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.
Today I learned about Phonics. I haven't had phonics since second grade and I was chosen among a few other students to go learn phonics in a third grade classroom. I learned that there are many different components to phonics when we covered the phonics vocabulary list. I didn't remember as much as I thought I did so the review was very beneficial. I hope to learn the best strategies for teaching word recognition. Is there a better strategy than just having the students look at the words over and over again to help them learn word recognition. I know there is not a list of sight words, but how do you decide which words you think are most important to teach students at different grade levels?
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ReplyDeleteIn class today my thoughts about the differences between teaching and assessing comprehension were refined. I learned that assessing comprehension is not simply asking a student questions and evaluating the degree of accuracy they answer wit. Instead it is determining the meaning a student is making and what strategies they are employing to make it. Comprehension assessment is a way for the teacher to see if the student is misinterpreting the text or misusing strategies. This is important because I want to make sure I am making my assessments meaningful so that I am able to use them to inform my instruction, and ensuring that this is the end goal is the way to get there.
I hope to learn more about the stages of word recognition as well as what to do to help my students progress through these stages. While I do have some understanding of the stages and some strategies to use, I definitely want to deepen my understanding and add to my toolkit.
In class today, in our small group, reviewing one of the articles we had to blog about (nine different discussion frameworks) was beneficial. This small group review also related to the whole-class discussion about comprehension (literal, inferential, critical). This is important when trying to create comprehension goals for student learning--which leads to choosing an appropriate discussion framework for students.
ReplyDeleteToday I learned more about the distinction between teaching and assessing comprehension. I also appreciated the refresher of some of the phonics concepts I don't deal with a lot in kindergarten such as analogy and diphthongs.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I would like to learn more about is how to help ELL students learn more about grapheme phoneme patterns when reading/writing as well as how to help them develop spelling skills.
Today was a great review of phonics vocabulary list and I found it helpful in again clarifying the differences. I think the main takeaway today was the difference between assessing and teaching comprehension. In working in our small groups I got some clarification of the difference between themed units and integrated units but in all honesty it still seems a little blended to me. What I hope to learn is some solid teaching strategies for teaching word comprehension as it is the aspect of literacy I feel is the most important as a foundation to learning the others
ReplyDeleteAs we created the cheat sheets during our small group time, it was nice to really analyze and break down the importance of discussions and discussion frameworks that can be used in the classroom. Incorporating discussions in the classroom really allows the students to engage in the texts through sharing and listening to others. There are so many different approaches for discussions, depending on the focus skill. Discussions also allow teachers to guide and assess student comprehension.
ReplyDeleteAs we read the chapters for the week, I hope to learn different approaches to teaching word recognition/word study. The texts always provide very creative and engaging lesson activities that can be easily implemented in the classroom. I also hope to learn when teachers should be concerned about a child's performance concerning word recognition/word study and how to determine when a child has learning disabilities, like dyslexia.
Yesterday, I felt like reviewing the terms for phonics was really helpful. Sometimes it's easy to forget what some of those terms mean and it was really difficult to remember during the first literacy course. Having this cheat sheet will be really helpful not only to undergrad students, but to entry year teachers as well. I have the list of terms and their definition saved on my computer and plan to keep as a resource for myself.
ReplyDeleteThis week I hope to learn more about how to explicitly teach word recognition strategies to my pre-k students in a developmentally appropriate way. While I don't want to focus too heavily on this skill during their pre-k year, I do want to expose them to word-recognition skills. I do have several students who are already reading and learning how to recognize words so I hope to learn how to support them while not overwhelming them with work that is too hard.
Yesterday in class, going over the terms for phonics was extremely helpful!! I am excited to read about the different aspects of phonics soon. Also, the discussions we had in our small groups helped me have a better understand of scaffolding.
ReplyDeleteThis week I hope to have a better understanding of spelling instruction and word recognition. These are two aspects that are critical to understand, and I have not studied them in depth before.
In class this week, the review of phonics was particularly helpful to me! All of the terms having similar names has been somewhat confusing to me, so I was glad for the review. I also really enjoyed working with my peers to write about about comprehension strategies involving writing. Writing out a map targeted at preservice/new teachers was beneficial for me, in that it helped me to get to the heart of why these strategies are useful and how to implement them.
ReplyDeleteRegarding word recognition, I hope to better understand strategies for teaching this in the classroom. Learning the typical progression of word recognition processes will be important as I assess my students' levels in the future.
Reviewing the terms for phonics was the most helpful part of class for me. I have heard of used most of the terms we discussed but it was nice to talk through them and to clear up some confusion. There are so many that are very similar in meaning but wildly different when it comes to execution and teaching and being able to see how they all are laid out together was very helpful and informative.
ReplyDeleteI am hoping to better understand how to teach spelling. Spelling is very important but can be daunting to so many of my students. i am hoping to learn more about teaching and learning spelling to better teach my students, especially those who struggle with spelling.
The biggest take-away I had in class yesterday was rediscovering the difference between assessing and teaching comprehension. This is so important for teachers because students will not comprehend texts if they are not taught how to use strategies on their own. I will be more purposeful in my teaching of comprehension.
ReplyDeleteWith word recognition, I want to learn how this should be taught with emergent readers. As a Pre-K teacher, there has been some push to teach sight words, but I want to see the research on this before I teach it.
In this week's class, I really learned a lot working with my classmates on the characteristics and strategies use in shared reading and read-alouds. It was very helpful to work together to think about different ideas involving these two strategies. Our time spent reviewing phonics was also very helpful. There are a lot of terms to know and the review assisted in helping me to remember these items.
ReplyDeleteThrough our readings and blogging this week, I would like to better understand how to recognize a student's progress in word recognition, as well as various teaching strategies that could be used in teaching this concept.
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ReplyDeleteSince most of my teaching years have been spent teaching fifth grade, I haven’t used some of word recognition vocabulary terms as much as teachers in the lower grades. Therefore, the review of those terms was very helpful for me this weekend. It was also helpful to hear about the differences in phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics again. A lot of those terms I haven’t really had to use since my undergrad classes, so I am thankful for the review as I know I will need to know these terms. In this week’s readings, I hope to learn how to understand these terms even more and best approaches for teaching them.
Yesterday I felt like my two biggest takeaways were the review of vocabulary terms at the end of class (always a good refresher), and the difference between teaching and assessing reading comprehension. I needed that reminder that simply asking questions that have expected answers is not sufficient. This week I hope to better understand the stages of word recognition and learn how (and when) to teach different decoding strategies.
ReplyDeleteThe most important thing for me was the review of vocabulary. I am still having some trouble differentiating between the terms so any opportunity to discuss them gives me some experience to think back on when I am confused.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to word recognition I am curious how to utilize the words that students already know to further their bank of sight words. I want to know the strategies for building on current word recognition so that students do not have to start over with each new word.