I read the article Kindergartners Can Do It, Too! Comprehension Strategies for Early Readers. I chose the topic of kindergartners and their comprehension because I have a child in kindergarten and I’m curious to learn strategies for his age group as opposed to the 5th grade strategies that I use in my own classroom.

I was immediately enthralled with her strategy in the article of having students raise their hands in different forms to indicate the contribution they intended to make (whether it be a connection or a visual mental movie). The article called this meaning construction. I thought this was ingenious and was building the children’s higher level of thinking capabilities already. I have always been told that you must activate background knowledge and allow students to search within their schema's to make connections.I never quite understood that activating and discussing schema's was the 1st step in comprehension skills. I knew it was important but I never recognized it as the basic foundation.

She then allowed the students to make connections, visualize and then ask questions, or infer. This was her way of teaching the strategies without the children ever understanding that they were learning. The students seem to believe they were merely interacting and taking part of the reading of the story. I think that her strategy was genius! The students were engaged and it was obvious in her examples of her anchor charts where she credits each child with the questions that he or she posed to the whole group.

I think I will try the strategy of having students share their mental movies or connections in various content areas. Such as social studies: I could have students share their schema's about particular battles or wars and then allow other students to voice questions or concerns that they wish to be addressed. It is whole-group engagement that could take our learning to a whole new level!

LM4

I enjoyed doing the vocabulary activity. I have the fortune of being able to use most of our assignments in my 5^th grade classroom but I had never thought to introduce vocabulary this way. I think it is critical to allow our students to express understanding in numerous ways. I appreciate that this strategy includes writing, art and higher order of thinking by allowing the students to express their understanding by forming definitions in their own words.

I plan to use this strategy at the beginning of more difficult content areas such as science with electricity and social studies when studying restoration after the Civil War. I hope that my students will add to their charts throughout the instructions and that, each time, their depiction of their understanding will be more and more complex.

I see that this strategy could be introduced and completed using very minimal time yet could have lasting impacts in children learning and retaining their knowledge. I also believe we will see an increase in the usage of the vocabulary from content areas as students master the ability to break words apart for greater understanding.  

Writer's Journal

I watched the video called Writer's Journal and I loved, loved, loved his tactic of having the children fill in the missing words and letters during their morning message. He specifically left out words that the children were familiar with and that he had already incorporated into the classroom word wall. As children began to read the message, they noticed the missing words and letters and then, by process of elimination and unknowingly using syntax clues, began to discuss and determine which words could possibly fit and/or make sense. I believe this skill is critical in developing young readers and writers and would be extremely beneficial when attempting to raise confidence levels and excitement in children.
I also appreciated his excited tones when it came time to read and write. Children will imitate our words and actions and even our moods so I believe he sets the stage for the children to have positive outlooks and, eventually, to become more well-rounded readers and writers!

For this blog assignment, I watched the Podcast on Readingrockets.com that was titled Parents as Partners. I have always said, from early on in my college experience, thinking that if only we could get parents involved at home, at the earliest of ages, that teaching children to read would be so much easier. The Podcast discussed avenues that schools can take to continue to reach out to parents, children and communities and to inform them of resources that are available to them.

One thing I found particularly disturbing was the discussion of Public Library access. While it seems as though libraries are in every community, it was interesting to hear that very few families or parents of small children actually have memberships or participate in any of the activities that are held at or sponsored by the library. Perhaps it could be a lack of transportation? More likely, I believe, it is a lack of awareness or knowledge. In addition, once the families arrive at our libraries, are they made to feel comfortable, welcome, and important enough to be excited to read?

The Podcast discussed the different laws that are attempting to combine school and home in order to provide children with the best learning opportunities. No Child Left Behind and Reading First are exposing families who may have initial difficulties or who could be more likely to struggle with reading, or education in general. I think it is important that we continue to find ways to enable our families even before the children walk into the doors of our school.

As a 5th grade teacher, I see the benefit of students who have involved, concerned and caring families. I see it in their abilities to read, write, socialize, and function in a group environment. I am concerned for the children whose families can't or won't put their educations first. I understand that most families want to do the absolute best for their children but sometimes are unable to provide, either financially or with time devotion, and I think it is definitely our responsibility to reach out and help those families.

My reaction to LM1

In Learning Module One, we were instructed to review a literary journal and discuss it. I chose to review the Journal of Literary Research. I found this journal to be unusually student-focused and I appreciated that the journal seemed to genuinely discuss, analyze and reflect on why students do the things that they do and the effect that the individual students can bring to his or her own learnging and to the learning environment of his or her classroom.

In particular, one article I read discussed the fact that student's discussion on the comprehension of a text is undoubtedly influenced by his reading level and reading identify. Too often, as teachers, we expect that if we give students an assignment, such as discuss what you took away from this particular book, we expect, and even require, that the conversation look and be as in-depth, as we think to be appropriate. This article exposed the irrationality of that thinking. If a student's reading identity is one way, we should respect in regards to the discussions and not attempt to change that by requiring them to fit the molds of typical reading comprehension conversations.

I had never heard of this particular journal prior to LM1 but I have subscribed and I intend to follow this article because I see true value in professional research that is written with genuine concern for the students that are being examined.