Module 3 Learning Summary

Module 3 Learning Summary

Videos:

I loved the first video about creating a passion for reading. It is so important to make reading engaging and “fun” in classrooms to create students who are passionate readers. I believe that students who are passionate readers become lifelong learners.

I have never actually seen a smart table in a classroom. I have seen them at conferences. I think they are incredible resources, but they are very expensive and schools have such a limited budget. I love the idea of being able to customize instruction on the table to match what I’m working on in my classroom. This would be an incredible resources, particularly for younger grades.

Virtual Field Trip to Atlanta:

I thought his part of the module was so cool because so many of the places featured are places I have been and are passionate about. Atlanta is such a historically rich city that I feel so fortunate to be a part of. I love the idea of sharing our rich culture and history with others who are not fortunate enough to experience it in person.

Expository Text Strategies:

I enjoyed all the graphic organizers that can be used for different types of texts or the information that you would like to process from the information.

Expository Text Structures:

With the changes in our reliance on technology, the familiarity of expository texts is becoming increasingly important. Students must be able to read a text and retell a text. By retelling, students can sense the organization of texts.

Module 2 Learning Summary

Module 2  Learning Summary:

Strategic Reading Lessons Powerpoint:

Implementing Strategic Reading lessons is something that we do in our reading program automatically. Our lessons are teacher directed which focus on accuracy and comprehension. One of the most important aspects of this to me is teaching students strategies for decoding words and comprehending texts. In the reading program I teach, the four components are automatically included. However, when I create my own reading lessons, one of the areas I need to improve upon is creating teacher questions before the lesson is taught. While I always have a clear purpose for each lesson I teach, I think it is very important to convey these purposes to the students.

Literacy Practice:

Content area reading can be defined as reading across the curriculum areas. Scaffolding is the methods that teachers use to instruct students until they are able to complete tasks independently. The scaffolding model allows teachers to differentiate instruction, giving each student the level of support they need to avoid the frustration level and keep them at their instructional level. In scaffolding, it is sometimes necessary to rewrite texts in order to create a text that is at a students’ instructional level. Graphic organizers can be very useful in all curriculum areas for gaining and recording information.

Blooms Taxonomy:

Bloom’s Taxonomy is a great instructional tool. It offers levels of instructional questioning and student products. I keep this wheel in my classroom to improve my instructional techniques.

Module 1 Learning Summary

Reading Strategies:
I really enjoyed the reading strategies video. It gave great insight into the true struggles of readers. It was excellent to see the progression of struggling readers and the strategies that can be useful in helping their reading development. This video could be beneficial for parents and teachers who are trying to help their struggling readers. Making a game out of reading or phonics can also be beneficial in order to engage students.

Expository Texts:
I absolutely loved all the graphic organizers that were used in this section of the module. All students don't need the same graphic organizers. Graphic organizers must start off very simple and become more advanced as students progress. As a kindergarten teacher, I use the most basic graphic organizers in my classroom. I believe that graphic organizers are valuable instructional tools. They appeal to students of multiple learning styles and give students multiple ways to represent their knowledge.

Module 1: Page 14 Activity

Use Table 1.1 “Summary of Proficient and Less Proficient Reading Behaviors” to observe a reader.  Highlight the characteristics you notice and provide an example of what you see.

 Reading instruction in my classroom uses a direct instruction program that levels all students and groups them accordingly. We take weekly data and record it. If a student is falling behind, they are moved to a group that is working at a slower pace or that is further behind in lessons. Since it is the beginning of kindergarten, many of my students are not reading yet, but working on concepts of print and phonological awareness. 

I chose to observe a student that is already reading. This student falls in the less proficient category.The student is currently reading 18 words per minute. While they identify most of the words correctly, they pause between each word to sound out the next word.  The student sounded words out or skipped them, and used pictures to help figure out the words. Because the student was focusing on individual letter sounds, there was almost no reading comprehension. I believe that as the year goes on, this student will quickly become more proficient.

Module 1: Assessing Reading Skills Video

This video really spoke to me. Reading is pointless without being able to gain meaning from a text. We put so much pressure on fluency and words per minute, but often don't focus as much on comprehension. We know fluency is important because if students are not fluent, then they are spending their time reading decoding words and trying to remember them instead of retaining the meaning of the text. This video was a great reminder to me why fluency is so important and to keep working with my kids on not just being able to read a story as fast as they can, but also constructing meaning.

Module 1: Assessment Powerpoint

Being a kindergarten teacher, I love reading. I am passionate about teaching students to love reading. I have seen first hand how important it is to build confidence and make sure students feel successful. Kindergarten can be crazy sometimes because we have students coming in on different developmental levels. Some are early emergent and may not have attended any school. Those students need to learn concepts of print and phonological awareness. Then there are students that are emergent literacy stage who are ready for reading instruction. I love seeing that direct instruction is beneficial at the emergent literacy stage is beneficial since the program we use is direct instruction based. It was crazy to me to see how many students are diagnosed with disabilities.

Module 1: Article and Book Analysis

As I was reading the text and the article, I was extremely drawn to the part in the text about RTI or response to intervention. I recently had the opportunity to go to a data team training through my county. In data teams we categorize our students into categories of how well they understand a concept. The fabulous part about it is being able to see the growth of students throughout the year. When we see, from the data, that students are not understanding the material, we implement interventions. This is what was mentioned in the text. I love seeing that we've got it right and are incorporating important aspects of reading for our students.
Since I am a kindergarten teacher, it is important to take into consideration the stages of reading as well. Since we have students that come in on all levels, we must take into account that some students may not have attended school before. They may be early emergent or emergent literacy. We must take their levels into consideration, differentiating as necessary.
The article I found was on comprehension and direct instruction. Since we incorporate direct instruction at my school, I am very interesting in the results it returns. According to the article, direct instruction improves reading comprehension. The awesome part of the program that we use is that it puts students exactly on their levels and allows for differentiation. This is where I really saw the book and the article tie together. Direct instruction gives us the data we need to find out the levels of students, see how they are responding to the instruction, and implement an intervention if necessary.

The effects of cooperative learning and direct instruction in reading comprehension strategies on main idea identification.

Stevens, Robert J.; Slavin, Robert E.; Farnish, Anna M.

Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 83(1), Mar 1991, 8-16. doi: 10.1037/0022-0663.83.1.8