Tompkins Chapter 5

In the reading for this week, one thing that I saw that related well to my field experience is the use of word walls and how Tompkins applies the use of word walls to the understanding of fluency for both reading and writing. What my CT does with her word wall, is that she slowly introduces words based on degree of difficulty, and once the word is introduced and practiced, it is placed on the word wall where students are constantly referencing it for when they are reading books or looking for how to spell words. This is how the word wall is being used for the writing and reading literacy. I think it is important to keep the words at a level that the students will understand. My CT does this by first only having 2-letter and 3-letter words on the word wall. Now, three quarters of the way through the year, they now have some 4-letter and 5-letter words on the wall that the students are all comfortable with. They also use the sounds that they know from these words to help them apply it to when they are learning new words as well.

Chapter 5

This chapter focused mostly on how to get students to read and write fluently. One of the ways it describes is having high frequency words posted on a word wall so the students see them frequently so they can spell them well and understand how to use them in a sentence. In my classroom, 5th grade, we don't have a specific word wall however we have quotes posted all over the wall. My CT posts them up after they have read them and analyzed them in their journals. This way, if they have any questions about any of the words in the quotes they can ask as we are analyzing them. Also, they will understand how to use them and if there are other ways we usually explain how to use them in those ways. Having them write in their journals also gets their writing fluency better and allows them to look back at the end of the year to see how far they have progressed in their writing.

Chapter 3

While reading Tompkins, I thought it was largely stressed on the importance of reading and writing strategies for teachers to incorporate into lessons. Not only was this stressed with many different thoughts and ideas, but being a motivational teacher when using these strategies was just as important. It is very important to be aware of students reading and writing abilities at the younger grades because that is when they are developing the most. We as teachers need to recognize these abilities, and guide reading and writing strategies best to their learning level. I witness a lot of different reading strategies within my placement currently. Although my teacher uses reading groups all the type for literacy, and never whole group; she still does great motivational discussion with the kids. Using predictions, asking "what if" questions, and relating the story to their own personal experiences really help with comprehension for the students. These questions are motivational because they all want to participate. She often leaves the students to do some type of group "assignment". For example, having them fill out a ven-diagram for the last story they read was very useful. This was a good way to force the students to recognize similarities and differences when they weren't that obvious in the story. This created higher level thinking for these 2nd grade students. They worked off each others thoughts and ideas, and actually lead to even more discussion about the story without the teacher being present. Although, my teachers reading strategies are well identified in the classroom, I see lack of motivation and strategy for writing. Students are unmotivated, and often frustrated when it is time for journal, or writing sentences with their spelling words. I feel that the teacher should set up different opportunities for the students to be more motivated about writing in order to succeed. The more that these students lack interest in writing, the greater chance they have of falling behind. Thats it why I feel is it important to created opportunities that are better geared toward things they will be inspired by to create the motivational aspect. I've come to the recognition over the past year taking TE401/402 that motivation is key. Having the best lesson plan means nothing unless you can find a way to first get your students motivated.

Tompkins Chapter 3

The reading for this week got me thinking more about how reading instruction is applied to the learning of the kindergarten students that I observe. Tompkins talks a lot about reading strategies for younger level students. Some of the strategies that I feel are very important are predicting and asking questions. I feel predicting really helps engage the students into what they are reading. I use this practice a lot, even when the students are doing their individual "quiet reading". I've found that by going around and asking kids about what they think will happen in a story before they read it, they are more likely to attempt to read that story, rather then just staring at the cover or just leaving the book on the ground. During reading, it is important to stop the student and not only re-cap what happened so far in the story, but also recall the predictions that were made and perhaps edit those predictions. I really liked how Tompkins talked about different ways to teach aspects such as writing letters and working on phonetics (sounds). These are aspects that also apply to my field work.

Tompkins, Chapter 3

In Tompkins Chapter 3, one important point I read which I also see in my classroom is the description of reading, “teachers read aloud to children and use shared reading, guided reading, and the language experience approach to teach reading. This is one concept I see in my classroom all the time when they are doing literacy. My CT does a lot of the read aloud technique to the class, instead of with the class or guided reading. I feel as though having the students pop-corn read or do guided reading, the class would be much more engaged and the students would get more out of it, as the book mentions as well. I also read and enjoyed learning about the literacy centers and the different variety they can be put together, for example, “ Bag A Story”, “Story Reenactment” and “Messages”. The "Message" activity was pretty interesting considering we discussed the necessity of practicing different genres, types of reading/writing and message writing to classmates is an interesting technique to use in class. I would be hesitant to use writing messages to classmates here however because I would not want my students to continue it after the session lesson.

Tompins, Chapter 7, Comprehension

In chapter seven of Tompkins, there was a strong overall focus on Comprehension. I found this chapter to be especially interesting to me because this is a topic that I often struggle with. Tompkins gave many suggestions on ways to help develop better comprehension for your students in the classroom such as sequencing, prediction, worksheet activities, etc. I think that we as teachers struggle with knowing and identifying with what strategies will work best for out classroom. I felt his suggestions were very intelligent and workable strategies to improve comprehension, but as teachers, I feel as thought it is a trial and error process for which ones will work best with your individual group of students. It can be hard to teach students that reading is more then just retelling a story, that it is the cognitive process of making connections with the text and conveying meaning; basically teaching different thinking skills. Although I feel that Tompkins strategies are well developed ideas, I feel the strongest about group discussion. In group discussion the teacher can develop questions that require higher level thinking, and can see how the students respond;whereas with other activities, you may not receive as good feedback. The problem with group discussion is time, and that is why I feel that teachers don't use group discussion as much.
In my classroom, my CT using the prediction strategy all the time in her reading groups. The students begin first by taking a "picture walk" silently by themselves. When the students are done, my CT will ask the students what they think will happen in the story by what they saw in the pictures. This seems to engage the students and they are excited to explain their idea. I like this strategy because it does keep the students attention, and they are focused on the story more. At the end, the students get to see who's prediction was the closest, then my CT begins with comprehension questions. She still relates the students prior predictions by stating, "Well do you think the story would have ended the same way if your prediction was right?". This really gets the students thinking, and they are getting more out of the reading groups then just summarizing a story. Different levels of thinking are being shown by asking questions such as these by the students.

In the Tompkins reading, I learned about the importance of reading activities to aid understanding. These activities can occur before, during, or after the reading. I found the most useful ones to be the ones that forced the students to think about the reading beforehand (predicting) and afterwards (recapping). Both of these tasks can be accomplished through a variety of ways, and to choose one would take a careful analysis of what works best for a certain classroom. I find that classroom participation works out best when students are put into groups or are given a set of pre-questions to answer. For the classroom I am in, a Kindergarten classroom, it is hard to get a higher-level of discussion going, but often the teacher will make a quick round through the students to get their predictions of what they think will happen based on a small piece of information, such as the title of the book, title of the chapter, or an excerpt from a certain section. This usually takes about 5 minutes and not only lets the children make predictions, but allows them to hear the ideas of others as well. I find it important to ask questions throughout the book as well, but not too often as I feel it will disrupt the flow of the book. A post-reading discussion usually works best with the Kindergarteners, and I find asking questions to the students about what happened during the reading a good way to recap.