VoiceThread Link

https://voicethread.com/new/share/6679511/

Week Ten: Why Some Children Have Difficulties Learning to Read

I chose this article because even though I have a pretty good understanding of why students struggle with reading, it never hurts to read further into issues. I found that three important concepts I read within this article are: students raised in families who have reading or speech disabilities are often at risk of struggling, students who are raised in poverty are often at risk, and students who haven't been engaged in the language play that develops an awareness of sound structure and language patterns will most likely be at risk as well, but the most important piece of information that I received from this article was that learning to read begins far before children enter formal schooling.

We often discuss at school how we will begin to see more students with speech and language problems because no one communicates anymore. Everything is done through text or on the computer. Children and parents spend more time on iPads and iPhones than having conversations.

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/why-some-children-have-difficulties-learning-read

Week 9 Reading: Waiting Rarely Works-Late Bloomers Normally Just Wilt

I decided to read this article because I have a few students who I would consider "late bloomers". Whether it is because they have a late summer birthday, aren't as mature as their peers, or their motor skills are a little delayed, I can tell that this is affecting them academically. I have a student that I believe needs to be in speech because his speech is affecting his writing and spelling. He is pronouncing his letters wrong so he thinks that they make different sounds than they really do so this also affects his reading. They have told me that they are later developing sounds so I shouldn't worry about it, but I do because I do not want him to fall behind his peers because he cannot get the help he needs. I also have a student who only knows half of his letters in his second year of Kindergarten. He is on a SAT, but I believe he needs further assistance. Again, I am told that they really do not like to refer students until they are in at least second grade. They think it is too young to identify any learning disabilities at this age. I'm not an expert when it comes to anything in the special education field so I don't know all of the rules and regulations, but I just know that I want to help these kids and it can sometimes be frustrating when I cannot get them the help that they need.

After reading this article, I believe the three most important things that I learned were: students that we refer to as "late bloomers" most likely have a skill deficit that needs to be addressed intensively, the poor readers in this study lacked one important skill which was phonemic awareness, and the struggling readers improved some in elementary school, but not so much after sixth grade, but the most important thing that I learned was the overall message behind this article: we cannot just let these struggling readers slip through the cracks, we have to find a way to help them to close the achievement gap.

I found this article very interesting because this topic contradicts itself a lot within the school system. They tell us that some skills are later developing yet we are expected to teach them now and the curriculum is more demanding now than ever. Also, we are expected to close this achievement gap, but we cannot always get the help that we need to do so. I am not disagreeing that some students aren't just late bloomers with different things, but we cannot always rely on the fact that they will "catch on eventually" with certain foundational skills.

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/waiting-rarely-works-late-bloomers-usually-just-wilt

Chapter 7: Developing an Interpretation

I absolutely agree with this chapter that as a teacher, I do not feel as if I hit enough of these objectives while reading with my students. I think it opened my eyes to different discussions that I can have with my students. I discuss characters with my students, and I always think "How hard can it be to identify the character of a story?" That is often what their "reading tests" consist of is testing them on a different skill each week. The skills are repeated throughout the school year. I often find them pointless. After reading this, it reminded me that there are so many other things that I can discuss with my students about characters. I decided that I am going to reread "Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon" to discuss the characters more in depth. This will cover objective B1-c: Compare these two characters ____ and _____. We discussed what the theme was and how Molly felt, but I now want to use the graphic organizers on page 154 and the T Chart on page 155 to discuss the similarities and differences between Molly Lou and the bully. I also want to discuss objective B3-a: Prove that (character/person) is very _________. This will get them started on proving their answers and looking for evidence in text which is something I have discussed, but probably not enough especially since it is a big part of Common Core. We will most likely complete page 188 together or I will help them write their sentences since their writing is limited.

10 Strategies to Enhance Students' Memory

The article I chose was "10 Strategies to Enhance Students' Memory" (http://www.readingrockets.org/article/10-strategies-enhance-students-memory). I chose this article because I have a struggling reader who struggles with remembering things, but once he remembers something, he doesn't forget it. I work on repetition strategies with him, and he gets on the computer everyday to work on listening to letter sounds and letter recognition, but I was struggling with finding other ways to help him remember things. I try to use songs or relate concepts to things that they are interested in and this works, but he sometimes will only remember half of what I said and not the whole concept. Last Friday, we were working on addition problems and he would have gotten most of the answers right but for 1.) his finger was moving faster than his brain when counting so he often skipped objects when counting or counted objects twice so I had to make him slow down, and 2.) he might have known the answer, but couldn't remember what that number looked like to write it. He could look at the number and know how many objects he needed for that number, but to tell him to write the number 8, he didn't have a clue what it looked like. Even though we use our number poems, he kept saying "Across the sky and down from heaven, that's how you make a number 8!" Even though I corrected him and made him repeat what I said, he kept saying the poem wrong. I was baffled because I thought he knew this information beforehand. That activity showed me that I must repeat concepts with him such as these daily.

Three important ideas/things from the lesson today are teach students to use visual images and other memory strategies, teach students to develop cues when storing information, and review material before going to sleep, but the most important thing I learned today is teach students to over learn material.

Teach students to use visual images and other memory strategies: I often have students draw a picture to go along with a sentence that they had to read or pick three words from the letter that we are learning this week to draw pictures of them that will help them remember what they are, but I know in the future this will really help my student with spelling and vocabulary terms.

Teach students to develop cues when storing information: This is something I use to teach new concepts by creating a song, or using information that they can relate to. This will be very helpful for my student in the future, especially if he can create the acronym himself.

Review material before going to sleep: This is not something that I can control, but I found the information interesting and I think I will mention it to my student's parents to see if it may help.

Most importantly, teach students to over learn material: This is something that I needed to learn myself. I thought that after he knew the material, he would continue to remember it, but I was wrong so I must keep on him about different concepts so he will not forget them for next year.

Week Seven Course Activity

Before reading Chapter Six, I had different goals in mind for my students, but after looking over the appropriate age level of my goals, I decided to change them a little bit. Instead of focusing on theme (which suggests Grade 2 and up), I decided to focus on Objective A1-a: What lesson does ___________ learn in this story? I feel as if this goal is similar to the theme goal, but it is a beginning step. Before beginning the book, we will have a group discussion on the meaning of lesson and why it is important to look for one within a book. We will also go over the usual material we do with every book we read: title page, author, illustrator, genre, and preview the book's cover and predict what might happen. While reading the story, we will look for evidence of what might lead us to learning the lesson and then have a group discussion as the end to decide what the lesson might be. After doing that activity together, I am going to try to read the book Chrysanthemum (if I can find it) or Rainbow Fish (even though we've already read this one) to the students that I am working with specifically and let them work their way through finding the lesson on their own. We will use the form on page 51 of the book and fill it out together.

I'm only going to focus on this one activity this week because I think that it will take all week to build a good foundation of what it means to learn a lesson in a story.

Week 7 Readings: Chapters Four and Five

Chapter Four

Three important ideas/things I learned from the lesson today are: allow students to work within collaborative groups to talk about text, provide guidelines and walk students through how to properly participate in a collaborative group, and educators should consider using steps from the writing process to incorporate into the reading process so that students are taking their time to come up with great answers and conclusions, but the most important thing I learned today was from the final paragraph of Chapter 4 on page 38: "If students can't "talk it", they'll never be able to write it." This statement means that students need to be able to discuss ideas with peers to gain a better understanding of the material. If students are able to hear the different views of their peers, it will give them more ideas to write about and the discussion may give certain students more confidence in their answers.

Chapter Five

Three important ideas/things I learned from the lesson today are: great answers on an assessment NEED to be answered in FULL (it is also better to give a partial answer than no answer at all), great answers are developed by knowing what evidence to look for in the text, and great answers are accurate, but the most important thing I learned today was that learning how to write great answers need to be modeled. Teachers can model for students how to come across these great answers and how to use the detail from the text to support why we think our answers are correct. Another important point is that if providing answer frames for students, there needs to be a point during these lessons that the answer frame is taken away and that the students need to develop the answers on their own.

VoiceThread: Portrait of my Reader

Here is the link to my VoiceThread. If you have trouble viewing it, let me know! It is shared within the group READ 6360 as well (I hope! lol).


https://voicethread.com/new/share/6589398/