Guided Reading and Graphs

- Guided reading is a teaching strategy used by educators to promote interest in books and the development reading skills in children of all ages. It involves a teacher scaffolding children’s learning at an individual level by assisting children only when necessary as they read aloud in their carefully assigned group(s) to decode words and comprehend what you read/was read to you.

Confused at all? Well, don’s be! Below is an easy to follow checklist of the essential parts in a high quality guided reading lesson:

Children are grouped in a purposeful manner that takes in to consideration thing such as interest and ability.

Children have some influence/control over what they are reading.

Children’s learning is being monitored by a teacher as they work, especially decoding.

The teacher is ready and willing to assist any child who they realize needs some extra help with their reading development, or asks for the teacher for it.

When monitoring groups the majority of your time is spent working with the lower level children, who need the most assistance.

Children’s comprehension of the content is being developed/promoted by the teacher through the use of various strategies and activities.

• Video response

Overall I really enjoyed watching the video. It was very informative. The only way that I think it could be improved would be by giving teachers more strategies for after teaching. I felt that overall the video was lacking in this area. Other than that though, I really liked everything. I think that many of the ideas I would be able to used in my own room. I especially like the ideas of having cards to show vocabulary on. 

• http://www.readinga-z.com/ is an amazing reading resource for elementary grade educators! It provides pretty much everything needed to teach a reading other than students! The resources are set up in categories beginning with what books to use for what level (with access to the books) and ending with information on teaching special populations of children. Additionally, in the other sections it talks about  topics from developing reading skills to methods for assessing, and all that in between. The site has built in tools for organizing the materials you like, so you will not lose them either. However, there is one thing about the site that I did not. You have to be a (paying) member, or sign up for a temporary free trial to actually access any of the the materials.

• Specific ways to use items from this site for guided reading:

Promote ESL children’s comprehension of by having them read the same story as the rest of their group in their native language, before reading it as a group and discussing the content.

To find and provide reading material to the classroom that matches child(ren)’s specific interest as well as learning objectives.

To get synopsis's of books from that you can read to children before having students rank the options in order of interest.

Look at the preplanned lessons to get ideas for facilitating groups, and for how to use strategies such as questioning to improve children’s comprehension of a story.

Provides templates for assessing reading in different ways, for various traits and in multiple languages.

Assessing Informally to get the Full Picture

Standardized test are not the only assessments that can show children's learning; there are actually a variety of assessments that teachers can use to gain knowledge about children's learning ability. These assessments provide different and more in-depth information about the students than standardizes one do. Certain types are even specifically geared for assessing certain reading skills, and can "pin-point" where a child is on the learning spectrum at that moment. It is a great idea to begin the year with one of these telling assessments (Ex. pictured to the left), so you will know what skills need to be reviewed, retaught or skipped all together.

3 Types of informal assessments that reveal information about one's reading skill(s):

• Cloze Test-

• This form of assessment was unknown to be prior to reading about it in this article. It is used for closure, and to assess final learning. Asks questions (using styles like fill in the blank) that one must have prior about a topic knowledge to answer correctly. (Pictured Right)

• Running Records-
• Observe a child, preferably while being unseen, and take notes of everything the child can be observed doing. However, you should not make judgements or try to explain anything internal; just leave all emotion out!
• I love the idea of keeping these records in a small notebook that you keep in the classroom. I think that I would make copies of the notes written in here, and put them in the child's assessment files to keep them from getting lost, have a spare something happens, to and because they would be easier to accessed and compare to other assessments in this spot.

• Informal Reading Inventories (IRV)-

• These are so handy to use when working with children. Many assessments can not be done in the moment, but an IRV can. Additionally, I realized from this information that if I was looking for something specific, but could not find it that I could create it myself.
• A fabulous idea by Teacher 2 Teacher for the organization of one's classroom IRV assessment materials is to keep all the templates for different IRV assessments in a binder. You could add articles and information from professionals about assessing to reference, too. 

Assessments are an unbelievably important tool for teachers, and informal ones should be conducted routinely throughout the year on every student. By doing this all of the children 's learning growth can be proven, and could be utilized later to show parents, school administrators, etc. how the child has grown as they have been in your care. Adversely, if the child is not showing gains you want to document this to show people as well, since it can indicate something developmentally wrong. These are actually even more important to have in my opinion.

I would love to hear about your thoughts on this topic. Specifically, I am wondering have you heard of any of these informal assessments before, or seen them being used in a classroom environment? And which do you believe to be the most useful form of assessment for educators to use? Least?

Guiding Emergent Readers

Guided reading is a concept well known to teachers, but often in the classroom the teacher seems to be pushing children more than guiding them as they read. This is incorrect to do, though. As Guided Reading with Emergent Readers explains, "guided reading should be thought of as a time for children to practice what they know about reading in front of a supportive person." Doesn't this sound nice?

Teachers should not as much be leading the reading group during this, as they should scaffolding the individual children. What children will need during guided reading practice will vary as their learning develops, and based on their prior knowledge.

• At beginning of school children are not ready for guided reading, yet. Reading instruction will involve encouraging children to want to read. At this stage they are not reading, yet. Big books are great for children at this stage.

 Observe children’s interest in learning to read and their attention span to know when they are ready to move past this stage and on to the next. The two behaviors go hand-in-hand in deciding whether or not a child is ready for a guided reading lesson. You can see these by noticing how long children look at books, if they understand meaning, their ability to create alternate stories, and so fourth.

• More responsibility is given to the children as they begin guided reading. The books read are based off of the children's ability and interest. The teacher prepares student for reading by learning about the subject matter, and reminding them of successful reading strategies to use.

Guided Reading does not end when the last page is finished. After guided reading teachers facilitate a discussion incorporating teaching points the instruction wants the children to learn about. Teaching points include many different topics.

• Retelling the Story: 20 ideas for retelling stories

• Monitoring Meaning: Add a chart with questions to ask self.

Children Need to Comprehend to Really Read!

As a teacher it is easy to focus much of your efforts on helping the children to correctly pronounce and decode words, but by doing that you are forgetting about one of the most important parts of learning to read, comprehension! Comprehension, which involves extracting the meaning from text, is something that good readers have. As Laura Pardo said in What Every Teacher Needs to Know about Comprehension it is a, "transaction between readers and the text." So, it is easy to see using this definition how the reader matters when it comes to comprehending material. Children need to be taught the skills as well as the vocabulary to do this. Teachers can help children learn this by using a variety of strategies.

Here are some ideas to help readers begin to comprehend materials from Pinterest:

1. Charts- (like the one below) Place in the reading area that the teacher references as she openly models them in relation to what is being read.

2.  Beach-ball Comprehension- Write questions on a beach-ball, and then have the children answer them using what occurred in a story that has previously been read. More information on this can be found on the blog I Can Teach My Child.

Hope that you find these helpful! Also, I am wondering what are some ideas that you readers have for  teaching children how to comprehend what they read? As well I am wondering if you can think of how to get parents more involved in improving their child(ten)'s level of comprehension?

One Minute Fluency Measures

From student teaching recently and from my professors I have learned that as a teacher you are just plain busy! There never seems to be enough time in the day, so you need quick ways to assess children's reading skills. In the article One-Minute Fluency Measures: Mixed Messages in Assessment and Instruction, Theresa Deeney teaches readers how to implement one minute fluency measures into the classroom. Doing these one minute fluency measures will allow you to provide the children in your class with the personalized assistance they need to develop to their highest potential level as a reader. Also, since it only takes a minute it will allow you to have the time to scaffold children as well. Here are some tips for doing these from Deeney's article:

1. Notice the number of words the child misses in a minute.
2. Pay attention to how many words a child reads in a minute.
3. Notice the rate that a child reads at.

Assessing children does not have to be a long, drawn-out process if you implement Theresa Deeney's ideas into your classroom.

Reading Fluency Factors into Reading Success

This week when I read the article Creating Fluent Readers by Timothy Rasinski (2004) I personally could not relate, because I have alway had a high rate of reading comprehension and fluency. However, as I read about Jonah I was reminded of my mother. She hates to read. She has always said it is because she can read the words over and over again, but it is like they just do not sink in, so she cannot tell you exactly what it is that she read. As Rasinski would put it she has not developed enough, "control over the surface level text processing," so that she can, "...focus on understanding the deeper levels of meaning embedded in the text" (2004).

Or in terms of the three dimensions of reading provided by Rasinski my mom like many struggling readings has accomplished the first dimension, but with the other two dimensions I am not so sure. Below are the three dimensions given in the article.

• Accuracy in Decoding Words- ability to sound out words in text with minimal errors.
• Automatic Processing- expending as little mental energy as possible as you read through the text by automatically recognizing the words on site.
• Prosodic Reading- the ability to phrase the text into units that are semantically appropriate.

To assess each of these here are some ideas provided in the Rasinski text.

• To tell if a person is reading in the first level of the dimensions calculate the accuracy of their reading by dividing the amount of words that they pronounced, or did not know by the amount of words read. If they are reading grade level material below an accuracy level of 90-95% they need help in this area.
• For this second dimension listen to how the child reads aloud. Ask yourself questions like are they rushing through the material to fast or slow.
• A way to tell that a person is in the prosodic dimension is the inflictions of their voice when they read. If they breeze through punctuation, and/or do not change their tone they probably are not here yet.

And once you know where a child is do practice with them to help them move forward to the next dimension! Below is a link with ideas for reading in the classroom readers:

10 Activities for Students to do in Reading Groups

So today I am going to leave you with these questions: 1. What would would you do to help someone who reads such as my mother, or Jonah? 2. How would you help you children who are learning to read to become more fluent? 3. In accordance with the dimensions where did you fall? Was it what you expected?

Reading's and Spelling's Close Relationship

In the past it was believed that reading and spelling were only kinda related, like third cousins once removed. However, in recent years it has been proven in multiple studies that children's spelling ability and reading level are very closely related, more like....siblings. The article by Cunningham and Cunningham (1992) that I read for class this week acknowledge this fact about young children's reading.

When I think about this fact I have kinda mixed feelings. On one hand it does not surprise me, simply because that just makes sense. However, on the other hand I am a little surprised whenever I hear this fact, because I am a horrible speller, yet have a very high reading level....so I am just like wHy CaN't I sPeLl?!?! Now I am left to wonder about how my teachers in elementary school may have affected my abilities. I have been trying to remember the lessons, and different things.

After reading this article one theory that I have come up with is that maybe I did not do enough work

that involved invented spelling as a child. Due to this I believe that I just may have memorized most words enough to recognize them, but not use skills build upon skills needed for spelling like phonetic awareness. This makes sense to me, because of how when write something down I will check to see if the words "looks right," instead of attempting to sound the word out.

For this reason as a future educator I believe that it is very important to incorporate activities that build phonetic awareness by allowing children to invent the spelling of words is important in the early elementary classrooms. So, here are some ideas to incorporate invented spelling:

•  Making Words: Children are individually given letters to create their own words using these letters that increasingly get bigger, starting out with two letter word and moving to six or seven letter words. This activity should take about 15-20 minutes. (This is from the Cunningham and Cunningham article (1992)) 
• For parents you could even do this at home with your children in a very fun way by making them spell words out of cookie shaped letter. Then, once they have finished you can pour a class of milk and eat up! (Inspired by an idea I found on Pinterest, which came from the blog Dirt and Boogers.)

• Personal Journals: Provide the children with their own journals, and give them some time at the end of the day to write freely. I would estimate that this activity would need about 20 minutes, but it could take less or more time depending on the topic and length of writing being asked for. The teacher can let  the children write about whatever they want, or a provide specific topic for children to journal about. Additionally, a teacher you can relate this topic to something that was done in another subject earlier in the day/week. This is a great way to integrate reading/writing in other subjects, which common core loves. ;]
• Here is Still Playing School's Introduction to Journaling with young children.

Today I am leaving you with two questions: (1.) Why do you think I might be a high level reader, yet a terrible speller? (2.) How would you incorporate invented spelling into the classroom?