Katie Dahl's Blog

Slavin (Ch. 1)

Is there a reading crisis in America?

No the press makes out that there is one but in all truth students’ reading abilities are not diminishing. They are just not improving.

Are we doing as well as we should in elementary school?

I think many teachers just teach one way of reading when a child needs to get many forms of it in order to learn.

How instruction can impact children:

Example: Average School (Hardin Park)

100 first graders in 4 classrooms (25 in each)

Categories of Students      Percentage in School          Count in Classroom (100)          Count (25)

Natural Readers (40-50%)         50%                                         50                                           12

Teachable (30-40%)                  35%                                          35                                            8

Tutorable (10-20%)                   13%                                          13                                            4

True Dyslexics (1-2%)                2%                                            2                                            1

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Morris (Ch. 2)

Explain what Morris means by the traditional role of kindergarten is “to level the playing field” in terms of literacy experience.

In kindergarten is where every student should be brought up to the same level of reading.

What literacy activities should be included in a kindergarten reading program?

⋲        Reading aloud to children

⋲        Guided contextual reading

⋲        Letter-sound study

⋲        Writing

Why read aloud to children? (5 things children learn)

⋲        It extends their experiences beyond their immediate surroundings

⋲        It provides them with a vocabulary to name the new experiences

⋲        It acquaints them with the characteristics, rhythms, and structures of the written language

⋲        Listening involves the child in creating a mental image and sustaining it over time

⋲        They can use language symbols to create a mental world beyond the present context

Why is guided contextual reading important in kindergarten?

The child will not only learn how to pronounce the word correctly but also how to sound it out for themselves.

What is echo reading?

When the teacher reads and then the child echoes what was read.

Describe dictated experience stories (language experience approach—LEA)

It is when you use children’s own experiences, recorded in their own language to teach them to read.

Describe big book approach (shared reading approach)

It is a book with large print and pictures so that everyone can see and read along with the teacher at the same time.

Why include both LEA and shared reading methods in kindergarten?

It will extend children’s experiences and nurture their language development.

Why is finger pointing so important for early readers?

It is important for the teacher to finger point to the words they are reading so that students can see where a word begins and ends.

Questions about letter-sound study:

⋲        How long does it generally take a child to learn letter-sound correspondence?

Questions about early writing:

⋲        How do you do assessments of writing at that age? Do you even grade early writers?

⋲        Is writing a part of the Standard Course of Study?

⋲        Should writing or reading come first? Could teaching one or the other first hinder a child’s understanding of language?

Is there a role for independent reading in kindergarten?

Not at this stage. At this level the elements of the program include: reading stories aloud, guided contextual reading, letter-sound work, and early writing.

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Morris (Ch. 3)

What does Fraatz (1987) mean by “paradox of collective instruction”?

Not only do teachers have to provide reading instruction for everyone but they also have to simultaneously address individual differences among their students.

What are the three critical components of learning to read?

⋲        Attend to individual sounds within words

⋲         Decode printed words by matching letters to sounds

⋲        Automatize decoding or word-level processing so that the mind can concentrate on the meaning of what is being read

List the four tasks that the first-grade teacher can use to assess individual children’s reading ability during the first week of school. Describe what each task is used to assess?

The four tasks are alphabet, concept of word in text, spelling, and word recognition. When assessing alphabet knowledge the teacher should make sure that the student is able to name letters as he/she is pointing to them. When assessing concept of word in text the teacher should make sure that the student is able to identify individual words within a sentence one echo-reading has been performed. When assessing spelling the teacher should pay close attention to the number of phonemes that the student is able to identify within a word. When assessing word recognition the teacher should pay attention to the number of words that the student is able to correctly recognize.

What are some of the challenges of small-group instruction that face students and teachers?

⋲        Just getting a class of a manageable size

⋲        Providing affective instruction

⋲        Supporting children in reading a text when they lack vocabulary

⋲        Tedious reading lessons with stumbling

How does Supported Oral Reading (SOR) differ from round robin reading in guiding children’s contextual reading?

The teacher reads the section aloud while the children mumble read and follow along with their fingers.

Why is appropriate leveling of books important and how has it been used in intervention and classroom settings?

Aiming instruction too low wastes time and effort. While aiming too high frustrates a student. Word recognition should be taught in the small reading groups. This way they get what they need and do not fall behind.

Describe the developmental sequence of word study instruction. What does the continuum consist of? Why is it recommended that teachers follow such a sequence of instruction?

The sequence of instruction begins with beginning consonants, next word families, third short vowels, and finally one syllable vowel patterns. The continuum consists of what the child knows. It focuses more on broader conceptual levels rather than discrete skills. It is recommended that teachers follow a sequence of instruction because there are so many individual differences among children within a classroom when it comes to their word knowledge.

How could you assess where a beginning reader’s is at on the continuum of word recognition skill?

Analyze their inventive spellings. It tells a lot about where the child is in their word recognition process and how they are doing with letter-sound correspondence.

Describe word sorting activities to teach beginning sound consonants and short-vowel word families.

A teacher could give a child picture cards and ask them to sort the pictures according to their beginning consonant sounds. For example a picture of a ball would be placed under the letter card “b” or under another picture that also starts with that same letter. This helps students understand beginning consonant sounds by giving them a hands-on activity. Learning short-vowel families is a little more complicated than beginning consonant sounds. Students will learn five short vowels, one at a time, using rhyming words. A word sorting activity that would help with this would be when a teacher places three “header” words on the table. The students will then read these words and must be able to do so independently. Next the teacher will demonstrate the activity by sorting the next set of letters under the appropriate header word. For example if the header word was “hat” the word that the teacher would place underneath it would be sat or if the header word was man the teacher would place ran under it.

What skills does word sorting help develop in beginning readers coupled with word games and spell checks?

It helps them “master the high frequency short and long vowel patterns” which will help them begin to make sense of other spelling patterns they come upon in reading. Good phonics instruction will lead students to fluent reading.

What is instructional pacing? What factors were found by Barr (1974, 1982) to affect effective pacing?

Instructional pacing refers to the teacher’s skill in leading his/her students through a set of graded reading materials. The first factor was that when teachers used a more difficult basal they were less successful because it did not help the lower readers in the class. The second factor was instructional time because the more time teachers spent directly working with children on reading the farther advanced they became. The third factor was the number of low readiness or low ability readers that were in a classroom. The larger the number of struggling readers added difficulty in the way that the teacher could pace reading instruction. The final factor was the number of years that the teacher had been teaching first grade.

In what ways can writing help beginning reader’s development?

Writing can help develop phoneme awareness and later in first grade it can help students assume the stance of the author which is also important. Writing can allow students to experiment, practice, and internalize letter sounds along with spelling patterns and site words.

What are three tasks that could be used to assess end-of-year reading achievement? Describe the tasks briefly.

⋲        Word recognition task-The student attempts to read a list of forty words graded in difficulty from early first grade to mid-second grade.

⋲        Spelling task-The student attempts to spell a list of fifteen words. There is a special scoring system that is used for this spelling test.

⋲        Passage reading task-The student reads up to six passages ranging in difficulty from early first grade to late second grade.

1. Describe in broad stokes the reading processes that take place during comprehension of informational text (p. 362, under Construction of Meaning and Concept Development with Informational Texts).

The reading processes that take place are accessing accurate, relevant knowledge, managing mental processes reading within the confines of a limited working memory, and constructing a coherent mental representation through pruning and organizational processes

 

2. Specify the effect that background knowledge may have on constructing mental representations from informational text. Why should teachers be concerned about activating prior knowledge?

Mediation that prompts young readers to activate relevant background information is an important support, but teachers must be sensitive to dialogue indicating that children may be relying on inaccurate or irrelevant prior knowledge.

3. What are the three instructional approaches that can be used to help primary-grade students comprehend informational text? Describe their common (p. 365) and distinctive features (p. 363-5).

The three instructional approaches are: picture walk, know-want to learn-learn, and directed reading-thinking activity. The common aspects of these three are: (a) an emphasis on reader engagement and social mediation, (b) activation of relevant prior knowledge, and (c) anticipation (or purposeful prediction) of what information might be likely to be included in a text.

The distinctive features are: Picture Walk is a precursor for reading the book. The teacher along with the students flips through the book and has a conversation about the pictures. The students use their problem-solving skills to determine what is going on in the story.

 KWL or Know-Want to Learn-Learn is a process during which the teacher generates a discussion about a text topic and uses a chart or worksheet to record students’ statements about what they know (K), want to learn (W), and, after reading, what they learned (L).

DRTA or Directed Reading-Thinking Activity is an instructional framework that views reading as a problem-solving process best accomplished in a social context. The teacher’s role is to select an instructional level text, divide the text into meaningful sections, and facilitate discussion of each section of text. Students are responsible for establishing their own purposes for reading, generating predictions, justifying those predictions, independently reading the text, and verifying or revising predictions based on evaluations of information in the text during the teacher-led discussion of each section.

4. What is the purpose of the experimental study reported?

            The purpose of this study was to explore how the PW, KWL, and DRTA might influence developmental reading abilities and content acquisition when used with informational text in the primary reading group context.

5. Who were the subjects?

            The participants were 31 second-grade students in two demographically similar schools, in the same school district, in a midsize Midwest city.

6. Describe the reading materials used during the intervention.

            The reading materials used was informational texts on topics that were likely to be familiar to second-grade students. The texts addressed science topics that had been taught to the students in their first- or second grade science curriculum as part of the state science content standards. The specific sequence of topics for each group during both cycles was: spiders, the moon, how water changes form, and insects.

7. How long did the experiment last?

            He gathered data over 10 weeks, conducting two four-week periods of intervention

within that time frame.

8. What were the experimental conditions?

            Data was gathered over 10 weeks, with two four-week periods of intervention within that time frame. Groups 1 through 4 from School A received the intervention during the first cycle, and Groups 5 through 8 from School B received the intervention during the second four-week cycle. After two days of individual pre-experimental screening to ensure that readers shared a common instructional level, a 45-minute orientation session with each group was conducted. There were 12 days of intervention in each cycle. Each group received each treatment for three days, with data being collected only on the third day. On the day following the conclusion of the intervention cycle, students were interviewed about the comprehension strategies and instructional preferences.

 

9. Describe the procedures specific to the Picture Walk, KWL, DRTA, and the Control Group conditions.

            Picture Walk: In PW a brief overview of the text is provided and then an interactive discussion about the book follows. Students will talk about the pictures, the text structure, the student’s prior knowledge, and then they formulate predictions based on that information. Then new vocabulary is introduced before even reading the text; afterward the students read independently and then determine if their predictions were correct.

            KWL: On the first and third day a KWL chart was collectively produced and then students would discuss the topic. On Day 2 and Day 3, each child wrote what he or she knew on a personal KWL chart before it was shared and written on our large group chart. Next, the children categorized the recorded information. The next step was for the children to generate questions about the topic. The same brief overview of the book was provided that the other groups received before reading. Their questions and “want to learn” statements were written on the group chart each day. Next there were guided discussions to help the children generate questions based on the table of contents or text headings and that would likely be answered from reading each text. After reading, they began their post-reading discussion by considering whether the text had provided answers to any student questions. If so, they were recorded in the information chart under the “What I Learned” column. Then the children had an opportunity to record their new learning on their personal KWL chart before they shared and recorded the new learning on the group chart.

            DRTA: Before reading, the students formulated and justified predictions about the text based on the title, cover, prior knowledge, and if available, table of contents. Students predicted for a two-page or three-page section of text. Then they mumble read that section of text. After reading each section of text, a brief discussion was held to verify predictions, summarize the information in the text, and generate new predictions for the next section of text based on the discussion about the text, pictures, and headings, if available. At the conclusion of the entire text, discussion was minimal about the overall text.

            Control: The children had an opportunity to read the same informational texts that were read in the intervention conditions. Before reading I presented the same brief overview of the text that had been provided to the treatment groups. Then the children independently mumble read the new text. Independent reading was always followed by drawing a picture and/or writing about something they would like to share with the group based on the text.

10. What measures were used to determine the relative effectiveness of the treatments? Describe the measures briefly.

VRT: On days 1 and 3 the students are given a list of 25 words.  18 of these words are related to the text and 7 of them have nothing to do with the text.  On the 3^rd day, students categorized the words under headings on a concept map.  They determined the yes/no method was pretty reliable for assessment.  This method provides a very good understanding to see if students truly know vocab words.

Maze: This task was a multiple-choice cloze modification.  It was a timed (3 minutes) group-administered task.  The original text read by the student was reprinted after 10 content words were deleted.  The score on the maze task was the number of the correct responses.

Free Recall: Students were asked to talk about everything they remembered from the text.  They were scored by a code sheet.

Cued Recall: The students were asked to answer three explicit and three implicit questions based on the day’s text.  First the items were scored as correct or incorrect as a measure of general comprehension.  Both correct and partially correct items were scored as correct.  Then a 4 point scale was used to produce weighted scores for each answer.

Post-Intervention Interview: At the end of each cycle, individual strategy interviews were done with the students in that cycle.  They were recorded and transcribed.  The interviews were conducted to determine if students gained knowledge of the 2 common strategies, activation of prior knowledge and prediction.

11. Which treatment(s) were found to be more effective in increasing students’ vocabulary knowledge and maze performance (p. 381)?

            Both the PW and DRTA yielded statistically significant effects on the maze. A comparison of effect sizes suggests that a slightly larger proportion of variance is explained by PW.

12. Students’ comprehension of the texts was greater under the DRTA condition than KWL and the control conditions. What do you think explains DRTA’s advantage over the KWL condition (p. 382)?

            DRTA yielded the strongest effects on Cued Recall Points. The scaffolded interactions during reading, actively justifying and verifying predictions, integrating text-based information with prior knowledge, and having an immediate opportunity to discuss new concepts seemed to help these novice readers when they were called on to respond to questions about the text.

13. It was found that the treatments did not differ in the quality and quantity of students’ retellings (p. 384). In other words, students were not differentially affected by the treatments in the way they integrated textual information with prior knowledge. What does this finding mean in terms of the different emphases employed by experience-based (KWL) vs. text-based (DRTA) treatments?

            The KWL focuses on “intervention that encourages, documents, and honors students’ experiences.”