Happy Spring to everyone! I hope you all had a restful and/or productive Spring Break, which ever you were hoping for! My trip to Africa was busy and productive as we worked with teachers and students there. I was so busy that I did not take any pictures of what we did...but I did spend one afternoon teaching beginning reading to 8 limited or non-English speaking ladies (1 was a refugee from the Congo, 2 were natives of Northern Uganda, and the remainder were refugees from the South Sudan. It was a humbling experience for me!
This week is focusing again on comprehension, specifically high level discussions and written responses and projects, as well as informational texts and classroom inquiry (in the additional articles). What roles do you think discussion and writing play in supporting comprehension of a variety of texts? Why do you think that?
As you read, think about your own comprehension instruction when you were in school or the comprehension instruction that you provide now if you are teaching. If you are in one of the teacher groups, use Form 6.3 to evaluate your own implementation of high level discussions in your classroom and blog about that. All groups use Form 6.4 to self-assess your group's blogging discussions over the last 3 blog discussions. How are you doing? what do you need to improve? How is the written discussion (which is an overlap of the topics of Chapters 6 and 7 of DS&G) helpful to your comprehension of what you are reading? How are the ideas in the article(s) that your group read related to the DS&G chapters? What teaching strategies that you read about would you like to try out in your classroom, either now if you are teaching or when you have your own classroom? What are some key ideas that you learned about supporting comprehension of limited English speaking students?
We will be meeting face to face on Saturday, April 1 from 9-12 in Rm. 334 of Collings Hall. My blog for Week 12 will go live after that class. If you are in the Certification Group, please bring your data/assessments and notes that you have collected on your case study child for us to review and talk about before you begin writing your case study. If you are in the Teacher Group, I plan to have your Assessment Task 2 graded before you come (and remember that it is/was due on Saturday March 25 before midnight on Canvas. I"ll add to the rubric that I have already begun for you. I"ll have a rubric for your multimodal text that is Task 3, so bring your plans on what you will do for that piece.
We will be constructing some "cheat sheets" for my undergraduate students on comprehension and how to support it in class as well as working on the above projects and preparing to begin our conversation about word recognition.
Looking forward to our face to face time together!
Friday, March 24, 2017
Saturday, March 11, 2017
Week 10 Spring 2017 Comprehension Part 1
I am having this blog go live on the Friday before Spring Break for anyone who wants to get a jump on the readings over the break. As you read this, I will have either just arrived in Uganda for a week of working with the school for women and its teachers OR be leaving Uganda after a hopefully productive week. I am taking printed copies of your Exploration projects with me and electronic versions of the rubric for each of you. I'll put comments on the rubrics and will email them to you as I have access to the internet and/or finish grading them. So you will know what it is like where I am, I'll drop a few pictures in here:
This blog begins the discussion about comprehension. So please tell me what you know about: the levels of comprehension, comprehension strategies that good readers use, factors that affect a reader's ability to comprehend a text, teaching strategies to support comprehension. I know that this is a lot to address, but it will help me for the next blog and determining what we will do on April 1 when we next meet fact to face.
The chapters that you are reading this week focus on teaching strategies to support comprehension and knowledge building. You will be reading about themed integrated units and comprehension strategy instruction as well as how to assess comprehension and strategy use. The McKee article demonstrated a particular strategy that children can learn to help them comprehend texts at higher levels. So in your blogs, all of you need to compare and contrast the different comprehension strategy instructional methods. How might they fit into themed units? What do you think are the strengths and challenges of using themed units to support the development of comprehension skills and strategies? Teacher groups: Evaluate your own comprehension strategy instruction. Which of the teaching methods have you used? what do you think you do well? What could you improve on? How does your comprehension instruction fit in with the Principles of Reading Comprehension from the reading comprehension article that you read?
Certification groups: Which of the strategy assessments in Chapter 5 will you use with your child for your case study? Why did you choose that one? How does handwriting development that you read about in C&R 3 fit in with our focus on comprehension?
Vocabulary/terms to use in your response: Please include and/or discuss the following concepts in your blog discussions. types of connections (text-text, text-self, text-world), prior knowledge, purpose for reading, situation model, hypertext, digital videos, declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, conditional knowledge, responsive engagement, text features, genre, multiple texts, cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies, self-regulation.
Hope you have/had a great break!
The chapters that you are reading this week focus on teaching strategies to support comprehension and knowledge building. You will be reading about themed integrated units and comprehension strategy instruction as well as how to assess comprehension and strategy use. The McKee article demonstrated a particular strategy that children can learn to help them comprehend texts at higher levels. So in your blogs, all of you need to compare and contrast the different comprehension strategy instructional methods. How might they fit into themed units? What do you think are the strengths and challenges of using themed units to support the development of comprehension skills and strategies? Teacher groups: Evaluate your own comprehension strategy instruction. Which of the teaching methods have you used? what do you think you do well? What could you improve on? How does your comprehension instruction fit in with the Principles of Reading Comprehension from the reading comprehension article that you read?
Certification groups: Which of the strategy assessments in Chapter 5 will you use with your child for your case study? Why did you choose that one? How does handwriting development that you read about in C&R 3 fit in with our focus on comprehension?
Vocabulary/terms to use in your response: Please include and/or discuss the following concepts in your blog discussions. types of connections (text-text, text-self, text-world), prior knowledge, purpose for reading, situation model, hypertext, digital videos, declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, conditional knowledge, responsive engagement, text features, genre, multiple texts, cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies, self-regulation.
Hope you have/had a great break!
Friday, March 3, 2017
Week 8 Spring 2017 Oral language and vocabulary Part 2
It looks like everyone is hard at work on your Exploration project. There were a couple of questions related to page numbers. For the annotated bibliography, no, there is no page number. Both groups should look at the rubric for specifics on what to include. You do need to tell the theoretical perspective of the article, and some may not explicitly say "the theoretical perspective is ......" so you will have to infer what it might be, such as constructivist, new literacies, behaviorist, sociocultural, etc. For the teacher group project of examining the instruction in your own classroom, I can't imagine describing and critiquing my classroom practice when I was teaching children in less than 10-12 pages. The thoughtfulness of that description and critique (and make sure you check the description in the syllabus as well as the rubric for exactly what needs to be included) will be key.
This week is the second week of thinking about how to support oral language and vocabulary. The key topics are language rich classrooms and word awareness. I know you have read an article about language rich classrooms but I think that this will provide lots of detail. So before reading, think about those two terms. How do you define word awareness? What do you think are the characteristics of a language rich classroom? Keep your responses in mind as you read the chapters.
You will be provided with a variety of instructional strategies, activities, and routines in these 3 chapters, including vignettes from classrooms from PreK through 2nd grade. Blog about how you think these activities/strategies/routines support language development. Think about how language development includes speaking and listening skills. What speaking and listening skills are in the new Oklahoma Academic Standards for English Language Arts? How might the suggestions in the chapters support learning those skills? Certification groups: Please also blog about the following questions: How are activities different from routines? How are teaching strategies different from activities? After reading the vignettes in Chapter 10, what is something key you learned about teaching vocabulary and supporting language learning across the early grades? Teacher Groups: You also read 2 articles for this week. Please also blog about how the content from the articles is related to the chapters that you read. Also complete the IVI in Chapter 10 and talk about your results.
The remaining 3 blog groups are meeting this upcoming week. Karen's group started a Google doc called Oral Language. Each group will have an assignment to complete related to one of the chapters for this week. Please use a different color font for your group than what is already there. Neka's Group: Please share your formative assessment projects with each other for peer feedback. Your assignment for the Google doc is to discuss Chapter 10 and for each age level (PreK, K, 1st, 2nd) summarize characteristics of oral language development that may be specific to that developmental level. Andie's Group: Share what you are finding out about your case study child to date. Then take Chapter 4 and summarize characteristics of language rich classrooms--bulleted descriptions and list and briefly describe (3-5 sentences each) whole group routines and strategies from that chapter and activities that could be placed in independent centers. Lisa's Group: Share about your case study child. Your chapter is Chapter 5. List and briefly describe activities and lessons to support word awareness and independent word learning.
I leave on March 9 for Uganda for spring break. I'll leave the blog for the week after spring break to go live on the Friday of Spring Break so you have a week off of my blog. I will be downloading your exploration projects on Sunday and plan on taking them with me to grade on airplanes or during downtime in Gulu. I will get the rubric and comments on the project back to you when I return on March 19.
Have a good week!
This week is the second week of thinking about how to support oral language and vocabulary. The key topics are language rich classrooms and word awareness. I know you have read an article about language rich classrooms but I think that this will provide lots of detail. So before reading, think about those two terms. How do you define word awareness? What do you think are the characteristics of a language rich classroom? Keep your responses in mind as you read the chapters.
You will be provided with a variety of instructional strategies, activities, and routines in these 3 chapters, including vignettes from classrooms from PreK through 2nd grade. Blog about how you think these activities/strategies/routines support language development. Think about how language development includes speaking and listening skills. What speaking and listening skills are in the new Oklahoma Academic Standards for English Language Arts? How might the suggestions in the chapters support learning those skills? Certification groups: Please also blog about the following questions: How are activities different from routines? How are teaching strategies different from activities? After reading the vignettes in Chapter 10, what is something key you learned about teaching vocabulary and supporting language learning across the early grades? Teacher Groups: You also read 2 articles for this week. Please also blog about how the content from the articles is related to the chapters that you read. Also complete the IVI in Chapter 10 and talk about your results.
The remaining 3 blog groups are meeting this upcoming week. Karen's group started a Google doc called Oral Language. Each group will have an assignment to complete related to one of the chapters for this week. Please use a different color font for your group than what is already there. Neka's Group: Please share your formative assessment projects with each other for peer feedback. Your assignment for the Google doc is to discuss Chapter 10 and for each age level (PreK, K, 1st, 2nd) summarize characteristics of oral language development that may be specific to that developmental level. Andie's Group: Share what you are finding out about your case study child to date. Then take Chapter 4 and summarize characteristics of language rich classrooms--bulleted descriptions and list and briefly describe (3-5 sentences each) whole group routines and strategies from that chapter and activities that could be placed in independent centers. Lisa's Group: Share about your case study child. Your chapter is Chapter 5. List and briefly describe activities and lessons to support word awareness and independent word learning.
I leave on March 9 for Uganda for spring break. I'll leave the blog for the week after spring break to go live on the Friday of Spring Break so you have a week off of my blog. I will be downloading your exploration projects on Sunday and plan on taking them with me to grade on airplanes or during downtime in Gulu. I will get the rubric and comments on the project back to you when I return on March 19.
Have a good week!
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