Reading Log 5:

“The Essentials of Teaching Children to Read” Chapter 3

OBSERVATIONS:

- Fluency:

o Accuracy and ease of decoding

o Age of grade level appropriate reading speed or rate

o Appropriate use of volume, pitch, juncture, and stress in

one’s voice

o Appropriate text phrasing or “chunking”

- Skills that make a fluent reader:

o Automaticity: translating letters to sounds or words

effortlessly and accurately

o Expression: using proper intonation in one’s voice

o Rate: attaining appropriate reading speed according to the

reader’s purpose or the type of passage

o Phrasing: reading orally large chunks of text such as

phrases or sentences smoothly without hesitating,

stopping to decode, or rereading

- Fluent readers can decode the words in text accurately and

effortlessly, and read with correct volume, phrasing, appropriate

intonation, and a reasonably rapid rate so that they reading as

become “automatic”

- Most prominent theory that explains how readers become fluent

 is the Automaticity theory

o Explains how reading fluency develops in the way that the

human mind functions like a computer, and that visual

input is sequentially entered into the mind of the reader

- Chall’s Stages of Reading Fluency

o Stage 0: Children engage in a pseudo-reading; will retell a

familiar story with the aid of pictures

o Stage 1: Begin to focus on the text on the page

o Stage 2: Consolidate what they have learned about reading

in Stage 1 (the connections between letters and sounds) by

reading easy books that are familiar or well-known

o Stage 3-5: In stage 3, children read for knowledge and for

information; stage 4 readers gradually become able to look

beyond the literal meaning of text and consider content

from more than one single point of view; stage 5, readers

are self-directed and have learned to read many genres of

text

- Fluency involves a process that looks different over time:

o Begins with fluent letter and sight word recognition

o Moves to fluent decoding or automaticity

o Fluent access to vocabulary and comprehension strategies

- Fluency practice is most effective when:

o The reading practice is oral

 o It involves repeated readings of a text

o When studies receive guidance or feedback from teachers,

parents, volunteers, and peers

- Seven characteristics of effective fluency instruction and practice

drawn from evidence-based research:

o Explicit instruction

o Model

o Reading Practice

o Access to Appropriately Challenging Reading Materials

o Use of Oral and Silent Reading

o Monitoring and Accountability

o Wide and Repeated Reading

- An effective teacher always maps our her lesson plan well before

implementing it

- Decodable text: usually short books that use common spelling

patterns (orthography)

- Logographic reading: words can be recognized as wholes without

analysis of the parts

- Phonological recording: words can be recognized through

recoding each letter into a sound, holding the sounds in

sequence in short-term memory, and then blending the

sequenced sounds together

- The drastic strategy:

 o Teacher storytelling

o Child storytelling

o Scramble, Sort, and Find

o Take A Picture and Write It

o Fill in the Blank

o New Text Close Reading

- Partner or paired reading- a student read aloud with a more

fluent partner or one of equal fluency

CONNECTIONS:

In my Kindergarten class, the cooperative teacher always uses

implicit instruction. She tells the class the directions (ex. A

worksheet), then she demonstrates to the class how to do the entire

work sheet. She then tells the class to go to their tables and do the

same thing. The teacher and I then walk around to make sure they

are able to follow the directions, and we help them when needed.

WONDERINGS:

- How old should children be to do activities such as Scramble,

Sort and Find? I feel as though my kindergarten class would

struggle with that. Also, how long on average do children spend

in Chall’s Stages of Reading Fluency?

“Words Their Way” Chapter 3

OBSERVATIONS:

- Categorizing is the fundamental way that humans make sense of

the world

o Allows us to find order and similarities among various

objects, events, ideas, and words that we encounter

- Word sorting offers the best of both constructivist learning and

teacher-directed instruction

- Three basic types of sorts that reflect the three layers of English

orthography:

o Sound

o Pattern

o Meaning

- Approaches to sorting:

o Teacher-directed closed sorts

o Student-centered open sorts

- Variations of Sorts:

o Guess My Category

o Writing Sorts

o Word Hunts

o Brainstorming

o Repeated individual and buddy sorts

o Speed sports
 o Draw and label/cut and paste

- Teacher-Directed Word Study Lesson Plan

o Demonstrate: Introduce the sort using key pictures or

words

o Sort and Check: individually or with a partner

o Reflect: compare and declare

o Extend: activities to complete at seats, in centers, or at

home

- Make a routine for word study, because it will benefit your

students to know when everything is happening, and when they

should study their words

- Ten Principles of Word Study Instruction:

o Look for what students use but confuse

o A step backward is a step forward

o Use words students can read

o Compare words “that do” with words “that don’t”

o Sort by sound and sight

o Begin with obvious contrasts

o Don’t hide exceptions

o Avoid rules

o Work for automaticity

o Return to meaningful texts

CONNECTIONS:

Last year, in my first grade classroom, the teacher frequently used

different activities such as the draw, label cut paste activities to teach

the children different variations of sorts.

WONDERINGS:

In the ten principles of word study instruction, it is stated that teachers

should avoids rules. I know that children learn in different ways, and

rules help some students learn. When is it appropriate to teach rules?

“The Essentials of Teaching Children to Read” Chapter 4

OBSERVATIONS:

- Students learn their new vocabulary by:

o Conversations

o Independent reading

o Media

- Four types of vocabulary:

o Listening vocabulary: made up of the words we can hear

and understand

o Speaking vocabulary: comprised of words we use when we

speak

o Reading vocabulary: words we can identify and understand

what we read

o Writing vocabulary: words we use in writing

- Sight words: occur frequently in most texts and account for the

majority of written words

- Structure words: carry little meaning but do not affect the flow

and coherence of the text being read

- Lexical words: actual meaning of the text depends on the ready

knowledge of less frequent words

- Key vocabulary: lexical words that emerge from the child’s

experiences

- Idiomatic expressions: combinations of words that have a

meaning that is different from the meanings of the individual

words

- Word map: a graphic rendering or a sketch of a word’s meaning

- Before and after word knowledge self rating: an efficient way to

survey student vocabulary knowledge

- Cloze passages: short passages from books commonly used in

the classroom in which certain words have been deleted

- Maze passage: a modification of the cloze passage, but they tend

to be less frustrating to students than cloze passages because

they are provided three possible answers to choose from in filling

in the blank

- Principles of Effective Vocabulary Instruction:

o Principle 1: vocabulary is learned best through explicit,

systematic, instruction
 o Principle 2: teachers should offer both definitions and

context during vocabulary instruction

o Principle 3: effective vocabulary instruction must include

depth of learning as well as breadth of word knowledge

o Principle 4: students need to have multiple exposures to

new reading vocabulary words

- Word banks: used to help students collect and review sight

words

- Specific word instruction: can deepen students’ knowledge of

word meanings, and in turn, help them understand what they are

hearing or reading

- Synonyms: words that have similar, but not exactly the same

meaning

- Antonyms: word opposites or near opposites

- Euphemisms: words or phrases that are used to soften language

to avoid harsh or distasteful realities, usually out of the concern

for people’s feelings

- Onomatopoeia: the imitation of a sound in a word

- Recasts: build directly on sentences just read that contain a new

word the teacher (or parent) may want to teach the child

CONNECTIONS:

In both my first grade classroom and my kindergarten classroom.

 The

students have had Sight words listed on words walls. The teachers

frequently refer to the word walls when doing different activities.

Although the

kindergarteners don’t use the word wall as much, the first graders

referred to it

on a regular basis.

WONDERINGS:

How well should the class know a word before it is placed on the Word

Wall? When is it effective to use a word map?