Differentiation and Collaborative Groups

Chapter 11 was unique in that it really broke down the ways that each of the chapters prior explained ways to differentiate through quantity, variety and choice. In using a variety of teaching techniques, learning tools, tailoring lessons and providing stimuli for different kinds of learners, and adopting a classroom library with a diverse shelves, teachers create a rich learning environment that is conducive for each of their learners' individual abilities and interests.

According to Allington and Cunningham, collaborative groups are great for the classroom because offer a teaching alternative to one on one teaching because with only one instructor in the classroom is just not realistic or always effective. Partners are good choices for class read-alouds because they allow every student the opportunity to respond and share their thoughts as you read to the class without taking the amount of time you personally addressing each student would. Reading partners are also useful because some students are eager to help encourage struggling students and they will provide the appropriate challenges and support if given the opportunity or paired well. The activities chosen as these paired readings take place and the amount of time allotted to interacting together will influence how productive reading partners are. It is inevitable that students will finish activities at different paces, so "filler" activities are also a must to ensure that every group has the opportunity to finish work at their own appropriate paces. 

This would be a good reference for reading partner activities. I especially liked this because it offers similar discussion to the discussion and questions that were suggested in the chapter for talking partners during whole class read-alouds. It would allow for reinforcement of specific questions and consistency.

Literature circles, like the ones we did over the course of this semester, were also mentioned in this chapter. However, one variation mentioned is to have each group read different books by the same author. I think that this would be cool to use if I were to assign a group assignment on different authors. Each group could study a different author and notice patterns, themes, unique illustrations, consistencies in target audiences, etc. and share their findings and maybe brief summaries of the books they examined with the class in a literature cafe setting (mentioned in a previous post) at the end the week. This would allow me to tailor the assigned readings to best suit various reading levels while also allowing students to choose books for their interests. 

A few weeks ago, I had to write my first CSEL draft, and a huge part of my learning theory and classroom application focused on inclusion. Collaborative groups and this chapter will be really useful for me in that regard because they allow me to specialize learning for different abilities and provide a forum for students to engage with one another in a productive, positive way. I want to nurture a community of learners who all feel included, involved, and important; group work or team work will have a huge part in developing an excited, interconnected community.

How do you think you will implement group work in your classroom?

Guided Reading

Guided reading involves the teacher providing students with scaffolding support as they read to development their reading and fluency skills. Instruction during guided reading generally should focus on students' use of specific reading strategies to enhance their ability to choose and apply a variety of reading strategies when they read independently.

According to Parker and Reutzel in But I Only Have Basal: Implementing Guided Reading in the Early Grades, guided readings typically progress through three steps:

1. The teacher introduces the story to help develop the students'  background knowledge.
2. The students are involved in a supported reading activity where the teacher introduces the story or part of a story, then the students quietly read aloud the identified text. During this step, the teacher observes as her students apply the strategies they know; as needed, she/he can provide support to help struggling students apply the appropriate reading strategies.
3. Once the story is complete, students are asked to follow up with an activity for extension of either the story or a new strategy learned while reading the story.

The overall goal of guided reading is to encourage and help develop children to become independent and fluent readers.

Here is a brief video that demonstrates how a guided reading in small groups might look:

Comprehension

Traditionally, comprehension has been tested, but it has not taught so that students retain their texts in the long-term. Comprehension, according to Gill, is affected by the reader, the text, and the situation. Readers meet text coming from different backgrounds, experiences, and moods which influence how they individually interpret meaning. Texts vary in their layout, content, complexities, and intent, and the situation or environment they are absorbed in and the purpose behind reading them. Gregory and Cahill provide that schemas, what readers already know that help them create bridges between their prior knowledge and the text, should be utilized and developed during comprehension instruction for young children. These connections are explained by the "Velcro Theory", which asserts that it is easier to remember text and information if we can attach it to information we already have in our heads.

A poster like this will help remind readers of the connections they should consider as they read. 

Just as it is when learning other subjects or skills, comprehension instruction should be more active and visible with young children. Visuals, repetition, reinforcements, and reminders (like the poster above) will help develop their ability to comprehend texts, which is essential to their success in later years of schooling. Activities, like the ones we participated in last week, will actively involve students with comprehension and connection skills.  

Which of the activities that we experienced last class do you think you would be most likely to use in your future classroom?

Vocabulary

All four of our readings for this week provided that vocabulary and reading are interdependent. A vivid vocabulary is vital for comprehending texts and for decoding words in texts that are unfamiliar; in addition, reading is one of the best ways, if not the best way, to develop a broader and more diverse vocabulary. When students first enter school, they vary in exposure to language and experiences with reading, and as Hart and Risley observed, children from less-educated homes tend to lag behind those from the working and professional socio-economic classes. Dalton and Grisham offer that what occurs as these students progress through school is known as the Matthew Effect, students with strong vocabulary and reading skills get stronger and students with weaker skills get weaker. To prevent this or to lower the numbers of students experiencing this, the articles suggest different teaching strategies and corresponding actives which will help with vocabulary development.

In Chapter 6, Allington and Cunningham claim that real, direct experience is best for retention of new words. Teachers can do activities with objects that they bring into the classroom from the "real world", like spatulas and ladders, then have descriptive and intensified discussions with the class about what the object is, what it does, what various activities it is used for, what stories students have with the object, etc. The objective is to create concrete ideas and provide evidence that will provide reinforcement of the word's meaning in different contexts. I liked the idea of teaching morphemes because I think it would be beneficial for students to understand root words. Knowing roots will help deconstruct unfamilar words as they read, and knowing how certain prefixes and suffixes create new meanings is also important for comprehension.

The chapter mention word dramatization, and I found this activity on Pinterest. I have used beach balls in the past in a similar way for class discussions, and I like activities like this because they add a little excitement and encourage more engagement from all the students.  

 Also, as if my previous posts haven't alluded to this already, I really like journals. The suggested "Vocabulary Journal" is great because students would have to find the meaning of words within the text, rather than looking in dictionaries and indexes. This would develop a really practical and vital skill that is used frequently at higher levels of education.

Lane and Allen describe classrooms with routine times designated to engaging the classroom community; of these, what I liked most were the classroom chores that can begin the year as simple, well-known and understand descriptions and names and then progressively become more advanced through synonyms and connections made during this designated time.

They also mention modeling sophisticated vocabulary which led my thought, once again, to Mrs. Tina. She describes to her students that those who are playing on their own on the playground or in the classroom are playing "independently". She reinforces that sometimes this is something that students choose to do, so overtime when I was leading her class in the afternoons, students would come up to tell me that "they just want to play independently, but so and so is trying to play with them, too". I remember being caught off guard by their choice of vocabulary the first time I first experienced a five year old complain about his hindered independence.

Which technology-based strategy did you find most useful of the ones provided by Dalton and Grisham?
Do you have any experience with Word Play or other activities that you found to be successful?

Word Study

Word study is important because the ability to spell and break words down influences students' ability to read, as well. At the elementary level, students begin to explore spelling and writing. Cunningham and Cunningham explain that between kindergarten and third grade students are being encouraged more and more to write with invented spelling. In doing so, students develop the ability to decode that is significant when reading. "Making Words" activities involve giving individual children some letters which they use to make words. These activities should be 15 minutes long and their end product should be 12-15 words per student. Students should begin with 2-letter words, then build on them with 3-letter, then 4-letter, and so on. Activities of this sort are effective because with one instructional format and activity, students are provided with countless possibilities for experimenting and discovering how our alphabet works.

Having the ability to spell, however, is not very useful without developing an understanding of what words mean and why they are significant to text. Therefore, Yopp and Yopp explore activities that encourage students to learn new words, find their meaning, and apply them to text and other aspects of their lives. One activity suggested involves students reading a text, taking note of 10 words they believe are important, writing them on adhesive strips, and then making a class chart to see which words were most commonly identified as significant. This is a really good activity because it focuses on finding big ideas in text, on identifying words with important meaning, and then on connecting their mean to the main ideas. Emphasizing looking up new words and understanding word meaning further prompts word consciousness; it also actively engages students with words so they can relate them to other words and contexts, explore how the different parts of word influence their meaning, and link words to their own experiences.

Two of my roommates recently moved out of the house we rent from my parents, and they left behind a shelving piece like the one on the left. My parents wanted to toss it but, with my future classroom in my forethoughts, I insisted we reinforce it, paint it, and use it until I can put it in my classroom. (They both rolled their eyes, but it is still standing in the soon-to-be-revamped dining room--BIG WIN for me so early in the week.) Anyway, when I began thinking of my post for this week, I had the "manipulative"/"free-play" area of my classroom on my mind. Then, Yopp and Yopp mentioned, "classrooms that promote word consciousness stimulate students' awareness of, interest in, and curiosity about words so that word learning extends beyond a particular lesson or the confines of a particular lesson"(158). I wanted to find activities that I could use as reinforcers to whatever we are doing with word study, and I wanted the activities to be inviting and fun.

"Let's Make Words!": When I initially came across this, I thought that it would be wasteful to have each student who wanted to do this activity cut out their own letters and etc. In my class, I would probably laminate the pages, cut the letters out and put them in labeled bags; then students would just need to grab a back and a laminated dotted page and practice. They could also fill the lines in with dry-erase markers if they wanted to record the words they create.

"Word Charts": There were a few of these on Pinterest, so I just chose one picture. However, they way that students list words could vary. They can have base letters and interchange certain letters to build words (as seen above) or they could be given a 2-letter root word and then different letters or letter combinations to build more words/create larger words. If you wanted, you could easily make both activities and rotate between them for variety every so often.

"Sort and Spell": I like this because it could be turned into a competitive activity where students challenge one another with word lists and then have to chose a way to organize them on the boards. They would, of course, be expected to spell correctly with the words provided for them. This activity would offer a multitude of options for sorting off and on the board (by number of letter, by sound, by relating categories, etc.) which would encourage creativity and also, with a little more autonomy, students' would be more engaged in their choice of sorting and in the words that are in the lists they choose.

-Did you find any other games that would apply to this that you might want to share?

-Did you find that Cunninghams' or Yopps' piece was more important than the other or do you agree that both are of equal significance to reading development? 

In Class: Readers Theater

Readers Theater is the use of a script related to a picture book or children's novel/book. The students read a script that is adopted from a book, taking turns reading each line. By doing this, the students interact with the story with more expression than they would by just reading the story by themselves. There are no props, costumes, or acting out of the story. The audience should visualize the story by the students reading the script out loud.

This helps to:
-develop fluency
-integrate reading, writing, speaking, and listening
-engage students and motivate them to read
-create purpose and confidence with reading
-provide an opportunity for collaborative learning

It looks like:

This is how it would work:

Reading Fluency

Cunningham and Allington's Chapter 4 introduces us to the methods of teaching reading fluency. This comes from rereading easy books, repetition of words, inflections, reading in groups, etc.; all of these contributing to each student's ability to read words in context, quickly, accurately, and with appropriate expression. It introduces different methods of reading in whole class contexts that will benefit independent reading, and of the provided suggestions, I like chanting and writing the words and the ideas of echo and choral readings. These combined with high-frequency word walls could help encourage reading and writing, as well as, build confidence in reading and writing for students to share.

Deeney's introduction to prosody, with regard to signal words and punctuation, could be developed or strengthened through echo and choral readings. Especially because as a group, the students could be more inclined to inflect appropriately or use exaggerated expression of punctuations. In addition, activities involving word chants and writing will also encourage excitement in reading with fluency.

Activities involving excitement over easy words and books both at home and in classrooms will encourage creativity in writing and bold expression in reading and writing activities. Rasinski introduces the idea of poetry cafes and readers' theatre festivals on Fridays. I really liked this idea, only maybe on more of a monthly basis. If students do the chanting activities and are enthusiastic throughout the week/month in reading aloud with their peers, I think that the cafes and festivals would be successful.

Poetry journals could be an "at-home" activity where the parents, siblings, etc. are encouraged to write poetry on the weekends with their children using vocabulary and contexts relevant to the class material from each week, and then allow the children to perform readings of their work at home. This would be engaging, fun, and be source of reinforcement over the weekend or holidays that seems more like a game than school work.

It would also provide some options over the month for the in-class cafes or theaters. If they have 3 or 4 poems to choose from over the course of a few weeks, the work they choose to present the class will use a broader vocabulary and more variety in content or expression.

Combining classroom engagement with at-home engagement and encouragement of expression and reading, could provide every student with a positive sense of "self" and capability that they can read aloud, they can write well and creatively, and they could be influential even when their writing seems "silly" or "meaningless". Asha Christensen wrote about her struggle to be inspired or put words to a page, and she was able to present her poem as a TedTalk partially because of her incredibly fluent delivery.

How would you encourage creativity for writing in your class?
How might you involve parents in the learning process?