EDLI635 Theory and Practice of Literacy Instruction

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Running Record                                        By: Caroline Gellis I did the running record on a sweet student. I called her aside toward the end of class and told her about the running record. She seemed very nervous. I did not want her to be nervous as I wanted her to do her best. So first I started asking her a few questions about reading. I asked her what stories she likes to read in class and about how the classroom library works. I asked her to tell me about her favorite book. Once I felt that she had warmed up, I began telling her about the running record. I introduced her to the characters and showed her on a map where Japan is. I gave her the running record and she did well. She started off a bit slow and unsure but as she progressed she picked up confidence and speed. I was happy that I gave her time in the beginning as I felt that had she been uncomfortable ...

   What texts and materials do teachers have in their classrooms that support students' development of fluent reading? Teachers should have a variety of books and texts on different levels for students to read. They should model proper reading so students should know how a fluent reader sounds. How do they select vocabulary to teach in all areas of your curriculum? The teacher selects vocabulary from the content that she is teaching that day. the new words can be from texts the students are independently reading or from are listening to in a read aloud. Words can also be from other subjects such as social studies, history etc. How much time do they allocate to word study? The amount of time can vary. Some days a teacher may want to do a whole lesson on words and strategies. Other days, the word can be a pulled from a book or a different lesson and it will not take a lot of time. What word study routines do they teach and encour...

1.       Explain the three levels of words and how you can use word levels to decide which words to teach. The first level is familiar words, words that students can read easily such as run, look, bed. The second level is words that appear often in print, on the news and in conversation such as democracy and freeway. These are the main focus of literacy instruction. The teacher need not present them as a separate lesson but can draw the words from materials that the students are learning. By pulling words from tests students are reading or learning, teachers also help students comprehension.  The third level is highly technical words which are left to the specific subject teacher. 2.       How do you teach your students to "chunk" words as a strategy for decoding unfamiliar words? When do you provide this instruction? A way to decode unfamiliar words is to look at chunks. If you are stuck with a long or hard word, you can...

1.       How can you ensure that your struggling readers have access to texts they can easily read? In my classroom, I have a library and once a week we have library time and students can take up to three books home to read. The books are labeled according to levels and I guide each student in the direction of her level. 2.       How can you foster a learning environment in which students have many opportunities to practice reading? I think that if reading is a teacher’s focus, she can find many opportunities throughout the day to get students to read. I try to write simple instructions that students learn to read and understand on their own. During reading time, I read to the students, we read together and then they read to themselves or in groups and I listen. When we are learning other subjects I will often ask the students, “What does this say?” or “Who can read and understand the sign in the picture?” Etc. 3.  ...

View my lesson plan  HERE

View my lesson plan  HERE!

Moshe is a ten year old ESL student. I began teaching him to read and write a couple of months ago. His accuracy rate is 92% which is instructional, but his self-correction rate is only 1:6. He is not self-monitoring his reading sufficiently. Though he has made great progress, the fact that he is not fluent in English slows down his learning considerably.  Most of his mistakes seem to be visual. Understandably, he did not have many structural or meaning mistakes as it takes him time to understand the meaning of the sentence. I would, therefore, focus on practicing his knowledge of the different and distinct shapes of the letters. Most of his mistakes were confusing letters with similar sounds. For example, he confused “f” and “t,” which is the same letter reversed. He confused “k” with “x” and “a” with “u,” which  do look similar. I divided our mini-lesson into two parts. In the first part, I concentrated on the story he had read. First, he drew and labeled the characte...

     1.        Students were looking for imagery as described by figurative language such as personification, similes and metaphors.      2.        Ms Gaten has the students go through the poem line by line so that they focus on completely understanding each line. They are able to analyze the line and look for figurative language. Then they can compare and contrast it to the other lines in the poem. They organized it into the graphic organizer. It also enables them to understand the pattern in the poem.      3.        They do a “quick write” about their thoughts on the poems and brought proof from the poems. This is the common core standard for students to be able to write opinion pieces on texts and support a point of view with reasons or information. 

This is my running record of the students reading. I think that the student is a fairly good reader. He did score under 95% so he cannot be considered independent, but he is instructional. His self-correction rate is lower then it should be, meaning that he does not self - monitor properly. His mistakes were often visual such as "most" and "must" and "live" and "lived". Perhaps he needs some visual cues to help him differentiate between the letters. He did very well on the comprehension of the text. He knew how to compare and contrast the whales and fish and answered the questions well.

Section 1: Shared Reading In the first part of the reading activity, Ms. Perez reads a poem together with her class. She gathers the children together and the atmosphere in the classroom is one of calm and organization.  Ms. Perez also keeps the tone in her classroom especially positive. When one little boy is struggling to read a word, she comments, “I love how you are trying”, and then helps him read. During her shared reading activity, Ms. Perez incorporates many items from the observational checklist: Guided reading, shared reading, and read aloud. She ensures that the children always have a comfortable amount of space to work and gives them the proper told and materials. By reading the poem together and listening to their peers read the words, slow readers have a chance to learn from peers who are quicker readers. The poem also includes many sight words and rhymes. From the poem, she also creates a lesson on phonics. Ms. Perez helps her students master the short vowel sound...

Carolyn Wilhelm presents a creative and thought out lesson plan.  The learning activities are great. The students are doing hands-on work and using reading, writing and critical thinking skills.   I do not feel that this project has a very significant reflection of the students’ learning outcomes. Because the students work together in a group, it is hard to pinpoint what each student understood.   The instructions are clear and the procedure is easy to follow. I feel that the resources in this assignment were a bit limiting. I would have liked to see the students bring in their own text. This would increase the creativity and variability. It would also introduce the students to research skills. Additionally, the use of technology would improve this project. Perhaps creating a video displaying the behind the scenes work that the students put in. It would be exciting to the students and give the parents a glimpse into the classroom. I like the use of a rubric ...

The process of becoming literate is learning to read and write a specific language. Children become literate by mimicking those around them. Starting from when they are born, they learn the language and its usage by listening to others around them. I enjoy watching my little boy learning to speak. He watches avidly as I talk and enjoys copying what I say. I look forward to when he will be able to properly express himself and learn to read and write. Sheila Owens classroom is an inspiration to all teachers. She truly believes in her students. By calling them “readers and writers from day one” she shows that she is sure of herself and sure of her students’ abilities. It is amazing to see just how much this takes effect in her classroom. Her students are confident and self-assured. They are ready to conquer the world. At the beginning of the clip, Shelia states that her class is composed of various levels of students including English Language Learners. She proceeds to wish th...

ELA Instruction                           Reading, writing, speaking, listening and language are the five essential components to ELA instruction. The basic goal of reading is to develop the skill of encoding and then comprehension. The students should develop the ability to understand complicated texts and expand their knowledge and develop a sensitivity for inconsistencies and ambiguities within a text. Ultimately, students should also be able to connect ideas and texts. There is a connection between reading and writing. Through writing , students have the ability to show an understanding of what they read. In general, this includes the ability to plan, revise, edit and publish writing. Students should also be able to express themselves in various forms of writing. Additionally, they should learn research skills and be able to express what research.  There are many tools students can use to enhance their ...