drewdoesliteracy

[drewdoesliteracy]

Readerly Exploration #7

Tompkins “Compendium of Instructional Procedures” & Gill “The Comprehension Matrix: A Tool for Designing Comprehension Instruction”

Due Date: 03/27/20

Big Takeaway:

Tompkins: Do not get stuck in the trap that says that tests are the only way to assess student learning! There are many ways to see how your students are performing

Gill: The Comprehension Matrix is a great way for literacy teachers to format their lessons and teaching concepts to help students comprehend the material they are being taught.

Nugget of Knowledge:

Tompkins: One of the methods that I found the most interesting was the “Book Talk” procedure. This method allowed for students to explain the book briefly in their own words, read a passage for their classmate, and then encourage their class to read the book. As a student, this could be very beneficial to help understand and relate to my classmates. It also provides a means for the teacher to see what levels each student is reading at as well as how they manage in front of a whole class (or small group) setting. I would use this method for a self-guided reading section of my class rather than for teacher-chosen literature.

Gill: Having gone through my high school ELA courses, I noticed that the prereading section mentioned on the Matrix was something my teachers often glossed over. We would usually have a short introduction to the text, but rarely did the literature we would read have an immediate impact on me. The Comprehension Matrix provides a great number of different activities for this section of reading that could have been highly useful for my understanding of different forms of literature. For example, one of the activities Gill recommends is an anticipation guide, which is a document that contains different statements and connections to the literature that the student fills out prior to reading a piece of literature. Although it may initially seem drab and dull, having the students compare a before and after version of the anticipation could allow students to see their progress when reading text.

Readerly Habit: 

“After you read, create a work of art that represents/symbolizes your personal response to the readings.”

Explorations to Practice Readerly Habits: 

(YES, I’M NOT AN ARTIST, I KNOW IT’S ROUGH)

[drewdoesliteracy]

Readerly Exploration #6

Tompkins chapter 9

Due Date: 03/10/2020

Big Takeaway: All texts and genres of writing have their own nuances and differences. Teachers must be aware of these various differences within each category and include students in the discussion of how each genre can vary.

Nugget of Knowledge: I found the section in nonfiction text features that focused on expository text structures to be very insightful. I recognized each pattern from either prior experience or previous learning about the type of pattern. However, what helped me the most was the figure on page 309 that gave each pattern and a sample passage and graphic organizer that could be used to explain the pattern. The passages helped reinforce what each pattern was aiming to discuss. I was then able to connect the pattern to how the graphic organizer could be utilized as well. These patterns could also be connected to fictional texts, as many pieces of literature also focus on patterns like description, cause-and-effect, or comparison.

Readerly Habit: “Read a wide variety of genres and formats of texts to grow in their knowledge and experiences as a reader.”

Explorations to Practice Readerly Habits: “Get inspiration from the assigned course reading(s) to find and read another text from a different genre or format and connect the two in some way.”

To explore this habit, I looked to find a text that exemplifies some of the features that I found from this chapter. After looking through the campus library, I found The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. I had previously read this book for a prior class on children’s literature, so I found it fitting to revisit the text to examine it for its’ text features. For genre, it is likely under the realistic fiction category, as the plot falls within the early 1900s of France. The plot contains three of the four kinds of conflict. The main character Hugo has a conflict with society because he feels outcast for living at a train station. He feels multiple conflicts with other characters because he often experiences social issues of not expressing his emotions. He lastly experiences conflicts with himself because he often wonders about how he would be different if his family survived on. The plot can also be diagramed (like figure 9-3). The setting is France during the early 1900s and goes through a week in the life of Hugo Cabret. There is mainly an omniscient viewpoint, where the reader is the only person who has full knowledge of each detail. If I was more thorough, The Invention of Hugo Cabret contains many (if not all) of the narrative devices that Tompkins listed out in the chapter.

This exploration was majorly helpful in my understanding of text features. Each factor I had learned previously, but connecting it to a book that I enjoyed made me understand the concepts more clearly. I understood how writers could insert each device, but I am usually not too keen on noticing these factors immediately within a text. Having an example for each device can become useful to compare texts and text factors in different forms of literature.

Pictured Above: The cover of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a text that is filled with various text features.

[drewdoesliteracy]

Readerly Exploration #5

Tompkins CHP. 8

Due Date: 3/09/2020

Big Takeaway:

Students need to learn the importance of text comprehension and teachers need to employ strategies that focus students to think and to think about what they think.

Nugget of Knowledge:

One portion of this chapter that jumped out to me was the number of strategies that Tompkins had for teaching comprehension. She lists 12 different strategies that accumulate to make up comprehension for students. When I saw the list, I made a connection to my previous experiences in ELA classrooms. As a student, I remember having reading discussion groups where each student was assigned a task out of a number of tasks to complete before starting the group. Looking at this list reminded me that many of our tasks reflected that strategies to strengthen comprehension. Along with this, I saw the extended list that notes different instructional methods to teaching each form of comprehension, many of which I had done in my own classes. 

Readerly Habit: 

“Before you read, learn something about the author(s) of the assigned course reading(s) and note how what you learned impacts your motivation and/or your purpose for reading.”

Explorations to Practice Readerly Habits:

When I researched the author of this textbook (Gail E. Tompkins), the first thing that I found out was that she had passed away. On October 1, 2017, Tompkins passed away at the age of 68. I found this out through an obituary that posted about her death. In this obituary posting, I found out many details of her past and educational background. Tompkins was an elementary school teacher in Virginia for 8 years prior to earning her doctorate in Reading and Language Arts from Virginia Tech. Following this, she spent the next 25 years as a college professor and authored numerous books, each on literacy and its involvement in the classroom. Tompkins also worked as a mentor to writing teachers and hosted numerous writing workshops through her time at different colleges and universities. The chapter began to take on a new meaning following my research of Tompkins and her work in literacy. Before this, I treated Tompkins as just an author, not a former teacher who saw the needs of her students would be answered through literacy strategies. The chapter began to look a little different following the research, as I began to read the text as though she were recounting different experiences she had as a teacher and how it related to literacy. Much of the words reflected those of professors, but the meaning behind the words stung much less than before knowing of her roots as a school teacher. This reflection helped me see the author as a person and as a teacher rather than a textbook writer. 

Pictured Above: Dr. Gail E. Tompkins, the author of the text, was an empowered literacy advocate who devoted herself to the craft of teaching.

[drewdoesliteracy]

Readerly Exploration #4

Readings: Tompkins chapter 10 & Gambrell “Getting Students Hooked on Reading” (2011)

Due Date: 2/26/2020 

Big Takeaway:

Tompkins - There are countless ways to engage students in reading and writing. The best teachers realize the strengths of their students and use a variety of methods to instruct reading and writing for their students.

Gambrell - Not only are teachers aiming to have their students learn how to read, but we are also trying to cultivate a love for reading on top of that ability.

Nugget of Knowledge:

Tompkins - Although I understood that basal readers often had materials to supplement instruction and student understanding, I did not realize how widespread some basal reading programs go. In this chapter, Tompkins has a chart that lists what the majority of basal readers provide in their curriculums. According to Tompkins, basal readers can include textbooks, “big books”, supplemental books, workbooks, reading kits, teacher’s guides, home-school connections, assessment systems, multimedia resources, and lesson planners. I understood that there normally is a teacher’s version of the textbook and a student version, but it was wild to see what else the programs can include impacting young readers.

Gambrell - What impressed upon me from Gambrell’s article was the idea of including authentic literacy into the curriculum. I feel like so often, Literacy teachers focus on very formal writing that is used less and less often. Authentic literacy looks to integrate more “realistic” texts and writings into reading. For example, an authentic piece of literature could be a book on the city of Rome. Authentic interaction is also important, especially peer-to-peer conversations about topics in literacy. Literacy has begun to shift to integrate more “real-life” materials than fiction books.

Readerly Habit: “Reflect on the contributions of reading experiences to reader identity in an effort to better articulate who he or she is as a reader.”

Explorations to Practice Readerly Habits: “Based on your successes and struggles reading this text, write down two or three goals for yourself as a reader for your next reading assignment.”

Goal #1: After reading Tompkins, my goal for the next reading is to compare the style of teaching in reading and writing with other subjects’ styles of teaching. This will allow me to see where ELA can overlap with other subjects and integration can occur.

Goal #2: After reading the Gambrell article, my second goal for the next reading is to see whether or not the reading is “real”. This meaning that I will assess the text for what is applicable to me and how it can relate to future teaching experiences.

After doing this exploration, I felt somewhat uninspired. It was not that my goals were not genuine or that the exploration itself was boring, but I have had to do this type of goal-setting throughout my student teaching experience. Each week, we are to set goals for ourselves and how we will look to improve each week. However, although the goals are set at the beginning of the week, it is very easy to get into school mode and forget all about the goals you made the night before. My hope is that this does not happen for the next reading, but I feel nervous it might be inevitable.

SMART is an acronym that depicts goal-setting, which was my readerly exploration.

[drewdoesliteracy]

Readerly Exploration #3

Post #3: Tompkins - Chapter 1 

Due Date: 2/24/20

Big Takeaway: The best teachers employ a handful of strategies that, when they work together, create a healthy learning environment for both the students and teachers alike.

Nugget of Knowledge: One section that struck me was Principle 8, which focused on differentiating instruction. What intrigued me was the ways you could differentiate. I always assumed that differentiation was mainly for post-instruction activities to separate students who needed more assistance than others. Here I found that you could also differentiate “the process” and the content of a lesson. For example, to change the content, you could redesign a reading assignment to be at the level of each student while containing the same content for all students. For the process portion, a teacher could adjust how they do instruction by keeping a keen eye on student progress. These ideas were not completely new to me, but it was helpful to see how differentiation can take multiple shapes than the one I had assumed.

Readerly Habit: Explore relationships with other people through reading by using texts as a shared experience with another person/other people or to gain insight into the perspective of another person.

Explorations to Practice Readerly Habits: Choose an excerpt from your assigned course reading(s) and share with a friend in another major to get his or her insight and perspective on it.

The passage that I selected from this chapter was from the section focusing on how teachers can understand how their students learn. Specifically, I wanted to see my roommate’s opinion on situated learning. Situated learning is the idea that, instead of theoretically learning about a job or career, a student will become an apprentice under someone within the position. One of my roommates is currently working part-time at a financial firm and is an RA on my college campus. To him, he sees the positives and negatives from this. He sees that this could be beneficial to students who know what they want to do beyond high school. However, for less sure students, it could be pointless to become a temporary apprentice for a profession they have no interest in. He had done a job shadow in high school but ended up choosing a different profession instead. My other roommate had a similar mindset. He felt that, if you are going to do some form of situated learning, you need a background knowledge of what you will do or observe. He also had done a job shadow while in high school, but at a business that was in a career that he would later pursue. During this visit, he was somewhat aware of what happened, but he would only truly learn about a career when he got an internship in college. To me, I can see the benefit for students that enter straight into the workforce. The easiest way to learn a new skill is to practice it constantly, so I think that learning a career can sometimes be the same way. This conversation was insightful, especially since it validated the thinking that I had. The idea of situated learning can be impactful if done right. But, for those that change their minds during a situated learning experience, it could be all for naught.

A brief look at situated learning.

[drewdoesliteracy]

Readerly Exploration #2

Post #2: Tompkins Chapter 2 & 6

Due Date: 2/17/2020

Big Takeaway:

Chapter 2 - While there are many steps and concepts to undertake through reading and writing, the most important idea is to allow students to explore their creative minds and develop their skills.

Chapter 6 - The main goal for a literacy teacher is to develop students in their abilities in writing and reading to increase their automaticity, speed, as well as their voice in writing or their prosody in reading.

Nugget of Knowledge:

Chapter 2 - I found the comparison between the writing and readings processes to be highly insightful. Each process contains very similar steps, such as a third step to respond to the reading or to revise the writing. Both revision and response are in the same vein, allowing the reader or writer to make a connection to what they have digested internally. Along with this, each process works in tandem equally. While in the mind of a writer, you are constantly thinking of how your target readers will interpret your readings. As a reader, you begin to think of what the writer meant through their writings. Each part works together to develop literate and competent readers and writers.

Chapter 6 - One of the concepts that was new to me in this chapter was the term prosody. Prosody is the way children use their voice through reading. I found it intriguing the different characteristics that Rasinski and Padak found in how a child reads. They found that a child’s prosody contains expression, phrasing, volume, smoothness, and pacing. Each of these characteristics contributes to the success or difficulty that children may experiences when they read.

Readerly Habit: 

“Engage in the reading process to increase the likelihood of text comprehension (pre-reading, reading, responding, exploring, applying)”

Explorations to Practice Readerly Habits: 

“As you read, highlight excerpts from the chapter that reflect the author’s purpose.”

Quotes:

“Most students reach the fluent stage during the second or third grade… This achievement is crucial because both readers and writers must be able to focus attention on meaning, not on decoding and spelling words,” (Tompkins, 2017).

“The vital element in word recognition is learning each word’s unique letter sequence,” (Tompkins, 2017).

“Students must develop an adequate reading speed or rate to have to cognitive resources available to focus on meaning,” (Tompkins, 2017).

“To become fluent writers, students need to be able to spell most high-frequency words automatically and apply spelling strategies to write other words,” (Tompkins, 2017).

“Teachers need to intervene and help older students become more fluent readers, so they can comprehend what they’re reading, and more fluent writers, so they can focus on creating meaning as they write,” (Tompkins, 2017).

[drewdoesliteracy]

Readerly Exploration #1

Tompkins 3 & 11

Due Date: 2/10/2020

Big Takeaway:

Chapter 3: There are numerous ways to look at the literacy capabilities of readers, each working in tandem to accurately portray the reading level of each reader.

Chapter 11: Teachers must use effective and well-supported methods to differentiate students and challenge them to the best of their abilities.

Nugget of Knowledge:

Chapter 3: One idea that intrigued me when looking through this chapter was the various methods to monitor the progress of a student. I thought that the main way to monitor a student’s progress was typically through homework and tests, but Tompkins provides more methods than those two. She adds that students can be monitored through direct observation, note-taking, student-teacher conferences, and by using checklists. Each method is equally impactful to monitor where a student is heading academically.

Chapter 11: I was impacted through the explanation of using high-quality instruction for struggling readers and writers. Tompkins makes it imperative to know that each learner has a different history of having difficulty with literacy and cannot be approached all in the same manner. Some methods she believes are effective include personalized instruction, using appropriate instructional materials, expanding the teachers’ expertise, and collaborating with literacy coaches. The quality of teaching will greatly increase if educators try to utilize these methods for struggling literacy students.

Readerly Habit & Explanation of Exploration: The readerly habit I chose to look at was, “Engage in the reading process to increase the likelihood of text comprehension (pre-reading, reading, responding, exploring, applying),”. To do this, before reading through the chapter, I scrubbed through the material to find words and terms that I had not seen before or that I could not define immediately. After finding each word and term, I looked up definitions for each concept. Each definition was then used as a dictionary of sorts throughout the full reading of each chapter. I found that defining each term helped me gather a sense of what each chapter was about. It also aided my understanding of assessing student progress and differentiating students. For example, in chapter 3, one of the concepts Tompkins looked at was the difference between an assessment and an evaluation. To me, these terms were interchangeable initially. However, I knew that these terms could be different than what I thought, so I jotted each term down. I was then able to find a definition for each term from Tompkins herself, which I then added to each term. This sort of discovery went on for each term until they were all defined. For some terms, I had to research more thoroughly through academic resources online. This exploration of the readerly habit helped me understand the basis for each chapter much better than I would have without defining the major terms from each chapter.

Unfamiliar Terms:

Chapter 3

Running Records - “a method of assessing reading that can be done quickly and frequently,” (TeacherVision)

Mini-lessons - “ a short lesson with a narrow focus that provides instruction in a skill or concept that students will then relate to a larger lesson that will follow,” (TeacherVision)

Assessment - “Formative; ... is ongoing and provides immediate feedback to improve teaching and learning,” (Tompkins, 2017)

Evaluation - “Summative; final, generally administered at the end of a unit or a school year to judge quality,” (Tompkins, 2017).

Book Talk - “Used to introduce books at the beginning of [a] unit and then display the books on a special shelf in the classroom library” (Tompkins, 2017)

Chapter 11

Differentiated Instruction - “Differentiation means tailoring instruction to meet individual needs. Whether teachers differentiate content, process, products, or the learning environment, the use of ongoing assessment and flexible grouping makes this a successful approach to instruction,” (ReadingRockets)

Literacy Coach - “A literacy coach is one who helps teachers to recognize what they know and can do, assists teachers as they strengthen their ability to make more effective use of what they know and do, and supports teachers as they learn more and do more.” (Toll, 2005, p. 4)

An example of how some people define differentiated instruction and what I researched for the term.