4: “In October”

           Miller’s chapters always leave me thinking about a lot and feeling both inspired and slightly overwhelmed. I am excited to have her book with me as I go into the teaching field, but right now sometimes all of her charts and suggestions feel so out of reach for me as a preservice teacher just trying to learn how to make an instructional plan! Despite the slightly overwhelming number of resources and information in Miller, I also always feel so inspired by her writing. In this particular chapter “In October,” she emphasizes believing in your students, setting goals for them, and making their thinking visible. She models how to lead a think-aloud and how to introduce the idea of schema to students. One thing that especially stood out to me in this chapter was how much Miller treats her students with respect. She doesn’t shy away from teaching them big words like “schema,” or “misconception,” or even talking about hard, real world issues with her young students. She values their feedback and ideas and structures her class in a way that makes them a part of the decision-making. This is something I hope to do in my future classroom.

Initial Response to “What are the rest of the students doing?”

           This article really resonated with my experiences in classrooms recently. I did not grow up in schools that implemented centers in anything so seeing them was really new to me last semester when I started my sophomore field experience. All three of my placements in the filed so far have included literacy stations in their classrooms. All three have specifically used the daily 5 method. I have witnessed the struggle of teachers to lead guided reading groups while the class has 5 different stations going on at once. In my current placement in a second grade classroom, students constantly interrupt the teacher while she leads guided reading. Whether they are asking to use the restroom, having trouble with their ipads, or not focusing on the task at hand, there are consistently interruptions. She has worked extensively with them on how she wants the stations to run, but has actually just started guided reading groups for this very reason. She is attempting to limit interruptions by placing a stuffed dog on the table when she’s working with groups. She has told the students that this dog signifies that she is unavailable to answer their questions, but they still come to her with them. I think that the activities the students do in the stations are engaging, they just tend to have genuine difficulty using the ipads sometimes. More explicit instruction about problem-solving may be needed to limit interruptions during guided reading.

Here are some pictures of the guided reading time/ daily 5 time in the classroom where I am currently placed. Students rotate between read to self, word work, journal writing, and choosing their own option from a list. They are also pulled for guided reading during this time as pictured above. It is awesome to see the things I am reading about in action!

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Simulation Journal #2

Friday, Oct. 5 @ 11:59 PM

Emma Slocum

Part I.

Within our simulation, your first deadline for your Unit Plan pilot project is fast approaching and you will have to submit Part I to Mrs. Fletcher this week. In your In-Service trainings, she’s been walking you through Messiah School District’s approach to instructional design using the Systems Model and has also begun to explain the district’s instructional plan template bit by bit. However, she hasn’t had time to answer all of your questions and seems to expect that you will complete parts of the Unit Plan before you’ve had a chance to really gain your confidence with the process. Not only that, but she’s asking you to do things for which she never intends to provide professional development for you at all, such as how to design a strong scope and sequence for a thematic unit of study.

Describe how you have felt “giving it a go” when you know there are very real expectations (deadline from your fictional principal and grades from your real professor) and share some things you’ve learned about yourself as a professional as you’ve undertaken this task.

Part II.

How does reflecting on our simulation in this way help you think about our course driving question differently? (Driving Question: How can teachers create effective instruction that is good for children and maintains the integrity of their philosophy within the constraints of administrative and other external mandates?)          

“Giving it a go,” has been quite the overwhelming experience.  Once the “Teacher In Service” portion of our course began we hit the ground running and haven’t looked back. From learning about academic standards and how to search for them, to writing instructional goals and essential content, I feel like I have learned more in the past few weeks than I did in some of my semester-long classes in the past! Even just searching on the SAS site for the state standards was so eye-opening and new to me. It really connected that what we are learning is what we are going to be doing as real teachers. I also was overwhelmed when we talked about different types of knowledge because I did not have a handle on the concept of Bloom’s taxonomy since I am taking Educational Psychology currently (a semester late). 

Working with in a group also always presents challenges and is slightly overwhelming especially with high-pressure assignments. I have had to learn to be very flexible. This isn’t always something that is easy for me because I am someone who loves to make a plan and stick to it. However, my group lost a member so we had to adapt and help each other out a lot. Through this process I have also learned to just give things a shot and not worry too much if I don’t do everything perfectly. In the process of learning about instructional goals, I wrote a bunch of instructional goals that were completely incorrect because they were way too “fuzzy” and content specific.                                                                                                                    

“Giving it a go,” has been so overwhelming and difficult because we are being asked to learn in the process of doing. As a professional, I am going to be asked to do things I am not 100% comfortable with. I also may have to work in groups that are difficult or deal with unexpected changes. The more I learn in this class the more I realize how important it is to be flexible and be able to take risks. I am developing these skills and hope to develop them further as I mature as a teacher and instructional designer.

Reflecting on this part of our simulation has made me realize that our driving question “How can teachers create effective instruction that is good for children and maintains the integrity of their philosophy within the constraints of administrative and other external mandates?” can be applied both philosophically and practically. We are starting to learn how to apply it practically by learning what it looks like to create actual instruction that is (hopefully) good for children. We are learning why we follow a certain model of instructional design and why it is effective for learning. However, many school districts will not use the same model as the one we are learning to implement. We have to design our instruction in a way that makes sense so that students can learn on a deep level and so that we can be effective in our instruction no matter what type of instructional plan we are asked to make.

An example of the EATS model of planning. My mentor teacher gave this to me as a resource to show me how she plans instruction. 

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Readerly Exploration #2

Emma Slocum

9/27/18

Wessel-Powell, Kargin & Wohlwend (2016), “Enriching and Assessing Young Children’s Multimodal Storytelling” Leong & Bodrova (2018), “Why Children Need Play” Scholastic (2018), “Building Language and Literacy Through Play”

·     “Enriching and Assessing Young Children’s Multimodal Storytelling” Big Takeaway: Teaching children how to tell stories multimodally can allow emergent writers to effectively communicate at a high level.

o  Nugget: You can use minilessons and modeling to teach students “tools” for multimodal storytelling such as character development, writing a script, and making a set. I loved how one teacher fully committed to modeling and came in as an “old lady” character to show her class what becoming a character looks like.

·     “Why Children Need Play” Big Takeaway: It is important to promote productive play that includes negotiation, symbolism, roles and rules, and multiple themes in early childhood education because it has a large impact on cognitive and social skills.

o  Nugget: Productive play helps children learn to consider the perspectives and needs of other people.

·     “Building Language and Literacy Through Play” Big Takeaway: Dramatic play has the most profound effect on language and literacy development so teachers need to facilitate it in their classrooms through helping students use props imaginatively, learn symbolic representation, and expand their play themes.

o  Nugget: It is important to gradually replace props that imitate real objects with ones that can have more than one function so that students can develop both their imagination and use of descriptive language.

I explored these texts through the lens of socioeconomic status. To begin,  I read the texts and considered the implications of play and literacy for students from a low SES background. After I finished reading, I did some research on what the lives of children who come from low SES backgrounds look like. Many students from this background have different responsibilities compared to students from with a higher SES. For example, they may have to look after their siblings, cook for themselves, and even maybe worry about their parents. Students with a low SES also usually have higher amounts of overall stress in their life both physically and mentally (American Psychological Association, 2018). These unideal circumstances leave little room for play at home. This makes play in the classroom even more important for students from low SES backgrounds. Unfortunately, these students typically attend schools without much funding who may not consider play a valuable classroom literacy tool. These schools also may not have the resources such as extra craft supplies, laptops, cameras, etc.to engage students in multimodal storytelling. Despite this reality, play in the classroom is vital for students who are not able to play at home because it helps to develop cognitive and social skills needed for future success. As seen in the Wessel-Powell, Kargin & Wohlwend article, storytelling through play allows students who are still emerging in their literacy skills or maybe even behind in their literacy skills to express themselves effectively. Finally, I did dome research on the effects of low SES on play and found a study concluding that, “the exposure to positive experiences, such as peer interaction and preschool setting, may minimize the effects of poverty conditions on the play behavior of children (Von Zuben, 1991).” This further strengthened my conviction that play is vital in the classroom for students from low SES backgrounds.

American Psychological Association. (2018). Children, Youth, Families, and Socioeconomic Status. Retrieved September 27, 2018, from http://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/children-families.aspx

Von Zuben, M. V., et. al. (1991, February). A pilot study of differences in play behavior between children of low and middle socioeconomic status. - PubMed - NCBI. Retrieved September 27, 2018, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2035587

This is a video of a project my sister and I did many years ago. We created a movie for a summer workshop we attended. When I was reading the Wessel-Powell, Kargin & Wohlwend article on multimodal storytelling, I immediately thought of this. We created characters, sets, and a script and even got our dad involved. Doing this was something we never forgot which just proves how effective multimodal storytelling could be in the classroom. 

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Readerly Exploration #1

Emma Slocum

9/21/18

“Reading with a Crayon: Pre-Conventional Marginalia as Reader Response in Early Childhood”- Sara Fischer

Reading with Meaning Chapter 1: “Guiding Principles”- Debbie Miller

·     Fischer Big Takeaway: The drawings young children do in books before they can read and write are more than just “graffiti,” they reflect early literacy and are significant signs that children engage with picture books on a deep level.

o  Nugget: Too often we “give” books to children but we do not allow them to have full ownership over them through drawing in them and exploring them creatively.

·     Miller Big Takeaway: As a teacher it is vital to have well-thought out guiding principles for what you believe is best for your students so that you can be an advocate for them no matter what is mandated.

o  Nugget: I really liked how much Miller stressed that as the teacher it is vital for you to model your expected behavior for students. Students won’t get it unless you show them how. All of the very specific examples of troubleshooting in the classroom with children who may be causing disruptions were so thoughtful and kind. I also appreciated how she emphasized that we want to don more than just teach kids how to read, we want to teach them that if they’re sincere, we’ll do everything in our power to support them in their learning and growth as a person (Miller, 2013 p. 24).

Exploration:

I was very intrigued by the idea of young children drawing in their picture books and how it is linked to early literacy after doing these readings. I also wondered if it helped develop what Miller described as “proficient readers.” I first tried to think back to my own childhood and could not recall whether I wrote in my books or not. I called my parents to double check and they said that I did not because they had a rule against it. This made me wonder how many of my close friends could remember their early reading experiences so I interviewed them at dinner. The majority of them all said that they did not draw in their picture books because they were not allowed. This was unexpected to me, I though more people would have drawn in their books as children, but it seems that it really is taboo and seen as “graffiti,” in a  lot of families. Many of my friends said that if they had not been restricted, they believe that they would have drawn in their books. Some even said that they drew on blank paper and interacted with stories that way. This made me think about whether drawing in picture books was linked to children becoming “proficient readers,” later on in their literacy development. According to Miller, one of the characteristics of proficient readers is that they “create visual and other sensory images from text during and after reading.” (Miller, 2013 p. 14) If we are restricting children from fully engaging in a text so early on in life, will this restrict their literacy development later on? I think that people can become proficient readers later in life, as Miller explored in her own career. However, the sooner we can help children become proficient readers the better. This has implications on how I will teach and the guiding principles of my classroom. If I want my students to become proficient readers, I will take a learner-centered approach to literacy and assess what the best practices are for my students.

This is the chart I made to conduct my interview and all the people who I interviewed. It was interesting to note that the only two people who did write in their books were my dad and boyfriend, also the only two males I interviewed. While I only interviewed a VERY small number of people, I wonder if there is a higher tendency for males to write in their books as children. 

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Instructional Design Simulation Journal Entry #1

Friday September 14, 2018

Emma Slocum

Part 1:

Now that you’ve made it through your New Teacher Orientation in our simulation, talk about an instance in which what is expected of you in this district might be at odds with your teaching philosophy and/or an instance in which what the district says they believe might be at odds with how things are actually run.

Part II.

How does reflecting on our simulation in this way help you think about our course driving question differently? (Driving Question: How can teachers create effective instruction that is good for children and maintains the integrity of their philosophy within the constraints of administrative and other external mandates?)

During “New Teacher Orientation,” it was quite clear that the district expected teachers to prepare their students for standardized testing. If students do not do well on the test, this will reflect poorly on their teaching. However, Principle Fletcher explicitly stated that we are not to “teach to the test.” This made me think about an interesting dilemma. The district wants the school to get good test scores and I am sure Principle Fletcher feels this pressure. However, she presented us with quite the contradiction: You will be evaluated based on how well your class scores on the test, but you should not teach to the test. It leaves teachers at a crossroads: Do I prepare my students well for standardized tests so that I look good, or do I teach them in a way I believe is good for them, and disregard my appearance. I am sure many teachers today feel this pressure. Based on my own teaching philosophy, I think that I will have to find a healthy balance where my students are prepared for the test, but it does not take over my classroom and goals.

Another topic regarding teacher evaluation that we talked about was the political origins of how teachers are evaluated. From immigration to Common Core Standards,  it is important to remember that there is often a political agenda behind many of the requirements that may contradict my personal philosophy on teaching. With politics involved, education can become more of a business that disregards the best interests of students. It will also be a challenge for me to work within these political constrains to teach my students in a way that aligns with my personal philosophy on teaching.

Reflecting on our simulation has made the driving question (How can teachers create effective instruction that is good for children and maintains the integrity of their philosophy within the constraints of administrative and other external mandates?) more difficult for me. It presents a challenge for me as a teacher who will have to answer to external mandates, but has a Christian worldview that heavily impacts my philosophy on teaching. What I believe is good for students may not be what the state or the district believes is good for students. It has also opened my eyes to the fact that the school district may also present me with conflicting information about what is expected of me. For example: not teaching to the test, but being evaluated on how well my students perform on standardized tests. I am very grateful that our course driving question will force me to wrestle with these very real potential challenges.

An interesting news report illustrating the pressure that is put on teachers not to teach to the test, even though students are still required to take high stakes tests and teachers are still evaluated on their scores each year.