Real Life Inquiry

For my real life inquiry I visited an elementary school during interventions (or small groups) for a fifth grade class.  The teacher took a group of five students into a small room while an assistant worked with the rest of the class.  When the five students came in the first thing they did was a timed reading activity.  One at a time the students read a passage based on previous reading skills tests and they were graded on accuracy.  I am not so sure I really liked the students working on this activity in the room together because while one student was reading, the other students were talking about who had the best score and other things that were not related to reading at all.  After the students were finished with their timed readings they were all given a book and they took turns reading aloud, on words they didn't know the teacher would help them.  The teacher also worked on some think aloud activities so the students could talk about what they thought about the book as they were reading, but they did not do any predictions or picture walking.

I really enjoyed the interventions that the students participated in, and I think it is something that I would like to use in my class room one day if the resources were available.  

I really liked the read aloud and think aloud sections of the activity, and I think it greatly benefited the students.  Things I would have improved about the interventions would be some way to keep the students occupied while their fellow student was reading.  Another thing I would change is for the students to do a project and teach the rest of the class about the book the students read together (like we talked about in our class)--I really like this idea and think it enhances the reading experience and comprehension.  I think that my experience really epitomized a lot of what we have learned and read about in class this past week on guided reading and groups.   

Do you think that this is a useful tool in a classroom?

What would you add to make a classroom more interesting during reading interventions?   

Tips to Making a Challenge a Little Less Challenging

The article on guided reading that I found was about issues with "challenging" texts.  The article stated that students who work with books that are too challenging may be able to get through the book, but they compromise their reading process--and if reading is fragmented or uneven during guided reading it is very likely that students will transfer these inefficiencies to their independent reading time.  The article suggested that teachers should increase their sensitivity to readers who are distressed with challenging texts and  ask questions to assess reader distress.

I think that it is very important for teachers to choose texts that are appropriate for students, there is a fine line between too challenging and too easy, and as teachers we have to choose our texts wisely.  The article I read gave some really good websites to visit such as ReadWriteThink.org which has tons of resources for aspiring teachers.  

Here are some handy tips to decide if a text is too difficult:  Students are off task, nervous, or engaged in inappropriate behavior, students read haltingly, the lesson takes more than 15-20 minutes, the teacher has to support all readers and cannot shift attention to one student or has no time to make notes about the lesson, and the teacher is tired from extensive explanations. 

Some handy tips for a text that is just right include: students are focused, students sound like good readers most of the time (with occasional stops to problem solve), the lesson lasts 15-20 minutes, the teacher makes notes about guided reading session, and the teacher is quiet and listening for much of the session.

A classroom operating on a guided reading session where the text is just right for the students is most certainly a more organized and learning enhancing classroom, can you think of any other suggestions to make a guided reading session work for students?  Have you ever been in or observed a class where the text was too hard for the students?  How did the classroom work or operate?

The Extravagance and Intricacy needed to Assimilate Jargon

Vocabulary is so very important. Vocabulary Lessons: Educational leadership by Blanchowitz and Fisher gave a lot of helpful and interesting ways in which teachers can expose their students to vocabulary which will ultimately create successful readers and educated students.  One example of a way to emerge students into vocabulary words would be by letting students "play with the words" while simultaneously creating a love for words.  I believe it is very important for students to have fun at school and dare I say love school!?  Playing with words allows students to understand how words work and "when learning is fun students become interested in words and see them as objects they can use and examine."  I think that many games could be used in a classroom setting to make reading fun and interesting such as Bananagrams, Scrabble, and even creating words out of bigger words. 
All of the articles seemed to have the same opinion about the importance of vocabulary to young students, The Lane and Allen article "The Vocabulary Rich Classroom" took a similar stance claiming that having a high vocabulary is extremely important and can be a future predictor of reading comprehension, reading performance, and future school achievement.  One of my favorite ideas for expanding vocabulary that I have come across is a word wall.  I think that every teacher should have a word wall to help students with difficult vocabulary words.  Word walls could be used in any situation during any subject matter--history, math, science, English, or even just for vocabulary purposes!

 I wonder if learning vocabulary is as important for older students?

Also, do you think it would be a good idea for each student to have their own personal work wall? (Maybe on the inside of a folder--that way during class activities they could make their own word wall but also have a classroom word wall). 

I don't think I ever realized just how important learning vocabulary is! I think sometimes it is easy to forget that reading is a process built out of many steps, and we must always put ourselves into the mindset of the students as future teachers in order to create students who are ready and able to go into the world and better themselves!  After all, sometimes even experienced readers come across with unfamiliar vocabulary, like in my title!