Read Aloud

A few weeks ago, I read a book aloud to my first grade class for the first time. The book I read was called, Bobo and the new neighbor. It was a cute book about about a loveable dog named Bobo. When a new neighbor moves in next door, he goes out of his way to meet them and make them feel welcomed. Reading this book aloud to the class was a great experience and went really well. I have been reading books aloud to the students pretty much since day one, but it was usually just in small groups in the book nook. I learned quickly through this experience that when reading aloud to students, you need to hold the book up, most likely with one arm, in a way that the entire group can see the pictures, and also where you can read the book comfortably. it did not take long for me to notice that while reading aloud, your arm can begin to hurt a little, so it is important to find a comfortable way to hold the book. When I read aloud to the whole class, I was sure to hold the book so all of the students could see it, and also made sure my arm was going to be comfortable holding the book up. Another thing I did during my read aloud was ask the students questions throughout my reading. Sometimes I would ask questions like, “How do you think that made Bobo feel?” to make sure they were comprehending, and other times I would ask prediction questions like, “What do you think is going to happen next?” I read to my first grade class every Friday that I am there and it has been such a fun experience. They love when Ms. Chavis reads to them and I love their attentive faces looking up at me while reading. The most important thing that I have learned through reading aloud to my students is planning and practicing. I am not sure if teachers continue doing this after they have been teaching a while, but I have found that it is very important to read, go over, practice, etc. what I am going to do with my students the next day. Even before I read a book out loud to them, I read it before. I want to make sure I know what I am reading to them before I read to them. I practice stopping points, questions, and vocabulary while reading the book. After my first read aloud, I asked my teacher how I did and she said great! She says typically she has to remind the person to be sure to show the book so the whole class can see it but said I had no problem with that.

 

-Bobo and the New Neighbor

Gail Page

1st grade

picture book

Reciprocal Teaching

I found the information on reciprocal teaching very cool and definitely want to use it in my classroom. The idea of reciprocal teaching is designed to improve reading comprehension. The goal of it is to prepare students to run their own discussion by taking turns as leaders. By practicing and using reciprocal teaching, the students are learning many things, especially how to conversate about something that they just read. Using reciprocal teaching in a classroom seems to be a fairly simple thing to do, the teacher just be sure to model what the students are supposed to do so they understand.

 

There are four different roles for reciprocal teaching, so students should be grouped into 4. The different roles are the summarizer, questioner, clarifier, and the predictor. The students will read a passage (or whatever the teacher has assigned) and take turns being the leader by doing their assigned goals. Each student will get a chance to complete each role because they rotate after each turn. The teacher’s role throughout the process is to guide and nurture the students’ ability to use the four strategies successfully within the small group. As the students get more practice with this activity and begin to develop skill, the teacher’s role is lessened.

 

I think this activity is great for many reasons. For one, it encourages and helps the children develop a sense of independence. The students and their group are working together to create conversation and learn from one another about information they just read. That in itself is awesome. Another reason why I like this idea is because students are working together to break down information so they can understand it better. Reading text and actually taking in the information and learning from it can be a challenging task, and I believe activities like this one show students how to be able to do it successfully.

 

Another thing that we have been discussing in class that I have found helpful is the information on vocabulary. I was absolutely shocked to learn that students add approximately 2000 to 3500 words yearly to their vocabulary. Students are learning most of these words by reading, which shows just how important reading and reading comprehension is. We have learned about multiple word learning strategies, including morphology, using context clues, and dictionary usage. There are many activities students can do as well to help them with vocabulary and reading comprehension, such as discussion direction and word wizard. We have gone over plenty of different ideas and I find them really helpful; I know I will be able to use these in my class one day.

 

Glog Address:

Glog-8659

Breaking Down Words

The article, “Breaking down words to build meaning: morphology, vocabulary, and reading comprehension in the urban classroom,” brought up some great points that made perfect sense. After reading this article, I feel like I learned things about words that I had never thought of before. Whenever I had trouble or confusion on a word in the past, I typically just kind of skipped over it. After reading this article, it has been brought to my attention that breaking the word apart can discover the meaning of many words. Maybe this is common sense to many, however I never looked at it this way. Another helpful tip that I learned in this article is the importance of knowing and teaching prefixes and suffixes. Once a student is familiar with these, they will be able to understand new words a lot quicker. If a student did not know what the prefix ‘dis’ meant, they most likely would not be able to understand what words such as disapproval, disorder, and discomfort means.

 

There were two quotes in the article that struck me. One quote, “Despite their limited vocabularies, some students have effective strategies for learning new words, and these strategies can and should be taught to others. Effective word-learners attack unknown words, break them into their meaningful parts, hypothesize meanings for the larger words, and then check their meanings against the context of the text as well as their own background knowledge.” I like this quote because I really believe it. I believe there are some students who either naturally have different ways of learning new information, or have been taught different and unique ways of learning, but I believe other students can learn from them. When effective word learners are breaking apart words, hypothesize their meanings, and check their meanings with the context of the text, they are able to learn new vocabulary a lot faster and better than other students. Another quote that I really enjoyed was, “An understanding of word structure can be a powerful tool for students faced with the daunting task of acquiring academic vocabulary. A large number of the unfamiliar words that students encounter in printed school English could be understandable if students knew the more common root word and could break the complex word down.” I believe everything about this quote. If a student learns prefixes and suffixes, they will be able to understand new words a lot easier. I feel like knowing this concept could have greatly helped me while in school.

 

After completing the vocabulary activities, I enjoyed the “making choices” one the best. I feel like that activity was challenging because it makes the student think about the difficult vocabulary, but it gives them choices, so it helps them with context clues and breaking the challenging word apart.

Internet Workshops and Blog Publishing

One of the many things that I have learned about elementary schools now is that it is essential to provide and practice the new types of technology in the classroom. One of the ways I have been planning to keep my classroom up to date with new technology nowadays is by having a classroom blog. The article, “Internet Workshop and Blog Publishing: Meeting Student (and Teacher) Learning Needs to Achieve Best Practice in the Twenty-First-Century Social Studies Classroom,” went hand in hand with my thought and also taught me new ways to incorporate blogs and other types of internet media that would be appropriate for the classroom. Classroom blogs are great for many reasons. For one, the teacher does not have to be an Internet or technology genius in order to create and provide a blog for their classroom. We have been learning in many different elementary education classes how to easily do this. One of my favorites that we use now that the article also mentioned is WordPress. WordPress is easy to use and best of all, free. Blogs are the perfect medium for educators to publish, share, and manage information. Teachers can also use classroom blogs to publish their student’s work. This is an awesome way to get students excited about their work since they know it is going to be on the Internet for potentially many to see it. By publishing their work online, students are motivated to produce quality, written work, and their engagement in writing, and the time they invest in the writing process increase when they know their work will be published on the Internet. Another great aspect of classroom blogs is that it is an opportunity for parents to see what is going on in their child’s class and provides a way for them to get involved. Almost everyone, especially adults, spends a great time online and I am sure every parent would love to see what their child is doing in school at the touch of their fingers. Another type of site that can be useful in a classroom is the Internet workshop. Teachers can create a research activity in which students are directed to specific Web sites to gather information, complete a research activity, and share the information with their classmates during a workshop format. I remember doing this a few times in school and I enjoyed it. Not only was it fun, but also it was very educational and showed me different websites with helpful information that I could use in the future. One thing the article did point out about doing something like this is finding kid-friendly websites is trickier than one might think. The article provided some helpful tips and websites to ease that process a little, and also we have been discussing different kid websites in our class now (RE4030), so these resources should be helpful for me when I am student teaching and/or the teacher of my own classroom. After the teacher locates appropriate sites, they then design research activities. Then the students complete the research activities and share and exchange information with their classmates.

 

I really enjoyed looking at the links to the kid-friendly websites, especially the ones on the owls! I think looking at all of the owl links has made me love them as much as Dr. Frye; they are so cute! Looking at the kid-friendly websites gave me an idea of how appropriate kid-friendly websites should be. They should be easy to navigate around, filled with help information that is also easy for children to understand, filled with pictures, most of them have games or activities that children can do to help build their knowledge, etc.

 

Barn Owl Questions:

 

1. List the barn owl’s scientific name.

Tyto alba.

1. What does a barn owl look like? (color, size, etc.) What kind of sounds does it make?

Barn owls have long legs, toes, and talons.The upperparts are light grey with fine dark lines and scattered pale spots on feathers. The underparts are white with few black spots. Their eyes are big and dark. They do not hoot, they screech. They are typically about 16 inches in length, and their wingspan is 3 ½ to 4 feet.

1. Describe the habitat of a barn owl: Where do they live? What kind of shelter do they need?

The barn owl’s habitat is open woodlands, pastures, and croplands (landscapes with grain to harbor good rodent populations). They commonly nest in old barns, grain elevators, cotton gins, and occasionally hollow trees. They need good shelter that can protect them in the winter because mortality is often high for barn owls in hard winters.

1. How is the barn owl especially equipped to catch its prey? (Describe its camouflage and other adaptations.)

Some of the barn owls adaptions are its silent flight, phenomenal vision to see at night and day, specialized hearing, huge and strong talons, the short and curved beak, and their camouflage appearance to blend into environment to help hide them from prey.

1. What do barn owls eat? Where do they find their food?

Primary food is small rodents, but they also eat birds, insects, bats, and reptiles. They are nocturnal foragers and they fly slowly across grasslands searching for prey.

1. Describe any “special talents” of the barn owl.

Because of their effectiveness at hunting rodents, barn owls perform a great service to farmers and others in the grain business who continually face rodent pests. They also hunt by sound, so can do so in complete darkness.

1. Describe the life cycle of a barn owl. (including reproduction)

These nocturnal predators often wait several hours after dark before emerging from their roosts. Nesting may occur in any month of the year. There are usually 5-10 eggs in a clutch. These are incubated for about a month. About 7 weeks after hatching, the young are ready to fledge, but they practice foraging with their parents for another week or so before leaving the area. Life expectancy is only 1 to 2 years.

1. What are some cool “WOW” facts that you learned?

I can’t believe their life span is only 1 to 2 years!

 

DED

 

Passage one	“It was hot in Georgia and Martin wanted to swim in the pool, but the sign said “WHITES ONLY.” Martin was thirsty, but the sign said “WHITES ONLY.” Martin needed to pee. “WHITES ONLY.” (p.3)	Question: I am confused, why did the sign says, “WHITES ONLY”? I have never seen such a sign before. Why were black people not allowed to go or do certain things that white people could do?   Inference: I think that things in America were different in the past. White and black people were treated differently and almost everything they did was segregated.   Reaction: I don’t think this is fair. It makes me sad to think that life used to be like this. I am so thankful that everyone in America is created equally and the laws have changed.
Passage two	“The way things are,” his father preached, “is not the way they always have to be. In the next world, people of all colors will live together and respect each other.”   Martin didn’t want to wait till the next world, by the couldn’t stay angry. (p. 6)	Reaction: Martin seems to care very much about being treated equally, even at a very young age. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for young African American children in those days not to be able to play and do the other things that the white kids were doing.   Inference: I know that Martin grows up to be a lot like his dad. He is a preacher who spreads the word of equality among everyone-black and white.
Passage three	The bus driver laugh. “This wont last long,” one said, honking at an old lady with a cane. (p. 12)	Question: I am confused, why are the whites being so mean and acting so angrily towards the blacks? The blacks never did anything to deserve to be treated this way, so why did the whites think they were so much better than everyone else? This doesn’t seem right; this is not fair.
Passage four	Martin organized a protest march from Selma to Montgomery. “Decent people know that prejudice is wrong,” he said, “but many are too frightened to speak out.” (p. 15)	Question: What does the word prejudice mean?   Inference: We know that so far we have read about blacks being treated differently, unfairly, and not equal to whites. I bet prejudice means something along those lines: being treated differently because of something, in this case, race.
Passage five	“Walk like a prince, not a peasant.” (p. 18)	Connection: I believe that all people, rich, poor, thin, big, black, white, etc., are created equally. That is why I have always treated everyone I meet with respect. I like this quote because everyone should walk with their head high because no one on this Earth is better than anyone else: you are as good as anybody.

5 websites:

http://www.neok12.com/Civil-Rights-Movement.htm

http://pbskids.org/wayback/civilrights/

http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/lbjforkids/civil.shtm

http://www.kidskonnect.com/subject-index/16-history/410-civil-rights-movement.html

http://www.dotcr.ost.dot.gov/asp/forkidsyouth/defaultkids.asp

Shared Reading

The article, Shared Readings: Modeling comprehension, vocabulary, text structures, and text features for older students, was very interesting and taught me different ideas that I had never thought or heard of before. So far, the only type of shared readings I have seen take place and done myself are the basic ones: choral reading, echo reading, and asking questions like, “what do you think is going to happen next?”. I have never seen a teacher model thinking while reading aloud like I read about in this article. At first, I did not like the idea and did not understand how this style of shared reading would be beneficial to students. After reading the entire article, my thoughts changed. What a neat idea! The quote that really struck me was the last paragraph: “…but I’m frustrated. Most everyone doesn’t do this. They ask kids a lot of questions, as if that will make them better readers. I wonder if some of my colleagues don’t know what they think when they read because they’re just good at it. It takes a lot to slow down enough to pay attention to what your brain is doing and then learn to explain it to children.”

 

The reason this quote clicked me with is because I believe that is what makes a great and effective teacher: understanding how one thinks and being able to relay it to students, so they can learn. For example, doing math. For an adult, math problems are fairly easy to do and we just do it. For a teacher, we must understand what young people are seeing and thinking when they are doing math, and figure out ways to reach to different students in order to teach them the material. This is why I liked the information that I read in this article. The teachers in the article were doing shared reading with their students, and once they got to a vocabulary word, new idea, different text structures or features, etc., the teacher would basically think out loud. By doing this, the teacher is modeling thinking to their students. If I have learned anything in this course, it is to model. Model everything. Children are watching and learning from everything that you do, including the way you read and think.

 

I really enjoyed seeing how this way of shared reading is fantastic for working on the student’s comprehension and vocabulary. When the teacher is comprehending what she is reading out loud, the students are able to see how a good reader makes inferences, predictions, and draws conclusions. Once the students see their teacher do this time and time again during read alouds, they will pick up the good habit themselves while reading.

 

I am glad I read this article because I think it is a great way to show students what a good reader does. As we know, students learn what their teachers model and modeling this type of reading is a sure way to improve your students reading skills.

 

FREEDOM SUMMER – SHARED READING

 

Pg 4-comprehension: Here it says that John Henry doesn’t swin in the town pool because he is not allowed. By looking at the pictures, we can tell that John Henry is an African American. We know that in this country a long time ago, African Americans could not do the same things or go to the same places that white people could go. This was called segregation. Thankfully, things have changed since then and now everyone in this country is equal.

 

Pg 6- vocabulary: The little boy said that he and John Henry spout like whales. What does spout mean? We know that whales swim in the ocean, and if we look at the picture, we can see the boy and John Henry swimming on their backs and spitting water out of their mouths into the air. I bet that is what he means by spouting.

 

Pg 15-comprehension: What could they be doing at the pool? The boys were so excited because the pool was going to be open to everyone that day-no matter what color. It looks like they are about to fill up the pool with asphalt. Maybe some people in the town weren’t happy about the pool being open to everyone. Maybe the still wanted the pool to be for whites only. Why would they feel this way?

 

Pg 17-vocabulary: After Will Roger’s told the boys to go home, they did not want to leave and wanted to see what was going on with the pool, so they hunkered in the tall weeds and watched all morning. What does the word hunker mean? I think it means that they bent down or hid in the bushes so no one would see them there so they could secretly watch what was happening.

 

Pg 19-comprehension: Why did the boy tell John Henry that he was wrong even though he knew he was right? I bet it was because they were both sad and the little boy knew it was not fair that John Henry was treated differently because of the color of his skin.

 

Pg 25-comprehension: What a powerful and emotional ending. How do you think the boys were feeling as they entered the store? I bet they were feeling nervous, but brave at the same time. Notice how they are walking in the store with their arms around each other? I bet this is because the little boy wants John Henry to be treated the same as him and he is showing John Henry and everyone in the store that.

R5

The article, R5: The Sustained Silent Reading makeover that transformed readers, was very informational and went hand in hand with what we are doing and talking about in class right now. Most schools are familiar with silent reading time, and though this is an important thing for schools to have, there are many flaws within the system, which makes the time not beneficial to some students. One of the flaws that I have noticed with silent reading time, which the article points out as well, is that many students are fake reading during this time. Since most schools don’t have a system that motivates students are holds them accountable for reading during this time, many students aren’t learning, improving, or benefiting at all during this silent reading time. I hate to admit it, but I was one of these students who “fake read” during silent reading time. I was not a huge fan of reading while I was growing up, so when we had to go to homeroom once a week to read silently for a little while, I typically did little to no reading. I feel like if our teachers would have incorporated the R5 silent reading, I would have seen more of a reason to want to read during this time, and would have improved my reading skills and possibly my joy for reading.  The R5 process is strategically designed to improve the flaws of the normal silent reading time. During R5, the students got to relax and read anywhere in the classroom of their choice. Typically, there are comfortable chairs, beanbags, or other comfortable areas that students can choose to read. I believe that providing an environment like this is a sure way to get students more interested and engaged with reading. While students are reading, they are practicing strategy use and the teacher is walking around and doing a “status of the class”, while conferring with students on their strategy plans. I believe by doing this, the teacher is showing the students that she cares if they are reading, what they are reading, how much they are reading, and making them accountable for it. The silent reading time most of us are used to completely lacks all of this. Next, the students reflect and respond in their reading log. This time helps the students comprehend and record what they just read. This is an important step because not only is it important for students to improve their reading skills, but it is just as important for them to actually comprehend what they have just read. Next, the students pair up and discuss important or interesting things they have just read. The teacher then holds a class discussion, where students talk about what they are their partner just read

 

This article connects to what we have been learning and doing in class because we have been giving reading assessments to the elementary students we are working with at Hardin Park. One issue I have been noticing, and one that this article brought up, is the fact that many students aren’t actually taking in what they are reading. A students may be able to read a passage fine, but if you ask them questions about what they just read, they do not know the answer. Comprehension is a huge part of the reading process, and I believe that the more students read, the better they become with it. I also believe that incorporating reading time in your class, such as the R5, would drastically improve reading and comprehension scores. As a matter of fact, it is proven that it will because the students that the authors of the article monitored had improved scores just months after incorporated this system into their classroom.

 

I believe that the R5 worked so well for many reasons. For one, teachers were having and providing texts to the students that they would actually have interest in. Secondly, teachers were making the students accountable for the reading, but in a caring and comforting way that encouraged the students. Thirdly, I think having the students use the restroom, drink water, etc. before getting started with the silent reading and providing comfortable seating arrangements for them was a huge help.  I have been learning through these articles and by giving reading assessments that reading ability is one of the most important qualities that a student should have. One of the best things I can do since I will be an elementary school teacher is to encourage good reading behavior at a young age and be a good reading role model to my students.

Extending Poetry

In class and from this article, we have learned that children and teachers associate poems with rhyming. This can be a challenging task not only for the teacher’s to teach, but especially for the children to learn. Instead of creating poems with real meaning and feeling, they are so concerned with rhyming words that the poem becomes nonsensical. There are many more worthwhile ways of poem writing that teachers can teach their student’s that the student’s will actually learn and benefit from. The article states that children learn to write poems best when their teacher is demonstrating. Poem writing can begin anywhere, starting usually about the second grade, and can be very informational and educational if done the right now. In the article, the arthor discussed how she would introduce poems by showing them different types, then the class and her collaborated and composed poems filled with descriptive vocabulary on what they just learned about a topic. I loved this idea and I think it is a very creative way to incorporate poem writing, but also provides a way for children to give feedback on what they have just learned. I think that when children learn information in creative and different ways like this, they will retain important content. I have learned a lot of great information on teaching my future student’s how to write poems, but the most important thing I have learned about it is simply providing the formula on how to write poems is not sufficient. Teachers need to model step by step, the process on writing a poem.

Poems

Although I have never been an amazing poem writer, I have always appreciated other people’s work. To me, poems are a form of art because it is someone’s feelings and hardwork written down. Much like how some people don’t “get” or enjoy some artist’s paintings or other types of work, other do like it and are able to see the meaning and beauty in it. The same goes with poems. I don’t like or understand every peice I read, however, there are some that really click with me, because I can relate to it or something along those lines. Also like other types of art, many poems can be interperted differently by everyone. That is one of my favorite things about them.

I enjoyed the book, “Love that Dog.” It was a quick read, but had me hooked the whole time. Somehow I predicted the dog was going to die before the book was over, but it still mad me sad once I finally came to that part. I also liked how the book was written how the young boy Jack was writing his poems. Being able to see how Jack wrote his poems was a cute touch too. It showed me what to expect from my young student’s when teaching them about different forms of poem writing. The poems in “Love that Dog” and “all the small poems and fourteen more” were very similar and I loved reading both books.

Zorgamazoo 2

Wow! I did not expect to enjoy this book as much as I did. After the first chapter or so, I finally got the hang of reading the book. I say got the hang of it because it is a lot more challenging to read this book by the way it is written and still understand and take in the information if you are not reading it correctly. I found that reading it silently, but in a pattern helped me. By doing this, I was able to read the book smoothly, keep up with it, and enjoy it. My favorite things about the book were the descriptions (of characters, places, ideas, etc.), the way it was written (rhyming, different fonts, etc.), and the storyline. My favorite part of the book was in the middle when Katrina overheard Mrs. Krabone and the Doctor discussing what they were going to do to her (Katrina), so she decided to run away. Once she ran away, she experienced different adventures, including running into a few bullies that wanted to hurt her. Then she meets Morty. Those few chapters were very entertaining to me and I did not want to put the book down. Although I enjoyed the whole book, I definitely found the first half of the book better than the second half. I believe I feel this way because the first half is a little more believeable than the second half and I have always had a hard time finding pleasure in unrealistic movies and books. I never watched or read books and movies such as Harry Potter, Twilight, Lord of the Rings, etc. because I just couldn’t get into the fantasy type of entertainment. I understand that many children enjoy this type of entertainment though, and that is why I will love incorporated this book into my future classroom! I have noticed the teacher I am interning for has a chapter book that she reads throughout the day and the children love it. Zorgamazoo is perfect for that read aloud time because it is interesting, fun, entertaining, and has many cliffhangers. I will definitely be holding onto this book.