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My personal objective for Educational Psychology 401 is to learn as much as I can about teaching so that I can be well prepared for my intern year and my career as an educator. The topics that really interest me are classroom management/critical thinking, learner diversity, and teaching in the real world. I am also looking forward to the Teaching Projects aspect of our course and seeing the different techniques that everyone presents to the class. I definitely would like to explore learning theories and motivation to gain a deeper understanding. I think that these are very important concepts to understand as a teacher. I am concerned about the PRAXIS exams and what they will cover. I am really excited that this course will help me prepare for them!

Reading Intervention

 

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In the article, “A Child’s Response to Intervention Requires a Responsive Teacher of Reading,” Lose discusses how early identification of a child’s literacy learning difficulties should be followed by assessments and interventions. Interventions should be adjusted to fit each individual child’s needs and “show accelerative learning and steady progress.” One thing that I really like about this article is how it stresses the importance of struggling readers getting help that is tailored to them. 

The article states that “children come by different paths” in order to develop literacy. Therefore, a generic, one-size-fits-all type of intervention is ineffective when working with students with learning difficulties and may actually do more harm than good. I agree that focusing on the needs of each individual child is very important. By using assessments, educators can target what each child needs help in and focus on improving that skill. 

The article also mentions how teachers of low achievers should have quality professional development. Research found that when more money was spent on the teachers’ professional development, the achievement outcomes were much greater. This supports the idea that “the lowest-performing learners need the most skilled teachers.” 

Do you agree with this idea?

Guided Reading

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In “Guided Reading: A Research-Based Response to the Challenges of Early Reading Instruction,” Anita Iaquinta discusses the importance of guided reading in order to offer students’ balanced literary instruction. One of the benefits of guided reading is that teachers can match up the material that the students are learning with their current level of ability. As time goes on, children can move on to reading more difficult texts and are continuously challenged to find meaning in the materials they are reading. The role of the teacher during guided reading activities was explicitly stated in the article, which gave instruction on what to do before, during, and after guided reading instruction. The author also mentions how “guided reading reinforces problem-solving, comprehension, and decoding” (418). I agree that guided reading is very effective and I got to witness a teacher using guided reading instruction during my real-life reading inquiry. It was obvious that the guided reading helped a lot and it was interesting to see how the students worked at each leve.

• Do you remember having guided reading instruction when you were in elementary school?

Iaquinta, Anita. "Guided reading: A research-based response to the challenges of early reading instruction." Early Childhood Education Journal 33.6 (2006): 413-418.

Real-Life Reading Inquiry

For my Real-Life Reading Inquiry, I decided to investigate how a student’s culture, home environment, and community affect their reading development skills and proficiency.  I visited Ms. J’s 1^st grade classroom at a local elementary school to observe a reading lesson and gather more information on this subject. I personally believe that exposure to literature at a young age is great for young learners and will help them significantly when they begin their formal education. 

The two readings from our course that inform my topic are “The Jones family’s culture of literacy” article by Johnson and “Building the Literacy Foundation,” which is the 3^rd chapter of our textbook, Classrooms that Work. Both of these readings discuss how it is essential for children to be introduced to reading at an early age. Parents can influence the children at home and when they start school, teachers can continue to help students develop a literacy foundation. 

I noticed many things while visiting Ms. J’s classroom. When I first arrived, Ms. J was telling her students about “Mouse Tales.” Every day a student would get to take a stuffed mouse home and journal about what mouse does. I thought that this was a very creative way to encourage students to practice their writing skills. Ms. J also has a very large word wall in her classroom. Throughout the lesson I observed several students referencing the word wall when they couldn’t think of a word or needed help spelling it. Ms. J also used interactive activities to keep students engaged such as “clapping” words to figure out how many syllables there were and “grabbing” a word to sound it out. After a general lesson, Ms. J spent time with students in small reading groups. While working with one group, the other students in the classroom were given the task to look for verbs in a book that the class had recently read as a whole. I noticed that Ms. J spent time going back over the lesson for that day with the lower level reading group to give them extra practice. After about 20 minutes, this lower reading group left the classroom to get extra help from specialists in the school. Ms. J worked with two other groups in the class, they read aloud, did partner reading and discussed the text. Other things that I observed in Ms. J’s classroom were multiple sections of books, lots of colorful posters, punctuation tips, several pocket charts, and flip charts.

When the students went to their special areas, I got a chance to interview Ms. J. She told me how she thinks that a literacy background helps a great deal. Recently, the demographics at her school have changed and ELL students have been integrated into her classroom. Instead of having an entirely separate curriculum, these students spend the majority of their time in Ms. J’s classroom and go to an ELL lesson for about 30 minutes a day. Ms. J believes that these students do make progress at school but when they go home they do not receive much help. Home environment makes a big difference and Ms. J can clearly see that with her students. In order to help these students get extra assistance at home, Ms. J sends a weekly newsletter to parents to let them know what their children are expected to learn each week.

This experience relates to my future teaching because I will have to work with students from various backgrounds and home environments. Ms. J definitely gave me a lot of insight on the challenge of working with students on so many different levels. She also helped me see that although it may be difficult, it is rewarding to know that you can make a difference and see the progress that students can make while in your classroom.

Vocabulary!

 

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“The Vocabulary Rich Classroom” provided some great examples of how teachers can encourage vocabulary knowledge. Students need to be exposed to words that they don’t know in order to develop comprehension. I really liked the activities that Ms. Barker and Ms. Rivas used in their classrooms. They were both great examples of how to get students to actively practice vocabulary. I thought that the way Ms. Barker changed the vocabulary she used with her kindergarteners to include more difficult words as the school year went on was a really awesome technique to promote incidental learning. Ms. Riva’s classroom descriptions activity during the morning meeting greeting was also a good way to challenge students to search for more difficult words. I especially think that this activity is great because the descriptions of their classmates help the students understand the meaning of words that they can associate with their classmates.

While reading this article, I thought about how my aunt always tells my little cousin to “use his words” when he wants something. Just like my little cousin, the only way that students can develop vocabulary knowledge is to use their words. Teachers can help students accomplish this goal by giving them tasks like the one’s mentioned in this article. 

• Can you think of another activity that students could do in order to increase their vocabularies?

The Reason for Reading

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In order to comprehend, readers need to think while they read. Chapter 7 in Classrooms that Work gives us various comprehension strategies that teachers can use in their classrooms. I never realized how much thinking actually goes into comprehension. Teaching children how to comprehend while they read can be very complex but with the right techniques they can build a great foundation for future learning. Through activities such as literate conversations, think-alouds, story maps, and “doing” the book, children can fully understand what they are reading and why. It is extremely important for children to question what they are reading in order to comprehend. Otherwise, they have no idea why they are reading which gives them no motivation to read. According to our textbook, “comprehension is the reason and prime motivator for engaging in reading.” Without comprehension, reading is pretty much a waste of time. Let’s make sure that we teach our future students how to comprehend so that reading is a beneficial and enjoyable experience for them!

• Do you recall participating in any comprehension activities when you were younger, such as think-alouds, questioning the author, or acting out a story?

• Do you ever feel like you’re reading without comprehending? What kind of strategies do you use to make sure that you understand the text you are reading?