Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
Savannah McEntireParticipant
One key takeaway I had from the reading by Eberhardt was the significance of teaching methods in regards to syntax and vocabulary when it comes to effectiveness. Many of us remember old school grammar instruction with sentence diagraming which may not have seemed to have purpose outside of that isolated activity. However understanding the concepts of grammar are important to reading comprehension, so we can’t just abandon this content altogether. Having more authentic methods for teaching vocabulary and grammar improve the effectiveness of instruction, as well as giving purpose to students.
When I had taught close reading in the past, we did not include a syntax and grammar portion. While this eliminated the use of “busy work” activities like sentence diagraming, it also left students with misconceptions. Previously, a close reading lesson would consist of a read aloud of the text, with stopping points for discussion and comprehension checks, while students annotate their copies of the text, and then an opportunity for students in writing to respond either to a question about the text’s main idea or about author’s craft. There was a heavy emphasis on comprehension in this format, but I did notice gaps, particularly for emergent bilingual learners, in comprehension because of gaps in vocabulary and syntax knowledge.
After reading about the effective strategies for syntax instruction in the readings, there are a few ways that I would shift or adjust these lessons to make them more effective for all learners but especially emergent bilingual learners. Using the reciprocal version of sentence expansion questions to break down and understand the content of a complex sentence is one way that I think I could add authentic instruction of grammar into a close reading lesson. I would begin by choosing a sentence that has complex grammar in a text that may cause misconceptions for students. On a chart, I would list the unpacking questions (who or what is doing it? what are they doing? How, where, which, etc.?) then as a class we can unpack the sentence and following this I can ask a comprehension question about the content of the sentence to make sure that students understand. This connects structure and meaning in an authentic way to keep learners engaged, purposeful in their learning, and not skip that important grammar instruction.
Another strategy I would like to try is to find a purposeful way to do sentence diagramming. Diagramming random sentences seemed to lack purpose for me when I was a student, but at the same time, looking back I can see that the practice also solidified my understanding of parts of speech and other grammatical constructs. Perhaps pairing this practice with the practice I mentioned previously would give the activity the purpose it was lacking when I did it as a student. Taking that sentence that we had broken down and asked those questions about, and then creating a diagram to represent all those different pieces of the sentence before asking the comprehension question would be one step further in solidifying that grammatical understanding.
Thirdly, I like the idea of finding the topic of a text by following the “thread” of subjects that are referring to the same thing in a text (including pronouns). This helps students to understand the variety of ways we can refer to something, and also assists students in understanding the main idea of a text, because they are able to track the topic throughout each sentence. Main idea identification is often a main focus of close reading lessons, especially the first time reading a new text. Using this strategy can help students more accurately identify the main idea.
Savannah McEntireParticipantPhonological and morphological awareness as they pertain to oral language development also play a huge role in preparing students for decoding in reading, while typically we think of background knowledge and vocabulary as preparing students for comprehension. The two go hand in hand because without knowledge of vocabulary and background information, students will struggle to use meaning to help them decode tricky words. While reading in the articles and listening to the lecture, I thought about what I see a great deal in the kindergarteners in my class who are emergent bilingual learners. Many of them have developed strong decoding skills relying on the visual components of the word in isolation, but when they lack the vocabulary to make meaning from the word, this can trip them up in decoding as well as in comprehension. For example, on a recent reading assessment that I conducted, one page of the book uses the word “chimps.” Many of my emergent bilingual learners (and even some of my students who’s first language is English) want to use meaning to help decode the word, and want to say “monkeys” because that’s what they see in the picture. Meanwhile, they recognize the sounds of the word from our phonics instruction, so they know the word isn’t monkeys, but they don’t know what “chimps” are so they have trouble believing that that is correct even if they accurately sound it out. Some will even stick with the guess of “monkeys” even though they know it doesn’t look right, because it is a word that makes sense. Another example is a text where a key turning point in the plot has to do with understanding what a skunk is (when the skunk enters the house, all the other animals run away) many of my EBL students will say squirrel, instead of skunk, and because of that do not make the connection that the other animals are leaving because of his smell. Introducing those vocabulary words ahead of time and building that background knowledge would go far in increasing both the accuracy and comprehension of emergent bilingual learners on many texts such as these.
Even though those examples are from assessments, I think the same is true for many reading and writing units where there is such a heavy emphasis on discourse and deep understanding of meaning, that there leaves little time to launch a book and adequately pre-teach important vocabulary words that build background knowledge. When teaching guided reading lessons, I usually spend time on vocabulary when launching the book, but as our book launches are expected to be less than 5 minutes and include an active engagement, unfamiliar sight word introduction, decoding strategy, and thinking job, sometimes vocabulary gets pushed to the side, or is only emphasized for about 1 minute or less (barely time to introduce the word and show a picture). One way I could adapt this is by thinking bigger than each individual lesson or book, to the broader spectrum of the overall unit. Finding a block to pre-teach important content based vocabulary words that will be seen across texts could alleviate those precious few minutes during each lesson to be more of a review, while a heavier emphasis on actually teaching those words would come in an introductory lesson to the unit. As mentioned in the article The Magic of Words, that quick exposure one time before reading is not enough for the child to really acquire the new vocabulary. They might remember it for the length of the lesson to read this particular text (or not) but are unlikely to be able to apply it in the future to other texts when they come across the same word, because they haven’t had enough exposure. I think that having a vocabulary introduction lesson at the beginning of the unit, and then reviewing important vocabulary during each individual lesson prior to reading a text will create that repeated exposure over a longer period of time that allows students to really learn the words.
When it comes to phonics and phonological/morphological awareness, our day includes a phonics block in the morning where more direct instruction around sounds and blending occurs. I have also added during an intervention block in my schedule a time where I focus on phonics skills in Spanish with my Spanish speaking EBLs. I have found this to be especially beneficial as (although a few sounds are different) the skills of using sounds and blending are the same, and reading books in Spanish means that they can focus more on the phonics skills and less on the vocabulary, however that vocabulary needs to be fit in more during other parts of the day.
One question I still have is around direct instruction of morphemes such as prefixes and suffixes in the early grades. I have taught chunking as a reading strategy for decoding so that students know they can break up words into parts, and have similarly taught students to look for a word they know within an unknown word as one way to find meaning. That being said, I haven’t gone so far as to teach prefixes and suffixes directly. I wonder what the most appropriate age is to do that and if at certain grade levels it overcomplicates word learning to actually make things more confusing. I definitely understand the importance of knowing those morphemes and how they can change and derive word meaning as vocabulary becomes more complex in second grade and beyond, but is this something that we should also be teaching in K-1? The article by Keiffer and Lesaux spoke specifically to doing this in fourth and fifth grade, but I’m wondering how it translates to the lower grades, and at what level and degree it should be implemented.
Savannah McEntireParticipantAs I listened to the mini-lecture I found myself nodding along and audibly agreeing with the things that you were saying. This current school year, in my main weekday teaching job (I also teach at a separate school on Saturdays for Saturday school) I am teaching kindergarten. There is so much pressure from my administration for students to be reading at a specific level at a specific time, and so much of our day is devoted to reading. This sounds great, but a giant portion of it is dedicated to guided reading groups where there is so much emphasis placed on those “abstract” or “secondary” skills as you described them. I find it difficult, with my students, most of whom are learning English, to focus on such abstract things, but that is the constant feedback from administration to my team. That skills taught and questions asked need to be transferrable so that they can be applied to any text, and not text specific to the text we are reading. For example, one of my reading groups is 3 students who are emergent bilingual learners and below grade level in reading. We use F&P and these students are reading level A books when the expectation at this point in the year is level C. These students first, in my opinion need to solidly understand what happened in a story and be able to articulate it before expecting them to answer these abstract inferential questions, requiring them to provide text evidence, etc. But the constant feedback to my team is that at any level students need to articulate the “deepest meaning” or main idea of the text at the end of each guided reading lesson. My 5 year old students are stressed. I am stressed. There is so much pressure. It doesn’t feel developmentally appropriate.
I appreciated how in the lecture you walked us through various supports you would provide to students and prompts that might be used to give them access to the content and the standards. I look forward to finding ways to use these supports to better assist all students.
The Saturday School classes I teach are ELA classes for 3rd and 4th grade students, many of whom speak Chinese as their native language. I am hoping to also find ways to implement these supports for those students as well. While they have a stronger mastery of English, I still notice gaps in academic language that hold them back in some areas of our work.
When reading the article for this session, the section of the text that most resonated with me was on page 10 titled “Topic Knowledge May Support the Acquisition and Use of Reading Comprehension Strategies.” In this section, the author explained that students who have a background knowledge or schema on the subject or content of the text were able to more successfully employ comprehension strategies when reading. When students understand the content of the text, they are able to more effectively use comprehension strategies to answer inferential questions, because their focus is not on understanding what the text is saying literally, but using the information in the text and their prior knowledge to construct a deeper understanding of the content. This speaks directly to our work with emergent bilingual learners, who often times are working really hard just to understand what a text is saying due to lower proficiency in the English language, or limited background knowledge of the content. It makes sense that these students would struggle more or take longer to master various comprehension strategies because their focus is not entirely on those comprehension strategies and inferences, but a portion of not most of their effort is used to simply understand the text literally.
Another section that I felt was very informative and important was on page 12 titled “Distinguishing Between Knowledge Activation and Knowledge Building.” There is a heavy emphasis on knowledge activation at the beginning of reading lessons, in my experience, but under the assumption that students have knowledge that can be activated. There is little emphasis on knowledge building for students who may have little to know background knowledge on a particular topic. I was interested to read that “it is not clear that all knowledge activation activities support comprehension” since there is such a significant focus on this in many schools. It seems that activating prior knowledge without time spent to determine which of that knowledge is accurate and relevant may actually inhibit comprehension. This piece is what is missing often times in a reading lesson.
I think that this is the biggest piece for me to consider in my Unit Analysis. I want to find meaningful ways to embed knowledge building (not just activation) that will support students in engaging with texts to understand them at the deepest level. This has been missing in my previous lessons aside from pre-teaching one or two vocabulary words from the text. I want to find more meaningful ways to build background knowledge for students so that they can focus on comprehension strategies.
Savannah McEntireParticipantAs fluent readers, is there anything you can understand?
What knowledge and skills are you using to try and make sense of it?
How does it feel to not be able to understand this text?While I do have some trouble understanding the text overall, I am able to make some meaning from it due to reading skills that I have, as well as some background knowledge that I have to help me understand some. First, I looked at the picture on the page, and saw that it was of a frog or toad in the water. Since they are photographs, I could infer that this was an informational nonfiction text. Next I looked at how the text was set up, in three paragraphs, and I could see how these were broken up into sentences. Next, as German is in the same language family as English, I looked through the text to find cognates to see if that could help me understand more. The words, phrases, and word parts that I came across and could understand to some degree were Bayou-Gewassern (Bayou water), rumpelt (rumbled), Frosche (frog) “In der Mitte des Winters” (in the middle of the winter), April (April), Sommer (Summer) “uber einem Jahr” (over a year), gewebten (webbed), Hinterfussen (hind feet), schwimmt (swim). I also have a little knowledge of German from when I was a child and lived in the Netherlands for a few years. From that I remembered the words Blitz (lightning) and Donner (thunder), weissen (white), winden (wind), Fruhlings (spring), and Jetzt (now). After figuring out these words in isolation, I would reread the rest of the sentence and then go back and try to make meaning of the sentence using the words that I knew. With that and some knowledge of frogs, the most meaning I could make was that the text is about a type of frog in the Bayou during different seasons and in different weather. But even that didn’t give me a full understanding of the text, or what it is that the author wants me to know about these frogs, what the author’s perspective is, or anything important like that. Things that, as a strong reader, I know that I am supposed to get from this text. For that reason, the experience was very frustrating. Something that I would have read quickly in my own language took me probably five times as long to get through and at the end of it I still didn’t understand everything I knew I should.
Savannah McEntireParticipantHello, my name is Savannah McEntire. I am a 2nd grade teacher in an ICT classroom in Flushing, Queens. It is my 5th year teaching, but my first year with this grade level. So far it is my favorite age group yet.
Although my school is in Flushing, a majority of our students are from District 24 which is primarily Elmhurst and Corona. A majority of my students are Spanish speaking, with a handful who are Arabic speaking. Our school also has a small population of Chinese speaking students, although I do not have any in my class.Because I teach in an ICT setting, as the Gened teacher, I do have quite a few SWDs who are also ELs. This is a population I have not worked with very much before. I did study TESOL and have my certification in it, but it has been now 5 years since I completed that course work, and I know that the practice is always changing as new research comes out, so my hope is to use this course to keep myself up to date on best EL teaching practices, and learning more about teaching EL SWDs.
I work in a charter school, so none of our students receive formal EL services like they would in a public school (something I wish was different), so it is up to me to supplement that not just for my students, but for both second grade classes since it is my specialty on our grade team.
-
AuthorPosts