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I enjoyed this chapter and especially the article this week because it focused on comprehension. I read the article first and found myself asking questions about the topic only to have the questions answered later in the writing. First, I wondered how writing actually helped with reading skills. Introspectively, I consider myself a stronger writer than reader. I take longer to read, often reread, and get distracted. After reading, however, I feel I have pretty good comprehension of the material. Connecting writing to comprehension makes sense in that case

Next, I wondered how the type of students’ writing may affect their development. Each year I am surprised about the lack of spelling, vocabulary, and grammar in the writing assignments I give my students. Although I, perhaps selfishly as a math teacher, do not focus on such errors I wonder how they are addressed in other classes. If students should be writing for more than thirty minutes a day, are teachers content with students expressing ideas and a willingness to write or are they focusing on details at the high school level? It is clear that The Literacy Association believes that students should focus on spelling, vocabulary, and grammar. As a math teacher, I know I can contribute to vocabulary by being more insistent on using more proper/official terms. How active do you think reading specialists should be in influencing other teachers, including in different subjects, to enforce spelling, vocabulary, and grammar?

Lastly, both Gunning and The Literacy Association agree that students should have strategies going into reading and writing. Gunning states that strategies such as preparing, organizing, elaborating, studying, and monitoring are keys to comprehension. By purposefully using constructive processes that activate a reader’s schemata they can improve comprehension. In my classroom, I can help the students focus on process based learning. Although they may not perfectly align, I can still have my students focus on planning, revising, and checking their answers (editing). Do you think developing comprehension policies in other subjects will contribute to higher levels of reading and writing?

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Gunning Chaps. 10-11: The Topic of this week’s discussion is “Teaching Writing to Improve Reading Skills.” After reading this chapter, I received some answers to burning questions about the associations between writing and reading. I have just the opposite situation to share this week. Last year, I taught 5th Grade. Every morning, after our Morning Meetings, my students would write in their Daily Journals. I realized that my class had students with different writing abilities, so I created slides that he pictures instead of the normal writing prompts. These pictures would consist of pictures of a green boot, a penguin, a diamond, a roll of paper towels, and a blue umbrella. I told my students to feel free to use the pictures in their stories in any order they wanted, however, they had to use them all. The students groaned at first, but quickly began to construct their stories. I also had an interactive Word Wall displayed for those students who would ask me every five minutes “How do you spell…..?” Students would take an index card spell the word on it, then place the word card in the respective letter pocket. This activity was successful at building the connections between letter sounds, written text, and sentence structure. Every student, except for one would engage in the activity, except for one.

“Harold” was absolutely incorrigible! He would ignore my requests to try writing in his journal, put his hoodie over his head and bury his head down on his desk.  He could barely write his name. His spelling tests had absolutely no CVC, or CVVC patterning at all. In fact, he would not ever use any vowels at all. One day, during ELA block, he volunteered to read a passage in our chapter book. To my surprise, Harold read beautifully! I wondered what kind of learning disability does this student have? It was so unique, that I had to ask our SPED teacher if she was familiar with this unique situation. She said she had never experienced this. I found out that my student displayed symptoms of a rare disorder called  “Dysgraphia is a neurological condition and learning difference in which someone has difficulty with writing for their age level. This can range from issues with the physical act of writing to issues with translating thoughts into written words.” Trouble forming letter shapes. Tight, awkward, or painful grip on a pencil. Difficulty following a line or staying within margins. Trouble with sentence structure or following rules of grammar when writing, but not when speaking. Children with dysgraphia are often skilled at reading or at expanding on a topic verbally, their struggles with writing are often blamed on “laziness” or “carelessness.” Have any of you experienced a situation like this in their educational travels?

Dysgraphia. Google (2021, April 29).

Kilpatrick Chaps. 5 and 9:  The chapters in this book often discuss the importance of fostering motivation and engagement in reading, and provide guidance on supporting struggling readers with social-emotional and behavioral challenges. Many times, students display frustrations while trying to decode certain difficult words. My questions still remain. What if a student doesn’t need encouragement with reading? What if a student needs encouragement with written expression?

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Reading and writing are both equally important in the classroom as both subjects and skills draw on common sources of knowledge. Reading comprehension is necessary for students to respond to texts. Writing about texts helps increase reading comprehension…and so on… and so on… Reading and analyzing while reading helps students become better writers. This is because when students are exposed to different mentor texts and taught how to analyze them, students are introduced to various genres, ideas, ways to organize writing, styles of word choice, sentence structures, vocabulary, fluency, and voice. When students are able to think critically about how an author incorporates these pieces into a text, students can learn write from different perspectives. Also, reading and analyzing mentor texts builds upon schema, which is students’ background knowledge and experiences.

In my classroom we use the Wit & Wisdom resources for our ELA whole group reading curriculum. This program is a beast, but I do feel this program allows for teachers and students to have rich discussions about mentor texts. These rich discussions lead to student engagement and reading comprehension. To practice reading comprehension, the students often draw about what they read and what we discussed. Drawing is a kindergarten way to “write” about reading. In Kindergarten it is difficult to think how I can get my students writing for 30 minutes each day, as suggested in the article. However, it’s important to remember that drawing is an early form of writing. At this point in my classroom, I have students responding to texts via drawings. Towards the end of the year, students are more able to write about a text or write their own stories using one or two sentences. Towards the end of the year, students are given opportunities to write “sticker stories” in my classroom. Students pick 3-5 stickers and then draw a picture incorporating their stickers. Then they write a story about their drawing. The story is only 1 or 2 sentences using “sound spelling”, but all the students LOVE doing this as it is a creative way to get students writing and practicing sentence structure. I hold students accountable for spelling patterns and trick/heart words we’ve introduced throughout the year, but many words are still spelled wrong at this point. I do this purposefully as to not discourage students from writing. Giving students an opportunity to write, opens up opportunities for students to be creative and have fun. If students like to write, then they are more likely to be engaged with reading.

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I agree with the statement that writing is fun. In elementary school, my favorite part of the day was when my teacher would have us write in our journals the first 15-20 minutes in the morning. It was a great way to get our thoughts out about a topic. That being said, the article mentions that writing can help improve comprehension. I believe that using the Think-Pair-Share activity mentioned in our text can improve both writing and comprehension skills. After reading a story, the teacher can ask a question based on the information they heard and give students time to write what they think and share their thoughts with their peers. The great thing about that type of activity is that besides improving comprehension and writing skills,  students can also have various answers and spark a discussion. This gets students involved with their peers, while the teacher can assess the student’s responses after collecting their answers.

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Writing and reading are two things that blend together when teaching them, but they do not always have to be tied together.  The article states that writing is going to strengthen reading comprehension. Students start to make these connections each day they write. The students are decoding words as they write as well as when they are reading. The article expresses that it is important for students to write. I remember in second grade being able to write stories off of a prompt. This taught us how to create a story on our own. Gunning’s Chapter 11 discusses think-pair-share. Students are discussing and talking through topics and reflecting on them.This will help students to organize their thinking before a writing activity, questions themselves and others, and seeing different perspectives. In the article the author states that elementary school students should be writing for 30 minutes a day. Teaching writing is going to provide students to apply what they learned with a purpose. After reading the article and the chapters I think it would be great for teachers to have a designated time for free writing. Not only do I do this with my pre-k students but, this can apply for many other grades. I think that highschool students should also have this opportunity because in highschool I personally  felt like i was always writing by taking notes, or doing worksheets and never just for fun. I think it is important for the students to express themselves through writing which will help their academics in many other ways. One thing I also would like to incorporate in my future classroom is pen pals. I did this when I was in elementary school and it is a good way to practice writing skills as well as reading the letter that was sent back!

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Comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading. During and after reading a guided reading lesson children are to discuss the reading as class. Some other ways teachers can implement reading is giving students the opportunity to discuss, recall and tell in their own words, or summarize what they think the main idea is. Children who are in elementary school should write for 30 minutes a day. As children go into middle school and high school, they should write even longer periods than before. Students should be reading and writing across all subject areas. Reading is essential ingredient for learning to write. Students writing about what they've learned through comprehension will and should improve their reading comprehension skills. Writing about what they have read allows students to determine what was most important in the text, as well as making connections to the content or in the world. Overall, reading and reading instruction can improve writing. While, writing and writing instruction can improve reading. KT

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