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During this seminar I have learned a lot about Word recognition. Particularly, I enjoyed reading the section on vocabulary. I think a lot of ideas from the intensive word practice  would be fun to try in class. For example, the "Beat the Clock" word recognition game. In addition, I have found that strategies in repeated readings and echo readings are valuable strategies that I already use in class.
During the assessments with my case study student his week, I learned a lot about assessing a students. We have used so many different types of assessments that truly find the causes of the struggles in our readers. For instance, the Checklist for Appraising Early Reading Development assessed numerous characteristics in the student. I found that my student's biggest strength was motivation, yet, his biggest struggle was comprehension. Struggle in comprehension has been an ongoing theme with my student. I'm eager to continue to assess and learn more strategies for all of my students.
Gipe, J. P. (n.d.). Multiple paths to literacy: Assessment and differentiated instruction for diverse learners, K-12.

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While reading this week I noticed something very interesting about the side margins in our book. At times the book indicates a bodily kinesthetic tip that a student can model with their body while learning a specific topic. This week I liked how Gipe explained how students can use their arms in order to sound out letters in a word. "For example to blend the word h/o/t/, place the hand at the opposite shoulder and say/h/, slide the hand down to the elbow and say /o/, and finally down to the wrist to say /t/" (Gipe)  We use a program at our school called Reading Mastery where the students sound out and blend words continuously throughout the lesson. This would be something nice to incorporate to keep the students attention and switch things up a bit.
This week I also liked how we all shared the different school assessments we use. I really don't care for the NWEA assessment that our school uses and neither do many of the teachers at our school. I have been looking at Basic Reading Inventory and Bader reading and language inventory to research it and possible bring these two assessments to the table and share with my co workers.

Gipe, J.P. (2014) Multiple paths to literacy: Assessment and differentiated instruction for diverse learners k-12. (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson.

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Once big thing I learned this week is that I do not know as much about phonic/phonemic awareness as I should. I just always considered it to be lower elementary skills, but I learned that it is important at all levels. Taking away from Gipe´s suggestions for instruction for developing phonemic awareness, I am going to include more poetry that focuses on rhyme and alliteration.
Through out discussions I also learned some new strategies to work on vocabulary in class. I plan on trying the idea of having the students find an image/draw a picture that can support the vocabulary word.  ¨Although it is true that many new words are learned incidentally through wide reading, direct instruction has an important role in vocabulary acquisition¨ (Gipe, 2014, p.227). I am motivated to try new ways to make vocabulary more meaningful to the students.

Gipe, J. P. (2014). Multiple paths to literacy: Assessment and differentiated instruction for diverse learners, K-12. (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson.

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I really enjoyed the reading assignments this week as they focused on reading and writing workshop. Having been out of the classroom for a year now, it was informative to read about some fresh ideas for teaching specific strategies. For example, the idea for dialogue journals (or interactive journals) is a great way for students to practice writing peer-to-peer in a “risk-free” setting (Gipe, 2010). Personal dictionaries are also a great resource for students to record new or unknown vocabulary words and to take ownership of seeking out their meaning (Gipe, 2010).

Another point I found valuable from the reading was the importance of developing a child’s listening vocabulary. The greater the child’s listening vocabulary, the more he or she has to draw from when it comes time to decode words as well as write their own work. I had a great experience using the Language Experience Approach while student teaching. The reason I believe this approach was so effective was because the child is the one who tells the story while the teacher records it. The child then goes back and rereads words that came from his own language. This was effective because it makes the connection between the listening and reading vocabulary. As Gipe points out, this strategy is also effective because of the way students are motivated to read their own work (Gipe, 2010).

Finally, I loved the idea in the text that describes writing as an ongoing dynamic process:

“Writing is a creatively complex, problem-solving process in which writers move back and forth between planning, composing, and revising their work” (Gipe, 2010, p.164) I believe that teaching students about the process is highly important and essential to their success as writers. They need to know that the writing process often involves many steps and that you sometimes take two steps back before taking one step forward.

Gipe, J.P. (2010). Multiple Paths to Literacy Assessment and Differentiated

Instruction for Diverse Learners, K – 12 (7th ed.). Boston, MA:

Pearson.

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I learned a few things during this seminar and also have some concerns. One of the things I learned is that I have a lot to work on in terms of phonics. Being a science teacher, phonics is not something that I particularly focus on. It can be intimidating to think about instructing and assessing phonics. According to Gipe (2014), "Assessment activities for phonemic awareness are essentially the same as those for instructional activities, but several published assessment tools are available for use with individual students," (p. 148).  In other words the tools are there and do not have to be created. It's just a matter of finding the right one for your situation.
My concern with phonics instruction is that once students reach middle school, they are really only getting instruction related to phonics an hour a day at the most. I know that is science it is not something that is a focus and I can bet that our other core subject areas, other than English, don't spend much time on it either. It's great that we are taking this class and learning strategies, but it would take a whole school buy-in to have a great impact.

References

Gipe, J. P. (2014). Multiple paths to literacy: Assessment and differentiated instruction for diverse learners, K-12. (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson.

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During this seminar, I learned a lot about phonemic awareness. As a fourth grade teacher, I do not teach phonics. Unfortunately, I have always taken for granted the fact that phonics is a K-2 subject, and I have assumed that students are “past” learning phonics by the time they get to me. When doing my phonics assessment with my case study student, I realized that I can use this with others who are struggling with reading to determine whether phonics is a deficit of theirs. I got a lot of useful information from this and plan to use it in the future, as needed. In Gipe (2014), I learned that “phonemic awareness is not the same as phonics” (p. 148). I have a lot to learn as far as the terminology of phonics. What I am still wondering is how I could teach these skills effectively to a student who has gaps in their phonics instruction. Since I teach 4th grade, I don’t have the experience I would need to be able to help these students. Luckily, there are a lot of strategies in our textbook. One of the ideas that I think I could do well is “reading well-chosen children’s literature aloud” (Gipe, 2014, p. 148). This and other strategies will help me to work with students with deficiencies in phonics.

References

Gipe, J. P. (2014). Multiple paths to literacy: Assessment and differentiated instruction for diverse learners, K-12. (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson.

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This seminar I learned a variety of instructional strategies to support students in early literacy skills, writing and word recognition. I learned I need to create more non-structured and risk free writing opportunities. I particularly loved the ideas of creating a dialogue journal to encourage risk free writing (Gipe, 2014, p. 166). The example shown are so powerful and demonstrate how much of an impact it has on students. Another fun way to encourage risk free writing would be the activity write a sentence/make a story. Students will be in a group and all write one sentence. In the end they would have created a story. I can see my students really enjoying this activity in my classroom.

Another area I learned more about was fluency. I am constantly looking for instruction to develop fluent readers. The Neurological Impress Method, was discussed along with students’ impressive growth. I have been incorporating more buddy reading and audiobooks into my classroom.

The third area that I enjoyed reviewing is the scope and sequence for word recognition. So much goes in the act of reading and it is crucial to identify student strengths and need.

References

Gipe, J. P. (2014). Multiple Paths to Literacy Assessment and Differentiated instruction for Diverse Learners, K-12 (Eighth Edition). Upper Saddle River: Pearson.

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My big take-away this week is that I need to start including comprehension strategies for my students specifically geared toward math. I am not sure exactly what that will entail at this point, but we have a group of teachers completing Readers Apprenticeship training in our school. It came up at our staff meeting today and while I would not begin the program this year (I have been focusing on working toward standards based assessment this year and it is taking all my extra time), I am considering it for next year. None of the math teachers in my building have gone through the training, but the teachers involved have stressed that there is a focus on incorporating the strategies into math classes. The feedback from the teachers already in the program has been really positive.

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The key concept I took away from the course this week was pre-writing strategies. I am teaching Writer’s Workshop for the first time, and I love learning new ways to incorporate techniques which encourage a love of writing. In our textbook, Gipe discusses several pre-writing strategies including drawing, drama, speed-writing, and making connections to story features (Gipe, 172-173). I paid extra attention to the idea of speed-writing because I thought it would benefit my class the greatest.

Speedwriting is meant to encourage positive ideas and less apprehension about writing. Using this technique, students write non-stop for a selected length of time without getting help with spelling or grammar, erasing things or crossing things out. The thought is that the ideas will flow freely since students aren’t worried about spelling or grammar.

I tried this activity with my students this week and they loved it. They were actually excited to write and couldn’t wait to get their amazing ideas on paper! I will certainly use this strategy in the future.

References

Gipe, J.P. (2013). Multiple Paths to Literacy: Assessment and Differentiated Instruction for Diverse  Learners, K-12 (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, Merrill, Prentice Hall.

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This week I learned how much preparation it takes to help our students become proficient in reading, paying closer attention to different patterns, comprehension, vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar usage. Phonological awareness plays a great role in literacy and is the basis to comprehend. Even though “early literacy skills certainly begin at birth and extend through the first five years of life” (Gipe, p.142, 2004). It is true that reading to young kids, exposing them to books at an early age, helps them being more advanced in literacy. A lot more work is done as students enter school and “reading aloud to students is among the most effective ways of developing oral language for both native and non-native English speakers” (Gipe, p.143, 2004). Different reading techniques help students being aware of print, reading from left to right, recognize upper and lower case letters and make a connection between letters and sounds.

Also, we as educators have to instruct, assess and share the data to our teaching partners, achievement teams and principal in order to create growing learning environments for our students. We have to create lesson plans and assess accordingly to our students’ needs in order to monitor their progress. Vocabulary is an important element in every day learning and students should be introduced to new content area words based on the lesson being taught. I would like to explore other techniques of introducing new vocabulary in content areas.

Reference

Gipe, J. P. (2014). Multiple Paths to Literacy Assessment and Differentiated Instruction for Diverse Learners, K-12 (Eighth Edition). Upper Saddle River: Pearson.

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The first thing that comes to mind from this seminar is just how much goes into being independent in literacy. Truly starting from birth and relying on others to help mold what you are learning and doing. The support it takes from so many people during a student’s educational experience. The importance of vocabulary, especially in specific content areas. Without the specific vocabulary reading and understanding in those areas would be impossible.

I would like to incorporate more vocabulary work for all of my classes. Teaching computer programs it can sometimes be hard to step away and work specifically on non-program work. I think if the students have a better understanding about what they are working on and can communicate to others they will be much better off in the long run. I have always felt if a student can teach another student how to do something in a program they truly understand what they are doing. They have to use their own words to do it, but need to understand the vocabulary from the text.

It really surprised me just how far away I am as a secondary teacher from all of the reading and writing assessments. I would like to have an overview of what is used so I have an understanding of what is being asked of the students and how they are being assessed for literacy.

I learned that my students is good at conversation and communicating to others. She really just has some small issues with transferring everything she is reading from the text to applying it to the computer program. � }d��jXu�