Module 6

Why give student assessments?
 

• Ongoing assessment of early literacy progress is essential for giving teachers the information they need to measure student progress, identify students who may require additional or individualized assistance, and guide instructional practice (Invernizzi & Meier, 2001; Snow et al.; Vellutino & Scanlon, 2001).

•  It provides a hands-on interactive experience with letters and sounds for teachers who want to delve more deeply into students’ underlying thinking .(Norman A. Kimberly & Calfee C. Robert)

Vowels in spelling

• Features that are assessed in the spelling inventory include initial and final consonants, digraphs, short vowels, consonant blends, long vowels, r- and l-controlled vowels, and ambiguous vowels. Students in first grade are asked to spell 20 words (encompassing features through long-vowel patterns). Second graders spell the same 20, plus 4 additional words relating to r- and l-controlled vowels. Third graders spell these same 24 words, plus 4 additional words with ambiguous vowels. (Helman, A. Lori)

• The next section consists of building the progression of words with initial or final consonant variations followed by vowel variations. These tasks gauge students’ ability to employ phonemic awareness of individual and blended sounds when spelling, as well as assess their knowledge of applying the vowel system in words. .(Norman A. Kimberly & Calfee C. Robert)

Reference
Herman, Lori A. "Using literacy assessment results to improve teaching for English-language learners." International Reading Association (2005): 668-677.

Invernizzi, M., Meier, J. (2001). Phonological awareness literacy screening 2002-2003: Charlottesville: The Rector and the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia.

Norman, Kimberly A and Robert C. Calfee. "Tile Test: A hands-on approach for assessing phonics in the early grades." International Reading Association (2004): 42-52.

Case Study on Orlando 

Orlando is a seven year old first grader.  Orlando is an active child and enjoys group activities and likes to sing and draw.  The main focus on Orlando is his comprehension skills.  He is unable to answer comprehensions questions like main idea or main characters when reading independently.  The end of the year was getting near and the teacher has a concern about his progress.  The teacher consulted her concern with a reading specialist and several strategies and goals were developed for Orlando.  The possible strategies that were put in place are graphic organizer, repeated reading, and comprehension strategies.  

Comprehension Strategies:

Readers stimulate what they currently understand or misunderstand about the topic and use this knowledge before, during, and after reading to clarify misconceptions and understand the text. The tips for implementations are predicting, summarizing, retelling, rereading, and questioning. 

 Predicting:

The students can make predictions based upon the story title, pictures on the cover of the book, or having a past experience with the titles or pictures.  Example from the book reading they used Cookie’s Week (ward, 1997, 2004) by Wednesday, the children will be predicting a new disaster the next day.  The book ends by saying, “tomorrow is Sunday. Maybe cookie will rest.”  The student would predict if Cookie is going to do a disaster or really rest?  These strategies would help Orlando by having self to text it would make him feel more comfortable on comprehending the text.

  

Graphic Organizers:

Graphic organizers are simple diagrams used to assist student at any grade level, in organizing and recalling elements from stories they have listened to or read.  Graphic organizer pertain to who, what, where, when, and why of the story or a sequence of events, using the key words such as first, next, and last.  Retell the story markers beginning, middle, and end.

Here are some examples of Graphic organizers:

 I used this one with my students to help them understand the sequences of the story. The first group used the story Humpty Dumpty and the second group used the story Jack and Jill.  

 This organizer could be used to show Orlando the beginning, middle and end of the story it makes it more fun.  

 

 

Graphic organizer for Orlando:

I’m going to use The Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Three little Dinosaurs and show the work by using a Venn diagram. 

I came up with this Venn diagram to help Orlando with his comprehension skills.  The purpose of this graphic organizer is to break down the information into smaller segments. It will help Orlando to concentrate on one feature of the story at a time.

                                          

 

A story map is a strategy that uses a graphic organizer to help students learn the elements of a book or story. By identifying story characters, plot, setting, problem and solution, students read carefully to learn the details. www.readingrockets.org/strategies/story_maps

 

Story Map on Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs


 

Story Map on Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Summarizing:

The student would give the main points of the text they are reading.  Based on the reading as we read a text, we keep a summary in our heads, which helps us understand the rest of the story and discuss the whole story at the end.  (page139) the students are asked the “who” or “what” and are able to give main points.   This strategy would help Orlando because he would stop after every period and understand what he read.  He would look for the “what” and “who” in each sentence and put it together as a final summary.

Retelling:  

A retelling in a story is pointing out the characters, settings, problem, event and the solution of the story.  This could be a different way of retelling the story.  This would help Orlando make a better understanding of the story.

Rereading:

The student could reread the story again to make a better understanding.  This strategy works best for Orlando because he would revisit what he read before and is able to make better sense.

 

 

Questioning:

The student should question before, during and after reading the story.  If Orlando uses this strategy it could give him an open mind when going through the text.

                                      

Repeated Reading:  Repeated reading of familiar text is a strategy to increase reading fluency.  A fluent reader has developed automatic word recognition skills, which allows the reader to spend more of his or her energy on comprehension and less on decoding (Levy, Coleman, & Alsman, 2002). 

The video that I watched was reenacting a story.  The teacher had the children act out the story by having them wear a jacket, vest, scarf and allowing one child to hold and flip the pages of the book.  This activity would help out Orlando because he would see the story come out to life and be part of the story. 

References

Fountas, I.C., & Pinell, G.S., (2001). Literacy Beginnings: A Prekindergarten Handbook.

Interactive Read Aloud Pre-K / ELA / Comprehension video

 

www.readingrockets.org/strategies/story_maps

One Storybook at a Time

Building Preschool Children’s Language and Literacy One Storybook at a Time

Katherine A. Beauchat, Katrin L. Blamey, Sharon Walpole
 

The article discusses about Innovation Configuration a tool that was developed to assist teachers in planning their shared storybook readings with students. It consist of five sections: 1)Oral Language Development 2)Comprehension Development 3)Vocabulary Instruction 4)Phonological Awareness 5)Print Awareness

            Shared storybook reading include all instances when an adult reads to a child or children, pausing to engage children in discussion about the text (Holdaway, 1979). During my shared storybook reading in my classroom I’m always pausing in between the story and asking the children questions about the text am reading or to tell my about the pictures on the page.

Based on Oral Language Development the article discuss that during shared storybook reading, teachers develop children’s language when they engage the child before, during, or after the reading.   Teachers can also ask open-ended questions that allow for multiple responses and connections to story content (e.g., Neuman, Copple, & Bredekamp, 2000) and seize opportunities to repeat children’s responses by building upon them with additional rich language (e.g., Whitehurst, Arnold, et al., 1994; Whitehurst et al., 1988).  Another way teachers can extend oral language is by using a follow up questions when child responds with one or two word answer. 

            The second Innovation Configuration tool is comprehension development.  Comprehension development includes a range of thinking tasks.  Whitehurst, Epstein, et al. (1994) suggested CROWD as an acronym for that range. 

Completion question- ask children to fill in a one-word answer to a question taken directly from the text

Recall questions- ask children to remember a sequence of events from the text in order. 

Open-ended questions- have no right or wrong answer but instead ask children to make comments or predictions
 

Wh-prompts- use the traditional who, what, when, where question starters and normally require only one- or two-word answers.

 

Distancing questions- ask children to make connections between their lives and the text.

Teachers can engage students in vocabulary instruction directly before or after the shared reading event. The teacher might introduce a specific word using picture cards or props and then prompt students to discuss their understandings (Wasik & Bond, 2001). After introducing the word, the teacher can guide the children to say the word to establish a phonological representation (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002). This procedure helps children to root that word in memory.  How is done in my classroom I will give the children words of the story during morning message and ask them about the word.  Then later on that week read them the story. Ask them if they remember seeing or knowing the meaning of the word that I introduced during the week.  Also based on the article teachers can give the children a child friendly definition for example the word goggles the teachers used to describe it the word (glasses).

Another development of IC is the phonological awareness section. Phonological awareness is the ability to attend to the sound structure of spoken language. Research indicates a sequence of phonological awareness skills from easiest, which is segmenting and blending the parts of compound words. To hardest, which segmenting and blending the individual phonemes in words. However, research also stresses the importance of developing children’s skills in these areas simultaneously (Lonigan, 2008). The article also mention that preschoolers who are given training in phonological awareness have accelerated reading acquisition (Adams, 1990) but we target only the simplest tasks. Those tasks are rhyme, syllables and initial sounds.  When I’m reading a book I ask the children if they can hear any rhyming words in the story and I also ask them to clap how many words are in the title of the book.  This could be practice every time a story is read in the classroom.

Finally print awareness is introducing forms, features, and functions of prints in a book.  Teachers introduces the way to start reading by going from left to right of the page. The article gave an interesting break down on how to introduce print awareness in the classroom. Starting with Mondays for being explicit about how to hold a book and identifying the front cover and title page, Tuesdays for discussing the role of author and illustrator, Wednesdays for counting the number of words in the title and locating where to begin reading, Thursdays for demonstrating return sweep, and Fridays for counting the words in a sentence and letters in words.  By following this schedule the teacher are able to focus on each convention. 

My name is Madelyn Ventura. I was born in the Dominican Republic and came to the United States when I was two-years old.  My entire schooling experience happened in the United States.  I am thirty two years old, pregnant, and have a five year old daughter named Aivah.  Ever since my family and I came from Dominican Republic we lived in Jersey City and still reside here.  

                

I am currently a Pre- K teacher for the Jersey City Public Schools.  I hold a certification in Early Childhood Pre-k through third grade.  My first experience in the teaching field was at the age of sixteen. I started as a group aide working three hours a day for an Abbott preschool.  I was then offered a position as a teacher’s assistant.  This is where I found my passion for teaching young children.  Currently, I am in the alternate route program pursuing my teaching license.   My future plans are to teach a few more years then end my career as a school guidance counselor.  Also, in the future, I am planning on retiring to the Dominican Republic to open my own preschool. The books that I enjoyed reading growing up were the little Red Hen and the Three Little Pigs.   Until this day I still enjoy reading this story to my children at work. 

            Growing up, I lived in a house that was only Spanish speaking, so in school I was pulled out of the classroom so I could learn how to speak English.  From kindergarten thru third grade, I was in bilingual classroom, but I still needed extra help.  In kindergarten, I started getting pulled out to help with my reading and writing skills in English. I remember that I used to love getting pulled out of class so that I can do fun reading activities with Mrs. O’Neal.  I feel that being pulled out of a large classroom setting and having a small group of students with Mrs. O’Neal helped me to read and write better.

During my high school years, I did struggle with reading and writing.  I had an English teacher named Mrs. C that offered to stay after school to help me with my writing and reading skill.  Still to this day, I struggle with some writing in both English and Spanish, but I keep trying to improve.  Since I do speak both English and Spanish, I noticed that I will translate to what I am reading to the other language.  For example, if I am reading a sentence in Spanish, I will translate it in English. 

Even during my college years, I still struggle with my writing, so I am constantly going back to check my work.  When reading at a college level I do have to read slowly so I am able to understand what I am reading.  I have joined reading groups to improve my reading and writing skills and I am reading more than ever. Now, I’m into reading romance books, and the news articles online.  I finally adjusted to reading and is more comfortable.