Real Life Reading Inquiry

      For my real life reading inquiry I took one of my dance students (the daughter of one of my co-workers) who is a rising second grader and assessed her reading fluency in relation to different leveled books. Emma's mother told me that she was a very advanced reader for her age, so I wanted to assess how true that was based on her fluency for her grade level. I checked out three books from the UT library that varied in their reading difficulty. I chose:

1) The Penguin and the Pea by Janet Perlman - an estimated grade level (EGL) 5.6

2) The Princess Test by Gail Carson Levine - EGL 4.0

3) Junie B., First Grader, Dumb Bunny, by Barbara Park - EGL 3.0

     Next, I counted out the number of words in the beginning passages of each book. The Penguin and the Pea had 113 words I would be testing her on, The Princess Test had 100 and Junie B, First Grader, Dumb Bunny had 120 words. I knew from a rubric online that in the second grade she should be reading at 55-79 words per minute for a book at her grade level. (I realize that I didn't actually find a book at her age level.) While she read the passages aloud to me, I timed her and then calculated her average words per minute (WPM). After she completed the passages I asked her open ended questions about the text to see how much she comprehended as well. 

      I found that for The Penguin she read around 33 WPM, The Princess she read 38 WPM, and Junie B.,  she read 50 WPM. To be completely honest, my results really confused me. I don't know how it's supposed to work to assess a student's capabilities at reading level higher than her own, and so I had a hard time telling if she was actually advanced. If I am looking at WPM alone, there is a clear decline in the number of words she can read as reading difficulty goes up. However, it's hard to tell if this indicates an advanced level of reading or not. All in all, I did realize that if I want to assess her true reading ability, I should have stuck to her grade level books. 

       While she was reading I was able to draw connections to some of the readings we did in class. Firstly, the fluency article "Creating Fluent Readers" very adeptly lays out what we need to be looking for in fluency. Emma had very high accuracy in word decoding - she hardly ever had a major pronounciation problem when sounding out new words. Her automatic processing was what I thought to be more advanced because she seemed to be focusing on the story more than the difficulty of reading (at least for the Junie B book). Finally, her prosodic reading was what I thought needed the most help. Of course, for an incoming second grader to be able to have high prosody would be an accomplishment. I also tried to use the "How else can I say sound-it-out?" when she became stumped on a word. I found that Emma is excellent at "chunking" which shows me that she has a high sight-word bank under her belt. 

       Overall the real life reading inquiry made me realize how much more complicated the teaching-reading process is going to be. I almost panicked when I realized these books would be way too hard for her because I initially thought it would be a good idea - but I had to keep my calm and act like it was all part of the plan. I definitely learned from it!

Emma with her Junie B. book!

Assessment/Readability

        As I read more and more articles on reading instruction I am struck with the powerful message of individualism that permeates every text. The modern day classroom does not operate on a "group instruction" method and is not expected to. When we look at children who struggle to read and need early intervention, it really shows me how careful I as a teacher need to be when assessing an individual student. Children with disabilities especially need this extra care and consideration. The entire idea of EIS and RTI are designed to help these students improve before the gap between themselves and other students widens too far. But what is really most important about all of this is the individual instruction they receive to catch up! I think it's great that teachers who are working with these students undergo intense professional development. This not only challenges the teachers to be better, but teaches us that learning never really ends.
        I also found the readability formula extremely interesting. I had no idea that you could literally copy and paste a text to figure out what grade level and difficulty it is! While there are many different formulas to use, the overall theme is that we can predict how difficult a book is and then we can provide individual instruction on these books to our different leveled students.

I found a readability formula generator where you just copy and paste the text into the box. I copy and pasted this blog and it came out with the various "formulas" and their prognosis for my blog's readability. This blog is apparently in the 11th grade - college level reading level. Yay!

Find the formula here! 

Vocabulary

         The biggest challenge I see in building vocabulary is the stark class difference that exists in the US today. As the Lane article points out, children who come from a low socio-economic background have incredibly less exposure to new vocabulary. I found it so interesting that only 10 minutes of free reading a day can increase 5th grader’s number of words read by over 600,000. If that’s not motivation to get your kids reading, I don’t know what is.

         The unfortunate thing about the class issue is that we as teachers sometimes feel helpless to change it. We can’t go into the homes and convince parents to use better vocabulary because often times these parents don’t have a good vocabulary bank either. That’s why I loved the idea in the “Vocabulary Lessons” article about doing “circle time” at the beginning of the day to improve vocabulary. The way she moves throughout the year from simple words to adult words is a great way for children to learn new words without feeling like they are just memorizing fancy words.

      I read this book a few years ago and both of these articles reminded me of it. It talks about a study done by researchers who literally went into the homes of children of different classes and counted the number of words they spoke. It's a really interesting book and if you have time to read it, I definitely recommend it!

Click here for a summarized page of what the book is about.

Click here for the book!

Comprehension

        I'm so glad we're spending so much time learning about comprehension. I honestly didn't realize until we did the excercise in class where we answered the fake comprehension questions about the nonsense paragraph how easy it would be to be deluded about how much a child actually comprehends. The questions we were asked were very easily answered by scanning the reading and plugging in the answers where they went. They did not in any way measure how much we actually understood.
      The comprehension matrix is something that I definitely want to employ in a future classroom. What I liked about it was that it not only focused on how much a child comprehends, but it stretches them in other aspects of their reading acquisition. It's such an easy tool to make sure students get it.
       The book also had several great options to prime kids comprehension. My favorite was the "Oprah interview." Oprah is a master at squeezing the most information she can out of a person, and using the format she uses on the show to ask a child comprehension questions would be perfect to make sure they understand.

She asks why certain things happened.

She asks participants to expand on what they know.

She asks agreement and disagreement questions.

     By treating a student like they are a book character on the Oprah show, a teacher can have a solid idea of whether or not the child understood what he or she read. It makes me wonder:

Can you remember ways that your own teachers provoked comprehension while reading?

Fluency Activity - Reader's Theater

Readers Theater is a performance of a literary work by an individual or group, wherein the text is read expressively, but not fully staged and acted out.

Note:This practice allows teachers to assign reading parts based on level of fluency.

Notice how expressive these kids are when they read!

Examples of a readers theater scripts can be found by clicking here, http://www.teachingheart.net/readerstheater.htm.

 A lesson plan that is pre-planned can be found by clicking here, http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/readers-theatre-172.html?tab=1#tabs

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Step 1: Introduce or review the nature, purpose, and procedures for reader’s theater with the class. Step 2: Assign students to individual parts by having them volunteer or audition. Parts can be assigned by students within groups and can rotate from one performance to another.	Have students practice their parts on their own, in their group, under your guidance, and at home.	Have students practice their parts on their own, in their group, under your guidance, and at home.	Have students practice their parts on their own, in their group, under your guidance, and at home.	Invite students to perform their scripts for an audience, usually their classmates, but others can be invited as well; schoolmates, parents, and the principal. Try to make the performance a special event. Many teachers turn Friday afternoons into a “classroom readers theater festival” at which many repertory groups perform their scripts.

Fluency

What I noticed most about the readings today was the emphasis on “meaning” in fluency. I’ve noticed with my own reading that sometimes when I read out loud I have no idea what I’ve actually read. For children who are well below reading level, this concept greatly applies. In this case, I like the emphasis that both readings put on rereading for understanding. Rereading not only increases the amount of exposure to new and old words, but it gives children a chance to improve the three elements of fluency. Repetition increases accuracy because it allows for teacher correction. It allows for the second dimension of automatic processing because the children need to work less and less to understand text without effort. Lastly, when a child can accurately read a book and he or she has high automatic processing, they can focus on improving prosodic reading. 

This hand out I found would be great to give to parents to increase their understanding of what I am trying to accomplish in class, as well as encourage them to continue teaching in the home. 

Click here if you want to see the site where you can download this!

Making Words/Ten Important Words

      The "Making Words" technique reminded me a lot of the exercise we did in class yesterday. The exercise makes a lot of sense because it allows teachers to enhance learning in a variety of ways. It allows for hands on manipulation that is consistent with the constructivist method of teaching that we are constantly being drawn towards. It allows for repetition because children become used to a way of exercising their word knowledge through creative word making. Finally, it teaches children how the symbols of letters work together to make meaningful words. It seems like a simple concept to us now that letters carry meaning, but I think that this is one of the most difficult concepts we can teach children, and this exercise does a great job of impressing this idea.
      The Ten Important words exercise goes along well with this exercise because of its emphasis on "meaning." I think that unfortunately a lot of teachers today are missing the idea of teaching meaning to their students. They may teach addition, multiplication, or reading but they fail to explain to children why these teaching points make sense. I love that we are learning to expand the understanding of teaching as future educators.

I love the idea of this magnetic board. It's just like the paper we did, but you don't have to throw it away once you're done!