Week 16 Spring 2017 Bringing it all together

You have done quite a bit of reading, blogging, writing, and discussing aspects related to emergent and beginning literacy, including theory, practice, and assessment. You have put into practice through your assessment projects and application projects what you have learned.  So as we come to the end of the semester, I'd like you to reflect about your learning over the course of the last three plus months and respond to these questions:
What are the three most important (to you) ideas that you learned about emergent and beginning literacy this semester? Why are they important to you? How will they inform your practice as a reading specialist, early childhood educator, or elementary educator?
Revisit the goals that you set for yourself at the beginning of the semester. How have you met them? What would you like to keep learning about?

Finally, respond to the members of your blogging group and their key ideas. You might want to use one of these beginning sentence stems:  This made me think about......., I was reminded that......., I can relate to this.......

I look forward to reading your application projects.   I've enjoyed getting to know those of you I did not know and having those of you I did know in class. Have a great end to the school year (those of you who are teaching) and a great summer! 

Week 15 Spring 2017 Writing Part 2, New Literacies

This is the last week you all will be blogging on your own blogs.  It is hard to believe that we only have 2 more weeks of classes! I'll be downloading case studies and Assessment Task 3 on Sunday evening when I return to Oklahoma from visiting my 91 year old mother.  I'm looking forward to reading what you have.  I have begun working on the new version of the iBook that your projects will be contributing to, and have begun to edit your cheat sheets for inclusion.  Please make sure that your names are on all that you do so that you can get credit.

This week you will read a chapter on the challenges of early writing instruction as well as 3 articles about implementing New Literacies into your classroom literacy practices.  Before reading, what do you think is a challenge for you related to early writing instruction?  How would you define New Literacies? What do you think they encompass in terms of thinking about young children who are just learning about literacy?

As you read, think about these terms:  participatory literacy, curricular integration vs. technology integration, features of e-texts, functions of writing.  Blog about these ideas in your own blogs, and make connections across the readings.  How is the writing chapter related to the New Literacies articles?

We will be meeting on April 29 from 1-3 in Rm. 334.  Please bring a draft of your application project for peer review (part of class ). Be prepared to share about your project as well. Final versions of the project will be due on May 6 at 11:59 pm.

Let me know if you have any questions. Have a good week!

Week 14 Spring 2017 Writing Part 1

This week you will be focused on teaching writing to young children.  You have already read about a couple of aspects of writing instruction:  handwriting and spelling. This week you will be focusing on the aspect of composition, including genres of text and grammar and mechanics. So take a minute and think about how you learned to write in elementary school.  What do you remember being the focus of the writing instruction? What kinds of texts did you write/dictate in PreK through grade 3 in your own education? How did that instruction (or did that instruction) help to make you an effective writer as you moved into the middle and secondary grades?

This week there are again quite a list of readings so you will need to share them out.  Everyone should read the writing in PreK article as it demonstrates how children develop as writers and what that means for how teachers support them.  Everyone should also read C&R 5 and 6.  Chapter 5 discusses how to help children learn to write sentences beginning at the oral language level and moving through to editing, grammar and mechanics.  Chapter 6 illustrates the phases of writing instruction that helps children recognize the characteristics of a particular genre, evaluate a text against those characteristics, and learn to write in that genre as well as what components of instruction should be included in each phase.  The remainder of the chapters each focus on a different genre of text, with illustrations of how to model and support learning about that genre.  Share those chapters out so you each get one.  Blog about teaching writing from your chapters, including discussions about Standard English, mechanics of writing, types and kinds of sentences, genres, the writing process, instructional components, rubrics, and differentiation.  

Remember, case studies or multimodal texts are due on Saturday, April 22 by 11:59 pm.  Those of you doing multimodal texts, I'll be sharing with you the Dropbox folder with the iBook template begun by Monday morning.  I'm working to get each section included with the literacy aspect labeled.

Have a good weekend, and happy Passover and/or Easter if you celebrate either holiday.
 

Week 13 Spring 2017 Word Recognition/Word Study Part 2

Thanks for your discussions about how word recognition and spelling develop through the emergent, beginning and transitional stages of learning to read and write.  Now that you know what the milestones are that you need to be looking for, the readings for this coming week target the how you support children's learning about the code. So, before you begin reading the articles and chapters, think about either your own instructional strategies and activities or ones you have seen in classrooms or ones that you experienced.  What did/do they look like?  Which ones do you think were most effective? Why?

The reading for this week discuss word study, spelling instruction, reading and writing word, manipulating words, and transferring word knowledge.  Everyone in your group should read the 2 articles.  Then divide up the chapters in the Hayes and Flanigan book so each of you only read one of the chapters.  Each is packed with instructional activities.  In your blog, teach/tell each other about the different activities in your chapter for reading words, writing words, manipulating words, and transferring words.  How do they change as children become more proficient?  How are they related to SAIL in the Ganske article?  How do the tips for implementing word study in K-2 classrooms compare to the ideas in the Hayes and Flanigan book?

Remember that you need to have small group virtual meetings this coming week.  You can use Google hangouts or the conversation feature of Canvas.  Please let me know when you are meeting and if you would like me to join you at all.  You have two activities to complete in your group:  First, review each other's case study (cert groups) or multimodal text (teacher group).  I'll be sharing a link to the iBook I have begun if you want to put it in there.  It will be on Canvas, and remember that you need a Mac to use iBooks author.  The second activity is to construct cheat sheets of teaching strategies.  Karen's Group:  Your cheat sheet is in the writing book, the chapter you read last week about teaching spelling.  Mykal's Group:  your chapter is the teaching strategies for transitional readers/writers.  Andie's group:  Your chapter is the beginning readers/writers teaching strategies for word recognition.  Lisa's Group:  Yours is the teaching strategies for emergent readers/writers. Put your cheat sheets in the class activities folder on Google Drive.  Each group needs to send me a summary of your meeting by the end of the week.

This week you also need to complete a virtual check in.  use the link on Canvas.  Please do so before Friday.

Let me know if you have questions, and remember to let me know when you are meeting and if you want me there.  Have a great week!

Week 12 Spring 2017 Word recogntion/Word Study Part 1

When you read this post, we will have already met together for our face to face class.  So reflect on what we did in class.  What is the most important thing that you learned in class?  Why is it important?  What do you hope to learn about word recognition?

This coming week begins the topic of word recognition.  Remember, that is not just about phonics but about learning grapheme-phoneme patterns for reading and spelling, building up a store of irregular and high frequency words that can be recognized by sight, using word parts, and learning a strategy for what to do when encountering an unknown word.  You will be reading about spelling development as well as characteristics of emergent, beginning, and transitional readers and writers. In addition, the chapters in the H&F book help you to understand what children at these stages need to learn and how to organize instruction to meet their needs.  They will allude to teaching strategies/activities but those come in the Week 13 chapters.

For your blogs this week, compare the three different stages of readers and writers. How are spelling instruction and word recognition instruction similar and different? If you are in a classroom, discuss how you now teach spelling and word recognition and evaluate your spelling curriculum.  What is the key idea that you each take away from discussions on invented or developmental spelling? What key idea do you take away from each of the chapters? Finally, why and how are word recognition skills important to comprehension.  Be sure to use the following terms in your discussions:  transcription skills, literacy diet, irregular words, high frequency words, text types, controlled vocabulary, decodable text, phonological vs. phonemic awareness, syllable, onset and rime, word families, letter forms vs. letter names, repetitive sentence structures, predictable word changes, fluency.

 Have a good week.