#11: Reflection on Blogging (Final Post)

This is the first time that I have kept a blog for any purpose.  Reflecting on these 8 weeks, the blog has been an enjoyable, informative, and worthwhile endeavor for me.
First of all, keeping a blog transforms my sometimes verbose writing style, since I am writing for a wider audience than myself and a teacher on a blog.  I find that my writing voice becomes more conversational and to the point when I write in a blog, which is an added benefit for the reader!
The second aspect of blogging that I enjoy is to be able to read the blogs of other students who are writing on the same topics.  At the outset of the course, I enjoyed being "introduced" to other students through their personalization and comments on their blogs.  Later, I learned so much from others' posts and comments that I could not learn in any other online format. The dialogue was more personal than simply following conversation links for an online course.   I felt that I could share ideas more easily in an informal way, conversationally, with other teachers through the blogs.
Finally, communicating through blogging has an open-ended quality of conversation that I appreciate.  In reflecting on a specific topics, I enjoyed being able to refer to a previous comment or post on a blog, and the conversation is still live.  Unlike one-time assignments that are turned in and graded, the blogs allow an ongoing dialogue across all topics throughout the course.  The ongoing references and communication add another dimension to the online course that is a great resource for real-time information sharing.
After creating this initial blog, I am certain that I will blog in the future.  I have found it to be a great  way to share ideas with a wider, but focused, audience; interact with others in a thoughtful an efficient way; and to document and reference thoughts in an ongoing basis.  It was a valuable and pragmatic aspect to this course!

#9: Fiction V. Nonfiction texts for ELLs

To show the similarities and differences of fiction and nonfiction texts, I used the Glencoe:  Exploring Our World 7th grade World Cultures textbook, and a version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, modified for ELLs by Hampton Brown Publishers.  Both texts are used by my 7th grade ELL students, and each one requires them to use different lenses for reading to gain information. This is the graphic organizer that I created to illustrate the differences between the texts:

The 7th grade students are familiar with the 7 keys to reading comprehension strategies, and we discuus and apply them to any text that we read.   These keys can be used to take meaning from either fiction or nonfiction texts.  The fiction text that I chose is adapted for ELL students, so there are critical thinking questions at the beginning of each chapter, highlighted difficult vocabulary with subscript definitions, and there are short summaries at the beginning of each chapter.  The nonfiction World Cultures text shares these features.  They are conducive for setting a purpose for reading, guiding low readers, and for thinking critically during and after reading the text.  The main differences in the non-fiction text are that it provides a glossary, website links, informational articles, and other extensions that provide opportunities for learning about the content that are not found in the fiction text. 

#10: The Purpose of Homework

The reason for this ongoing homework assignment is that reading is an essential vehicle that raises all of their academic skills.  It increases their vocabulary, which is inherently deficient compared to native English-speaking peers; it strengthens their ability to decode automatically and read fluently, and this leads to increased comprehension and critical thinking skills.   The improved thinking that results from reading helps them to succeed across all of their subject areas.  By reading content of their choice, and finding pleasure in reading, they then recognize the intrinsic value of reading.   As a result, when reading becomes something that provides intrinsic rewards, it is less of a chore to do the required reading in any content area, and the students become accountable for their own assigned reading and learning in all subjects.  This is an invaluable long-term result of assigning 20 minutes of reading per night as homework.

 The guidelines that I follow in assigning and grading homework are:

1.                    Meaningful homework always re-visits skills or new information that they have already learned in the classroom.  Before having homework on a topic, in class we: build background on the topic through discussion; learn and practice the topic through listening, speaking, reading and writing; and I informally assess their understanding of the topic through observation.  If the students do not have a grasp of a topic before leaving the classroom, then I will wait and re-visit it in one more lesson before assigning it as homework.  This is because meaningful homework always reinforces and offers practice of new skills.  It should not lead to frustration or make students feel incapable of practicing a skill correctly.

2.                    Along with reinforcing and practicing new skills, my homework objectives are that students: 

a.    Use it as an opportunity to solidify the skills they learned in class that day.

b.    Come up with new questions as they do the homework that serve as discussion points in class the following day.  Not understanding becomes a way to ask questions and extend learning on the topic.

c.     Become more confident in their ability to independently do a skill as a result of completing a homework assignment, since it takes at least 24 practices to become 80% proficient in a skill (Hill, 86).  A homework assignment should be comprehensible so that a student completes it with a sense of confidence in their ability to independently do the learned skill.

3.                    I provide feedback for homework in two ways:

• First, I spend each Monday conferencing with each student individually for 3-5 minutes on their overall progress in ELL and in core classes.  At this time, I ask them how their nightly reading is going, look at reading logs and provide them with new ones if necessary.  I also try to give specific comments on how they do on core and ELL assignments.  This shows them that they do not just get a number on a paper, but that the teachers really think about and value what a student produces when they do assignments at home.

• The second way that I provide feedback is online.   Our school uses a district-wide Schoology subscription as a way to give and turn in assignments, chat about classes, and post grades.  It is a mixture between Regis’s World Class and Facebook for middle and high school.  On Schoology, my students submit homework as Word documents in a dropbox.  I grade them and leave comments on them and return them to each student through their personal account.  Their iPad notifies them when an assignment is graded, and they can look at it and ask questions if necessary during the next pullout lesson.  This way, students are informed of their grades and comments as soon as I submit them, with no papers to get “lost” in a pile or in a locker before being turned in or graded.  It is a system that takes some getting used to at first, but I like it because of fewer papers/ less waste.  Students like the technology component because of the control that they have over submitting assignments. And, they like to see grades and teachers comments without waiting an entire week to discuss a paper assignment after it has been returned to them.

# 8 - Identify key components of a sheltered lesson to promote comprehensible input for Ell’s

 Watch the videos of the sheltered literacy lesson that is presented in various phases. Observe what the teacher does to promote comprehension. What do you see the teacher do? What do you see the students do? Reflect on the video in your blog, entry #8. List the strategies used in the sheltered lesson, and comment on your observation of both the teacher behaviors and student interaction.

Before Reading:

Strategies used:  

1. Explicit Instruction:
1. Teacher gave and explicit introduction of the Content and Language Objectives
2. Gave written and verbal instructions
2. Building Background/Schema
1. She previewed the instruction by visiting past lessons and explicitly introducing new vocab with visuals:  photo and written summary and vocab boards.  The students were mostly gathering the information for building schema for the story.  They also sang the Spanish birthday song as  a way to demonstrate a text to self connection.
2. Emphasized the importance of specific new vocabulary.  Students viewed, looked at, read, and discussed the vocab boards the teacher had created.
3. Preview the Story:
1. Give a book walk (in this case, review plot of Esperanza Rising)
2. Summary - and Text-To-Self, Text-to-World, Text-to-Text connections.  Sometimes the students made text connections automatically - to self, and to other texts the class read. other times they had to be directly introduced by the teacher.  For example, when she asked them to sing the birthday song that is in the book and a part of their schema.

While Reading:

Strategies Used:

1. Have students make explicit connections.  She did this by using the Diary Board in the front of the room.  The notes about previous readings served as reminders for making new connections, questions, inferences, predictions as they read.  
2. Teacher read aloud clearly.  She used a slow, clear speech, and emphasized words that would be new to them.  She modeled reading strategies such as ask questions, infer, make connections to show them how an adult reader thinks as we read.  Reminds students to use the 7 strategies for themselves.  Students listened mostly, and made well-developed connections between the novel and previous novels the class read.
3. Increased interaction with the text.   She did this by stopping reading, and visiting various passages on the overhead to discuss vocabulary, writing structures and reading comprehension.  She also increased the wait time so that students could form their own connections, questions, inferences, etc.  She continued to make connections when students overlooked any text connections.

After Reading:

Strategies Used:

1. Review of:  Key vocabulary, new concepts, connections made, allow more text interaction for students.
2. Other strategies used by the teacher as outlined by her in the post-lesson reflection are:
1. Do lots of front loading/ building schema in the pre-reading.
2. The Diary Board:   a cumulative collection of reading strategies that the class uses throughout the reading of a novel.   This board makes a useful quick reference to the book as they read.  The main parts of the diary board are:
1. "I wonder",  Inferences, Summary of learning so far, "I'm confused" - students questions about previous nights' reading, "This reminds me of…" Student connections.
3. Two other techniques that this dynamic teacher uses to create a solid SIOP lesson are:  Model good strategy usage as much as possible.  And, let students use sticky notes during reading to track and accumulate a collection of the strategies that they put to use to create comprehensible input and improve their own reading comprehension.

# 7: Running Record Miscue Analysis on 2 ELLs

Context: This activity increases awareness of the struggles connected to language development as compared to literacy development for all readers.
Task Description: Conduct a running record/miscue analysis on 2 second language learners, one that speaks Spanish, and one that speaks another language.
Analyze the miscues for M-meaning, S-Syntax, and V-visual cues. Are there some features of the errors that reflect the first language? Are there miscues that are universal to all readers?
What are some next teaching points based on this data? Answer these questions and discuss possible strategies or assignments to address the reading challenges you saw on your blog.


The only ELL students at the school where I teach are Spanish-speaking.  I did the miscue analysis with 2 8th grade ELLS.  One has been in the ELL program in our district since kindergarten.  She is still in the program becuase she scores slightly below proficient on the standardized ELL test (ACCESS).  The second student has been back and forth between our district and Mexico three times since kindergarten.  He has spent 4 of the past 9 years in school in Mexico.  Both have high listening scores, are verbally articulate, and are independent readers.

The first student read a passage for age 10-11 year olds.  She is a fluent and confident reader.  The main thing that I noticed in her reading is that she automatically made connections between the text and her personal experiences (Text-to-Life).  For example, in the text, a mom was afraid that a rat would bite the narrator.  The student instantly commented "A rat bit my brother!".  This tells me that the decoding processor in her brain can decode, or recode according to Freeman, automatically.  This automaticity strengthens  her comprehension and fluency and allows her to comprehend higher-level texts.  Of 30 lines, she only had one miscue, inverting "Said mom" to "Mom said".  She did not self correct, but did not need to , since this was a syntactical error that did not affect the meaning of the passage.

The second student, who has spent 4 of his 9 years of schooling in Mexico, read a passage for 9-10 year-olds, and had significantly more errors.  His errors were all grapho-phonical and syntactical.  He has a strong enough sense of meaning and vocabulary that his errors do not significantly affect meaning.  He said "hectors" instead of hecatares; "brush" instead of bush; and "fieriest" for fiercest.  Each of these errors show that he has a solid base in phonics knowledge, since he retains the correct beginning and end sounds in all of the errors.  This also shows that he has strong comprehension, since the words that he used in place of the actual word were very similar to and retained the meaning of the original word.   This student did not have as strong of automaticity in decoding and comprehension as the 9-year ELL student.  He lacks some instant word recognition, possibly because of his sporadic English instruction.  His strong base in phonics knowledge (taught at his elementary school) is evident in his ability to recode to gain meaning from an unfamiliar text.

# 6 - Learning vs. Acquisition activities

The students:

Look up words in the dictionary to write definitions:  Learning.   Looking up vocabulary is explicit instruction, the words are not learned within the context of the text.

Make a Venn diagram to compare two stories:  Acquisition: students are using a graphic organizer to gain meaning from sources/texts.

Practice sounding-out words:  Learning.  Sounding out is a drill that focuses on phonics procedure, not overall meaning in context.

Read in round-robin fashion:  Both:  Round Robin is acquisition by the experience of reading and applyin learned strategies to gain comprehension and vocabulary.  It is Learning because Round-Robin allows teachers to step in with instruction on word decoding or corrections at any time during reading.

Correct peers when they make mistakes while reading:  Both.  Peer correction is a way to use learned rules in an authentic way.  The peers receiving the correction are learning, when they are directly receiving the reading cues from another student.

Identify words in a Big Book that start with the same sound: Both.  Students are applying rules of reading, beginning sounds which is a learning exercise.  And, the act of reading a new story is an experiential activity that promotes acquiring knowledge through the overall context of the Big Book story.

Group cards with classmates' names by a criterion on such as first or last letter.  Learning.  This exercise emphasizes identifying word parts in isolation.  There is not much context to draw from for reading acquisition.

Write rhyming poetry and then discuss different spellings for the same sounds.  Acquisition.  Creating written expression in poetry puts emphasis on the message that a student wants to convey.  Acquisition teaching includs doing mini lessons on all aspects of writing.  Discussing homonyms is a mini lesson that addresses spelling, without making it a main focus of the objective: expression through writing poetry.

Ask the teacher how to spell any word they don't know:  Learning.  Since students ask about spelling, they understand that conventions are an important objective in writing.  This is a learning view.

Work in pairs to arrange words from a familiar chant into sentences.   Acquitision.  Students are using their background knowledge of the chant, and of syntax to re-create their internalized knowledge of the chant.

Divide words into syllables:  Learning.  Manipulating word-parts without context is a word recognition method.

Make alphabet books on different topics:  Acquisition.  This encourages a meaningful activity ("Make a book") where students draw on their background knowledge to practice written expression.  According to the acquisition theory, the students will naturally self-correct their books to make them appropriately communicative for the audience.

The Teacher:

Preteaches Vocabulary: Learning.

Does a shared reading with a big book: Acquisition.

Makes sure that students read only books that fit their level: Acquisition.  This promotes comprehensible input where students best learn the new vocabulary and writing structures that will increase their reading level automatically, and produce the spillover effect in their writing.

Has students segment words into phonemes:  Learning.  Focusing on word parts is a phonetic exercise that emphasizes segmenting isolated words, instead of reading authentically in context.

Writes words the students dictate for a story and has students help with the spelling of difficult words:  Both.   The fact that students are writing a story for the sake of creating a story is an acquisiton activity.  Since they focus on spelling; and have the opportunity to correct one another's spelling it is also a learning activity.

Asks students to look around the room and find words starting with a certain letter:  learning.  This focuses on phonics, word parts and does not require contextual background knowledge or syntax skills.
Uses decodable texts: Both.  Re-coding can happen with decodable texts.  So can using background knowledge and context clues to enjoy and learn from a story.  Both improve reading ability.

Sets aside SSR each day:  Acquisition.  Students will learn new vocab and acquire syntax, background knowledge, and knowledge of conventions through SSR.

Teaches Latin and Greek Roots:  Learning.  This puts emphasis on spelling skills and not "whole picture" reading knowledge.

Has students meet in literature circles:  Acquisition.  Encourages students to learn about, share, and  recall background knowledge and use comprehension strategies (questioning, predicting, etc.) for the purpose of authentic communication.




 

#5 - Cultural aspects of childrens' books that affect comprehension

The two children's books that I looked at from the perspective of culture are  Jean De Brunhoff's The Travels of Babar, and Falling Up, a book of poems by Shel Silverstein.  

In Babar, the setting is very specific to wealthy people. This could provide a cultural understanding gap for many ELL students.  Babar and Celeste, the main characters, are royal elephants.  The settings that they visit in the story include the African savanna, a chateau in the French countryside, a cruise ship, a circus, and ski slopes in Europe.  Of these, it possible that ELL students are familiar with some of these locations through experience or reading.  It is likely that most of these locations are not in their personal schema.  To build background, the class could do a quick vocabulary activity of vacation terms, or places around the world, using a map with graphics from the book drawn on it.  This would help students to make text-to world comprehension connections between where the characters are in the book and the real geographic location.

In addition, the story was originally written in 1934 in French.  It was translated in to British English, so some of the language is uncommon, like the elephants "inquire anxiously" "eat with relish", say they are "delighted to make your acquaintance", and "encounter savage cannibals" throughout the story.
It would be difficult to provide the necessary schema for students to learn all of these terms before reading the book.  The teacher could quickly provide explanations for any unknown terms while they are reading.  Since students are not likely to see this language in too many other contexts, there should not be too much effort in to having them learn the terminology before the reading.  Since the advanced vocabulary is combined with very detailed pictures and a fun and simple story, this book it is a good opportunity for students to be exposed to British English to build schema for more advanced reading later on.

One cultural difference that could affect comprehension in Falling Up  is a poem entitled "Cereal".   The poem is an ode to the many kind of cereal, including Rice Krispies, All Bran, Shredded Wheat, Wheaties, Oaties, and Wheat Chex.  Previewing this fun poem would be a great opportunity to talk about the American food culture, and the hundreds of choices that we have at the grocery store.  The teacher could show pictures of each cereal box, or even have samples.  Students could list, discuss, compare American cereals or other foods with similar foods or brands from their countries before reading the poem.  

#4 Metacognitave look at decoding

The assignment to read a foreign language with no background instruction was intriguing to me.  As an ELL teacher, I have "Newcomer" students who are in this situation in English-speaking classrooms.  Some of these students can call words (i.e., imitate the correct sounds when reading and speaking), and we the teachers sometimes wonder how much of the read-aloud they actually understand.

I chose to read a Czech article on a "Learn Czech" website; and then read some simpler phrases on the same site.  As I attempted to decipher the passages, I found myself using the following strategies:

1.   Look for cognates:   The Czech letter combinations, accents, and syntax are totally unfamiliar to me, and my eye automatically jumped to a word in the middle of the page "Technicke".   I thought "Wow,  I know this one!" (I didn't, it was actually a near-cognate: "technical").  I found myself scanning the remainder of the passage for words that could be the same or similar as the English word, and therefore more decodable.

2. Look for word patterns, or words that repeat often:  Words like "ma" and "je" were recurring, so I inferred that they are probably pronouns.   This helped me to start to recognize some form of structure within the sentences in the passage.

3. Try to find familiar word families:  This exercise was futile; I quickly realized that even if there are word families, they are very different from those that we have in English, or in the Spanish/French with which I am familiar.   I found some similarities, but they did not at all give clues to the meaning of the reading.

By the time I tried these 3 strategies, and looked through more simple Czech phrases, I understood how difficult it can be to glean meaning from text without supports.   Some supports that would have helped are:   Someone reading it aloud with expression and/or gestures; a background lesson in pronouns or basic vocabulary; some sort of introduction to the context of the text; or direct translation(!)

Puzzling over the passage also brought to mind Suzanne Irojo's assertion in the What Does Research Teach Us About Teaching Reading to English Language Learners? article that "ELLs can not develop phonological awareness in English until they are familiar with the sounds of English".   The sounds-letter correspondence of Czech is completely unfamiliar to me; it occurred to me that even if I know the meaning, I would not have enough phonemic awareness of Czech to read this passage aloud.

In order for me to be able to read this passage, I would have first needed sound-letter correspondence instruction to develop phonemic awareness of the letters and letter combinations.  It is likely that I may not be able to reproduce some of the sounds that we do not have in English writing.  Next, I would need a lot of vocabulary instruction, starting with basic phrases and the main verbs (to be, to have, etc.) so that I could recognize them as part of the sentence structures.   This particular passage was about the right to universal education, so I would need to be taught a lot of academic vocabulary, and some background (shema) in the topic as well.   I could clearly see how each of the components of reading instruction  - PA, Phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension - are absolutely needed to be able to accurately decode, read aloud, and to gain meaning from an unfamiliar text.

Overall, I found this to be a task that was intriguing and even fun at first, though it became clear early on that I could not decode the meaning of the language without instruction.   It also showed me how a student could easily become frustrated or overwhelmed by texts that are not at or near their language level if they are not given sufficient instruction for decoding and reading them.  It was a great insight to the value of explicit and scaffolded reading instruction for non-English speakers!

#1 - Discuss with another teacher, his/her philosophies about teaching literacy

At the middle school where I teach ELL, I share classroom space with our Literacy Specialist.  The Principal put us in the same area, since our students have many of the same instructional needs.   95% of my ELL students were actually born 10 minutes away from the school in our town.  They have grown up in the USA, and have had ELL instruction for 7-9 years; yet 30 of them are still ELL since they do not have the literacy (reading and writing) skills required to pass the state language assessment.

Our Literacy Specialist has 15 years of experience teaching literacy, and it is interesting to get her insight on what works to increase students' reading achievement.    At the middle school level, when the high- needs kids are clearly identified, she says that a variety of factors are necessary for developing literacy.  Among them are motivation, personal accountability, and fostering intrinsic rewards from reading. 
She provides each student with a "menu" of activities that they can choose to do during each 40 minute session.  Some of the essential tools that she uses to create high-interest, active reading environment for students are:

1. The students fill out a beginning of the year interest inventory, or personal interview.  It discusses their favorite activities, movies, classes, etc. since a main way to get them hooked on reading is by providing high-interest materials. 
2. She has them choose from a comprehensinve list of variety of high-interest pieces about anything from school shootings, to poetry, to graphic novels or biographies of famous authors. 
3. To help students to establish strong foundation of  reading for comprehension, she ensures that they are all well-versed in the 7 Keys to Reading Comprehension (Visualizing; using background knowledge (schema); asking questions; making inferences; sythesizing; using fix-up strategies).  The strategies are posted on the wall, used as bookmarks, and discussed daily.
4. Students are held accountable for what they read.  This is a major philosophy of hers.  They start to have dialogues using the terms "schema" and "I infer that...".  It is important that the students feel empowered and informed by reading when they leave the literacy lab.