Real-Life Inquiry Project

For my real-life inquiry project, I observed a two year old girl from my church as she displayed emerging ideas about concepts of print. Olivia has been spending the last few weeks in the nursery taking time look at books, read books to her baby dolls, and spend time listening to a teacher read to her. When a teacher reads the book, she is highly engaged, pointing at pictures and mimicking actions displayed on the page. (For instance, one of her favorite books lists a different body part on each page and she will point to her own body part and sometimes name it as well.) When reading to her baby doll, an interesting phenomenon occurs. She will place the doll in her lap, open up the book and "read" to the doll. Her reading is incoherent phrases that she strings together, but she does sometimes point to pictures as she "reads." She holds the book in an upright position and turns the pages in the correct direction.

I think it is important to remember that even children at a young age can be interesting in reading. Though she probably does not yet understand the concept of a word, she is display some knowledge of individual letters. Her reading is interesting because she takes on a tone while reading that is similar to one that I and other teachers use when reading to her. She is extremely interested in books and likes to read whenever she can. While we as teachers may not work with children this young, it is important to remember that possessing a strong interesting in reading is helpful. It is also so vitally important to be exposed to a variety of print options from a very young age. I can only assume that Olivia will continue to find a love for books and reading as she gets older. As the IRA and the NAEYC point out in their joint position statement in 1998, reading aloud to children is one of the most important activities that help children understand and learn skills for reading success (p. 3). I believe that not only her parents attempts but also the teachers attempts to read aloud to Olivia helped to spark this excitement in her wanting to read. Not unlike the Jones Family mentioned in Johnson's 2010 article, Olivia's family has established a family culture that values literacy. They take time to point out print in her everyday life. And, obviously, reading to Olivia is something that her parents value.

Here is a video of Olivia reading.
 

Readability

Fry's 2004, "Readability vs Leveling" article was a bit confusing for me when I read it the first time. It had sounded to me like readability and leveling were a very similar process, that they did not need to be pitted against one another to be judged. (Honestly, I am still somewhat under that same impression.) To me, it seems that they are the same, except that leveling books takes context and relevance into account while readability is a more general way of choosing books that may be easier to read. I suppose I may be a bit confused on the subject, but I am willing to admit that I am. Is there really a remarkable difference between the two methods?

Is leveling any better than readability measures? 

Word Wall Vocabulary

In Blanchowitz and Fisher's 2004 article, they talked about how we as educators can help build a child's vocabulary. One point that stuck out to me was one that focused on developing word awareness and a love of words. I am sure many of us have seen the word walls used in classrooms at one time or another. In my experience with word walls, they were used to house old vocabulary or spelling words. I think this idea is a fantastic way for children to be able to continue to interact with and remember these words that they have learned. One way that I would like to use a word wall in my classroom would be to have a separate wall that displays words chosen or used by the children themselves, not words that are assigned through a text. When we allow the children to see the importance of their words it gives them more ownership over them. The children can begin to search for other, more sophisticate words to use in their writing.

Here is an activity were children review word wall words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLDVKAF-Ncg&feature=player_embedded

Modeling Comprehension

Throughout our time at UT, we have heard over and over the importance of modeling aspects of learning for our students. Sometimes this can be a difficult task to accomplish. In Pardo's article, What every teacher needs to know about comprehension (2004), she explains the importance that modeling our thought process can have in teaching children about comprehension while reading. Talking aloud is often a strategy that teachers use to explain their process to the children. I suppose I never thought to use this strategy when it came to teaching children to make inferences while reading. If I take time to explain how I inferred a particular point in a passage, I am helping to show the children that I had some prior knowledge that I had merged with new information from the passage, making a connection between the two. It seems easier to explain our thought processes in other content areas, so I am flustered by my belief that it would seem difficult to explain while reading. It is just another reason why modeling is important when teaching. Further explanation of our thought processes allow the children to start to develop these same strategies as well. 

Speed vs Content

In Rasinki's 2004 article, "Creating Fluent Readers," he points out that some schools are pushing for speed while reading. I have seen some of this phenomenon, where speed is favored over content. It does not seem to be effective especially when considering grades that use standardized testing. While it may be helpful for the children to read a passage quickly for a test, the questions usually focus on the content of a piece. This means that the children have to read and reread the passage for each new question, wasting perhaps more time than they would have if they had carefully read the passage the first time. 

The Power of Words

In the Yopp and Yopp (2007) article, they mentioned that it is important to create a classroom environment that promotes word consciousness. I have seen classrooms use a special word wall or a big words chart to point out and promote the use of uncommon words that are used by the students. I believe it is important to remind the children of these words as they are writing and reading. Simply displaying the words in the classroom is not enough. We need to be conscious of the fact that talking about the words the children are using is just as important. Showing your own enthusiasm when encountering new and different words is a key component in raising the level of enthusiasm the children attain. It is important then that we model the process, and share our own thoughts with the children. In Cunningham and Cunningham's 1992 article they spoke of how making words can be important in children's development of phonemic awareness. Here again, modeling the process is key. Bring in words that you have struggled with, explain to the children the steps you took to better understand the word. That could mean a way you learned to spell the word or even steps you took to derive the meaning of the word. This allows the children to see that learning continues throughout life, that there are words that can sometimes even stump the teacher.




Pinterest has several ways to "build words," but I thought that this one was very interesting. Using building blocks to literally build the words in a lesson.

Coaching

One of the articles that I chose to read was Clark's 2004 article encouraging the use of coaching children while they read. In my own experience and in the experience of others, the phrase "sound it out" is frequently used when helping young children learn to read. It was interesting to see different ways of presenting the same idea to the children without using this same phrase. While we all may know that children sometimes use pictures to help them recognize a word, or that children may break the word up into parts, we sometimes forget to step back and look not at the whole word but at it's parts and contextual clues surrounding the word. Simply reminding the child that words can be broken up into parts could alleviate any stress or anxiety the child has while needing to "sound out" an entire word. Clark offered specific phrases and strategies that teachers can use to replace the "sound it out" method. I often jumped right to giving the children clues about the word, forgetting that it is also important to allow the child time to think through how to figure an unfamiliar word out. The idea of having the child think about how to solve this dilemma is not a new one, but I believe it is one that is frequently overlooked by myself and others.


While thinking of something interesting to include with this post, I came across Joanne Meier's blog, Sound it Out. While her blog is not specifically about the "sound it out" phenomenon, some of her posts have been very interesting to review.   

Changing our View

 

In Bell and Jarvis's 2002 article, it was interesting to see how they both incorporated research about how children learn to read and write into their classrooms. As future educators, we are always discussing activities that we can incorporate in the classroom to promote literacy but rarely have the opportunity to let our ideas play out. All that we may envision is difficult to truly imagine until we have that opportunity to test our theories, to put into practice the ides and activities that we think would most benefit the children. In the article, I was excited to see how the research had influenced the views that the teachers had of children. This idea that children come into a classroom already being a reader and writer seems logical, but at the same time, we teach as if most children have never been exposed to either idea. Beginning to see our students as readers and writers can give them power and confidence coming in to our classroom. Celebrating what they know and showing the children ways in which they have already mastered some of the learning concepts can have such an impact on how a child sees him or herself. This idea they presented, that learning does not happen in singular instructions periods is fascinating, for instance, changing the way we teach children about letters. Taking a more holistic approach to words, learning letters and their sounds without drilling one letter at a time, can be a more exciting and innovative way to teach our students.

Disconnect in Effectiveness

Of all the readings, I found Allington's Effective Reading Instruction (2002) to be the most interesting. The six "T's" that identify exemplary teachers, hopefully, are what each of us strive for in our own teaching, helping the students get the most out of a lesson, while keeping the material interesting and engaging to the student. Most schools today have a set curriculum and schedule allowing little to no variance. While Allington's ideas are ideal, in a classroom today, they might not always be possible. Not every school has the resources or variance in schedule to provide the children with a "let me demonstrate" approach. I believe this style of teaching can be very beneficial, but in some schools today it may not be seen as the most beneficial way to teach. The use of scripted curriculum takes away from a teacher's opportunity to provide more for his or her students.