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DUE: 4/19/2021

ASSIGNED COURSE READING: Park (2012), “A Different Kind of Reading Instruction: Using Visualizing to Bridge Reading Comprehension and Critical Literacy”

BIG TAKE-AWAY: In order to support students in comprehension, teachers should invite students to visualize parts of the text and create opportunities for students to discuss their visualizations.

NUGGET: “As the data illustrate, visualizing can support students to become more wide awake about people, both literary and real. It can also become a springboard for discussions on literary characters' social and cultural identities, and for inquiry into readers' theories on race, gender, and human behavior.”

READERLY EXPLORATION:

I chose to explore relationships with other people through reading by using texts as a shared experience with another person by choosing an excerpt from the assigned reading, Park (2012), and shared it with my mom to get her perspective on it. My mom is a reading specialist for grades 4-8 in a private school. During my Facetime with her, she shared her use of visualization with her students. She said that she uses visualization a lot, mostly in two different ways. One way is just by having students stop what they are reading and share what picture is in their mind. My mom said she loves to have students go to the white board and draw a picture of what is in their mind. She has them use their own personal experiences and text evidence to explain why the picture looks the way it does. One example is a student drawing a girl in a dress that is happy. My mom would ask the student why the character is a girl, why she is wearing a dress, and why she is happy. The students would find text evidence and then explain that she is happy because she was out at recess with her friends. The student would then connect that experience to their own by saying that when they are at recess with their friends they are happy so that means this character is happy too.

MULTIMEDIA DOCUMENTATION: My mom and I on Facetime.

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DUE: 3/29/2021

ASSIGNED COURSE READING: Manyak, et. al. (2014), “Four Practical Principals for Enhancing Vocabulary Instruction”

BIG TAKE-AWAY: Teachers can enhance students vocabulary by providing instruction with routines for introducing target words, review experiences, anchor experiences, and fostering participation.

NUGGET: “The MCVIP team identified deep processing experiences as those involving comparing and contrasting word meanings, teasing out nuances of meanings, using words in writing, or applying target words while analyzing texts, characters, and concepts.”

READERLY EXPLORATION:

I chose to explore the world through reading by using texts to answer questions about the world by taking myself on a field trip to a place on campus that connects with the big idea of the assigned reading, Manyak, et. al. (2014). This reading really reminds me of my field placement that I am in right now and how my mentor teacher focuses on vocabulary and different activities around vocabulary. I have talked to her a lot about the idea that students cannot comprehend information if they are stuck on the vocabulary. Throughout the nonfiction unit so far, students have read different nonfiction texts and analyzed them. Before reading each text, we go through the vocabulary that is in the text and discuss what it means. We ask students what word parts they see, if it has any suffixes, what the root word or base word is, etc. As I was sitting in the library, I picked up a few books and tried to find different words that students would have to know before reading it, to understand what the author is trying to say. One book I looked at was Our Food by Grace Lin. This book talks about nutrition and children living on a farm. There are a lot of vocabulary words throughout this book that students would need to know before they read it, in order to comprehend the text. Some of the words include grains, nutrition, and protein.

MULTIMEDIA DOCUMENTATION: The library.

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DUE: 3/8/2021

ASSIGNED COURSE READING: Tompkins Chapter 9

BIG TAKE-AWAY: Teachers should teach students about text factors and the role they play in comprehension, so that they not only see them in texts they read, but can also create the text factors when they write.

NUGGET: “The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts emphasize that at each grade level, kindergarten through eighth grade, students grow in their ability to use text factors to comprehend stories and nonfiction texts, particularly complex texts, more effectively.” (p. 318).

READERLY EXPLORATION:

I chose to explore the world through reading by using texts to answer questions about the world by taking myself on a field trip to a place off campus that connects with the big ideas of my assigned reading, Tompkins chapter 9. I went to my field placement in my fourth grade ELA classroom. My mentor teacher teaches many text factors as part of a unit, but also teaches using minilessons, especially during flex time (guided reading). One text structure that we have been focusing on a lot lately is cause and effect. My teacher started the day with different examples of causes or effects and has the students think about what caused the effect or vice versa. Students also have had opportunities to come up with their own examples of cause and effect. Thinking about my field placement really helped me understand this text better because I could think of specific examples of how my mentor teacher taught these text features and how students responded to them. I think explicitly teaching different text features really helps students comprehension and also improves their writing. I notice in my students’ pieces of writing that they use text factors, such as cause and effect.

MULTIMEDIA DOCUMENTATION: I had the opportunity to teach a lesson on Zoom using a nonfiction article and comparing and contrasting it to an article we had previously read.

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DUE: 3/1/2021

ASSIGNED COURSE READING: Tompkins Chapter 8

BIG TAKE-AWAY: In order for students to comprehend complex texts, teachers need to provide detailed instruction, many different strategies, and scaffold for students when needed.

NUGGET: “Students often have to read a picture-book story or an excerpt from a chapter of a novel two or three times in order to draw inferences because at first they focus on literal comprehension, which has to precede higher level thinking.” (p. 262).

READERLY EXPLORATION:

I chose to engage in the reading process to increase the likelihood of text comprehension by skimming the assigned course reading for unfamiliar terms and taking the time to look up the definitions of those terms. The first term that I have never heard before in Tompkins chapter 8 was double-entry journal. As I researched this term I found many examples of students’ double entry-journals. A definition I found was from www.adlit.org/strategies/22091/ and said, “…enables students to record their responses to text as they read. Students write down phrases or sentences from their assigned reading and then write out their own reaction to that passage.” Another term I wasn’t super familiar with was evaluative comprehension. I have heard of literal comprehension, inferential comprehension, and critical comprehension, but I could not remember what evaluative comprehension was. After looking in the glossary of the textbook, I found evaluative comprehension is the most sophisticated level of comprehension. It is when the reader judges the value of the text they are reading. This process helped me dive deeper into the text and become familiar with some of the ideas Tompkins had before I started the chapter.

MULTIMEDIA DOCUMENTATION: An example I found of a double entry-journal.

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DUE: 2/15/2021

ASSIGNED COURSE READING: Tompkins Chapter 1

BIG TAKE-AWAY: To be an effective teacher, you need to understand how students learn, support students’ use of the cueing systems, create a community of learners, use a balanced approach, follow Common Core standards, scaffold students’ reading and writing, organize and differentiate instruction, and link instruction and assessment.

NUGGET: “Teachers use independent reading and writing for these purposes: Create opportunities for students to practice literacy strategies and skills, provide authentic literacy experiences, and develop lifelong readers and writers” (p. 24).

READERLY EXPLORATION:

I chose to explore relationships with other people through reading by using texts as a shared experience to gain insight into another perspective by proving an interpretation of the assigned reading through the lens of another course I have taken. After reading the first chapter of Tompkins text, I thought back to my children’s literature class I took freshman year. In my “nugget” above, it says how teachers should provide authentic literacy experiences for students. This really stuck out to me because I think this is one of the most important things teachers can do for students. I remember learning about authentic literacy experiences in children’s lit starting on the first day of class. I remember Dr. Fischer asked each student if we considered ourselves a reader. I said not really because in my mind being a reader was sitting down and reading a chapter book. However, I read every single day, whether it is in a textbook or the ingredients to something or the road signs while I drive. I think as teachers we need to not put so much pressure on students about reading and sitting at their desks, but encourage them to read at home with their families and during their everyday lives. Providing authentic literacy experiences gives students ownership of their reading and academic development. If a young boy enjoys reading baseball magazines, then that is awesome and we should encourage that authentic love of reading.

MULTIMEDIA DOCUMENTATION: The textbook I read in Children’s Literature.

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DUE: 2/8/2021

ASSIGNED COURSE READING: Tompkins Chapter 2 and 6

BIG TAKE-AWAY:

Chapter 2 – Teachers should teach the reading and writing processes to students together so that students can learn to problem solve and be creative as they read and write.

Chapter 6 – Teachers should assist dysfluent readers and writers by using these components: automaticity, speed, prosody/voice.

NUGGET:

Chapter 2  – “Teachers think aloud or explain what they’re thinking so that students become more aware of how capable readers and writers think; in the process, students also learn to think aloud about their use of strategies” (p. 65).

Chapter 6  – “When students’ reading is limited to basal reader selections or leveled books that can be completed in 15 minutes or less, they won’t develop the endurance they need to become fluent readers” (p. 194).

READERLY EXPLORATION:

I chose to read a wide variety of genres and formats of texts to grow in my knowledge and experiences as a reader by finding a fictional text that communicates a similar big idea of the assigned reading, Tompkins Chapter 2. After looking through many books, I came across Beautiful OOPS! by Barney Saltzberg. Throughout this children’s book there are many things that go wrong, such as torn pages, something spilling, and corners of pages being folded. After it showed a problem, it told how it could be fixed in a creative way. My favorite page was when Saltzberg said, “A smudge and a smear… can make magic appear.” This shows that even if you make a mistake, there are ways to problem solve and be creative to fix the mistake you made. I think this mirrors Tompkins thoughts because the ultimate goal for teachers is to show students different processes in reading and writing to help them when they get stuck. These processes, prereading/prewriting, reading/drafting, responding/revising, exploring/editing, and applying/publishing, include ways to problem solve and be creative, just like Saltzberg does in Beautiful OOPS! All of these ideas provide students with strategies to organize their thoughts in order to solve a problem.

MULTIMEDIA DOCUMENTATION: The excerpt from the book I chose.

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DUE: 1/25/2021

ASSIGNED COURSE READING: Brighton (2015), “Advanced Readers in Reading First Classrooms: Who Was Really ‘Left Behind’? Considerations for the Field of Gifted Education” and Tompkins Chapter 3

BIG TAKE-AWAY:

Brighton – Gifted students should receive services to encourage critical and creative thinking, such as services whether there is a formal gifted program or not and developmentally appropriate programs to use nonreading content (science, art, and music) to ultimately help in each subject.

Tompkins – Using the instruction-assessment cycle to assess each students’ progress can enable teachers to better instruct students and meet them where they are at.

NUGGET:

Brighton – “Reis et al. (2004) offered strategies such as faster paced instruction, the use of more advanced reading materials, compacting the skill elements of the reading program (i.e., focusing only on those elements that the student needs and teaching those in a compacted timeframe), and employing higher level thinking strategies such as focusing on analysis of texts” (p. 281).

Tompkins – “Teachers have to take into account more than just reading levels when matching books to students: They also need to consider what they know about their students and about the texts they’re reading. Students’ background knowledge and related vocabulary, the structure of the text, and the complexity of the book’s theme are also important considerations” (p. 86).

READERLY EXPLORATION:

I chose to read texts deeply in order to interpret, critique, and analyze the various layers of meaning a text might offer by learning something about the author, Gail E. Tompkins, and use that to draw conclusions about the motivation behind the reading. I went onto Google and searched “Gail Tompkins biography” and one of the first things I could find was an obituary, which kind of made me sad. I came to learn that Tompkins was an army brat and moved around a lot and lived in many countries. She then went to the University of Nebraska and taught first grade for eight years in Virginia. Tompkins’ life was surrounded by education, especially reading. She even went back to school for reading and language arts from Virginia Tech. She taught in many universities for 25 years and received countless awards. One of my favorite parts of her obituary is, “Gail will be remembered as a college textbook author” and then later says, “Thousands of pre-service teachers across the US have learned to teach reading, writing, and language arts from her books.” I think it is very admirable that Tompkins put so much of her life into the world of language arts. From her experiences as a student, teacher, professor, award recipient, and author, I believe she is a very credible source from learning how to teach language arts. It makes sense now why throughout chapter three she comments on specifics of giving assessments and describes each part of them in teacher friendly definitions.

MULTIMEDIA DOCUMENTATION:

A screenshot of the website I used about Tompkins.