Literacy Reflections

Well, it’s safe to say that when I started I was certainly quite the inexperienced blogger, but now I’ve come to easily post my thoughts and navigate my colleague’s blogs (I never really thought of myself as particularly technologically challenged, but just goes to show…you’d think it wouldn’t have been quite so hard to figure out as it was!).  I even managed to customize my own header with my fave picture of the Blue Ridge Mountains in VA!

I should add that as mode for learning, discussing, and simply tossing around ideas, the blog is a pretty good tool.  I know that in some of our school psychology classes, we have used the discussion board feature on blackboard, and to be perfectly honest we all hated it and dreaded doing it.  So I was a little skeptical on how the blogging would work, but I’ve come to think it is different from blackboard and WAY better in that it is laid back and actually fosters discussion instead of forcing you to post on a specific topic by a specific time.  In looking through what I’ve posted on my blog, I like that I was able to use it as a place to reflect on the weekly readings and invite comments from my classmates who felt they had something to contribute.  I also actually liked browsing other people’s blogs and being able to simply comment when I felt like it- not feeling pressured to write a certain amount or something of a certain profoundness- but just being able to say, “hey, I like that idea”. 

One thing I have loved the most has been the opportunity to get the insight of so many teachers through the blogging community.  I definitely started this class with a school psychologist perspective- assessment, assessment, assessment!  Which I think is great, but I’ve never been a teacher so the things I have struggled with most in my school psychology training have been how to actually take what we learn from those assessments and LINK it to successful, research-based interventions.  The blogging (and also the professional learning teams!) has been the perfect opportunity to get the teacher’s ever-so-valuable perspective….they have first-hand experience on what types of strategies work and don’t!  I’ve really appreciated everyone’s comments on my own blog, especially when several times I posed some questions about a child I might be working with- I got some helpful suggestions, so thanks! 

A theme that I found to be reflected a LOT in what I wrote is the idea of tying what children DO know to what they don’t-  I knew this was kind of an underlying principle in teaching ELLs, but in looking back through my blog I realize that this idea applies to ANY child in ANY situation.  Just recently we were talking about brining home and school together by bringing “home literacy” into the classroom- so that kids can learn in the classroom from what they already know at home!  It’s like scaffolding in a broad sense- easing children into what they don’t know by using what they already DO know.  Same with the social contracting article; it all seems to take me back to the idea that  kids don’t necessarily need, explicit, boring, and isolated instruction on concepts at a young age, they just need time to explore and make connections on their own.  The job of the teacher is to be an indirect guide in that exploration, structuring situations and learning experiences so that children can best put what they already know to work in exploring new literacy concepts!

I think I’ll be able to take what I’ve learned and put it to great use when I’m working one-on-one with kids and when consulting with teachers.  Again, being able to discuss and bounce ideas back and forth on these blogs has really helped me to reflect on what I’ve learned (and hopefully retain it!) and get the ideas of others.  I’ll now be much much much more aware when assessing early skills of what things to look for, and how to help use what I find inform instruction! 

I love the Duke/Gates article’s idea about bringing “home genre” print into the classroom!  I think we spend so much time trying to get children to bring “school genre” work home and trying to encourage parents to do more of this type of work at home with their kids (which certainly is beneficial), but often at school we are not embracing the types of literacy that ARE often found naturally in thei children’s home environments!  It is especially easy to incorporate these types of home literacy activities into “centers”- i.e. when children are playing at a kitchen themed center, including books that look like the cookbooks their parents use at home would be really effective- because we all know kids love to play “grown up”- in encouraging them to write their own recipes, etc. etc.  I also really liked the idea of actively bringing in each child’s personal home environment by having them bring an item with print on it a home and share with the class.  Great way for the child to make literacy personal and relevant!  Placing these brought-in items around the room helps remind them that they are learning to read and write at home and at school!

I thought the Learner.org video really emphasized that teachers should not shrink away from embracing an ELLs culture just because he or she does not speak the ELL’s primary language.  Obviously this is somewhat easier if the child speaks Spanish, people in the U.S. generally have a greater familiarity with the spanish langauge and more materials are available in both spanish and english…books can be sent home in Spanish, the teacher can potentially learn songs in Spanish for the class to sing, etc.  However, I really liked the part where the teacher interacted with the Chinese students- although the teacher doesn’t know any Chinese, she takes the time to ask her ELL students to share with the class how to say words from the story in Chinese.  This helps these children connect what they are learning in this reading lesson to their prior knowledge and cultural experiences- and so they can better learn new English vocabulary and understand the context of what they are reading.  My inquiry project centered around ways to support ELLS in mastering early literacy skills and a finding I found reiterated in the research was that ELLs need many opportunities to engage in collaborative talk with their peers when learning to read.  The example of asking the Chinese children to pull in vocabulary from their native language and discussing whether anyone had ever eaten a rice cake makes collaborative conversation more accessible to these children.  The topic of conversation and vocabulary is familiar to them, so they can feel proud about their culture and engage with their peers in authentic conversations.  These authentic conversations have been found to be the best method for ELLs to learn new vocabulary and expand upon their knowledge. 

The article I picked to read from the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy addresses national reading initiatives that focus on early intervention in the form of pre-packaged programs.  The authors point out that they do not take into account the individual differences and needs of struggling readers.  The authors use a specific example of the first ten minutes of a Reading Recovery session with a 7 year old student to demonstrate the demands placed on the student to switch roles, taking away from her ability focus on literacy learning.  For example, in the first passage read with the teacher, the teacher openly faces the student, provides evaluations of her reading, and encourages the student to also comment on and evaluate her own reading.  When reading the second passage, the teacher has closed posture and looks down at her running record.  She does not provide evaluation, and therefore the student also does not comment on her own reading.  Within ten minutes, the student is expected to jump from a collaborative reading method to one in which she is a solitary performer.  The authors argue that these “lowest achieving” students (those selected for Reading Recovery) must negotiate shifting contexts detracts from the mental energy that could be focused on learning literary concepts. 

I generally agree with the authors that pre-packaged “one size fits all” reading programs do not intuitively speak to meeting the unique needs of struggling readers.  It seems obvious that not all students struggle in the same areas of reading, not all use the same strategies to try to learn to read, etc.  Therefore, a more tailored approach based on assessment of the individual’s students reading strengths, weaknesses, and strategies would be optimal.  The specific example cited in the article in which the student is required to constantly negotiate different roles and contexts makes me wonder about the effectiveness of “pull-out” reading help at all.  The students who are pulled from class are considered the most needy, and yet they must interrupt the flow of their day, leave class, and negotiate a new role within small-group or one-on-one reading help.  As the authors point out, even within the small reading session, the student may have to negotiate different roles.  The child in the example does well with her changing role, but yet it may still be detracting from her actual literacy learning.  However, many students have a very difficult time switching roles and adapting to new contexts, so it is easy to imagine that these students may reap even less from a pull-out reading session.  Therefore, instead of pulling students out of class for pre-packaged reading improvement programs, it may be more beneficial for them to receive help within the context of their regular classroom reading activities, such as a one-on-one tutor during literacy time, etc. 

The idea of running records is very similar to a strategy that school psychologists use, and so the learn NC tutorial on running records was somewhat familiar to me.  What I did like was the specifics of this strategy a little more than the one we learned because it involves more detailed tallying of the specific errors that occurred and ANALYSIS of each error.  I think it is a good strategy to simply determine the student’s instructional level, but is even more useful in analyzing the strategies that the student is using while reading.  Determining how and why the student’s reading errors occur gives us valuable knowledge that can inform intervention! (of course!)  i.e. if the student is relying too much on the pictures to guide his/her reading of unfamiliar words, then we know to intervene with strategies to help the student focus more on the word structure to decode the word.  We as school psychologists always stress linking assessment to intervention, and that’s not nearly as effective if you don’t get to the root of why mistakes are being made!

In theory, it makes great sense that students should be exposed to informational text early on- that way when they are suddenly expected to use this text to support academic learning in 4th and 5th grade, they are not completely blindsided.  However, it is also unsurprising to me that this text is infrequently incorporated into reading lessons and activities in early elementary school- many children are still learning the basics of reading and might struggle with the more complicated words and structures of informational text. Additionally, children who struggle with reading will probably not be very motivated to attempt to read these texts on their own-they would be better motivated by texts that are fun, exciting, and tell stories.  Therefore, I’m not surprised that the article talked about informational text only being incorporated in 3-4% of 1st grade classrooms. 

However, it does make great sense for teachers to MODEL the reading of this type of text to their children at an early age.  This could easily occur within the context of a science or social studies activity; the teacher could read aloud from an informational text, modeling the ways in which this type of text should be read.  Again, this can included strategies like self-monitoring of understanding in which the teacher asks herself “I’m not understanding this part….how can I fix that? I can go back and re-read that part”, etc.  This way, children gain exposure to information text and the strategies that can be used to read it.  Then, when children can be progressively guided through learning to read informational texts on their own, learning about it as their reading skills continue to develop and not waiting until 4th grade. 

Out of this weeks readings, I most liked the article about social contracts for writing….I think mainly because I had never really thought much before about the ways really young children learn to express themselves through early writing.  Especially thinking about early writing as being a social construct….although it makes sense from a developmental perspective, given that kids learn by experience and learn from modeling, etc.  It’s not just an exploration they make on their own, it’s one that evolves as they begin to imitate and incorporate progressively advanced techniques.  I like the idea of teachers and parents serving as sort of “indirect” guides in this process.  To me it seems parallel to incorporating literacy learning (like phonemic awareness) into more experiential activities, instead of standing in front of a room full of bored students explicitly teaching rules.  That way children still get to explore on their own while being gently guided in the right direction. 

I thought this article had an extremely valid point in the premise that all langauge is, in fact, contextualized.  Therefore the differences between BICS and CALP do not hold quite so true- BICS is supposed to be the everyday language of context while CALP is the more the more abstract, “decontextualized”, and academic language.  I do see Cummin’s point and I do think a distinction between the two does exist in that “BICS” can be conceptualized as more conversational lanauge and therefore is more easily acquired because kids NEED it to communicate and be social.  and human beings are social.  CALP is a lot more abstract and harder to wrap your head around and therefore much harder to acquire and remember.  BUT…i’m straying from the point here…that I do agree that “CALP” language still does retain some form of context.  SO…it follows that it is the job of the teacher to understand the context within the child is working, as the article suggests.  Furthermore, beyond just simply undertsanding the child’s context, the teacher should work to provide the ELL child with a context that is relevant and meaningful. Simple things like connecting new academic vocabulary to experiences that are familiar to the child see obvious but can be really effective.   That way we don’t focus as much on what the child doesn’t know but what he or she can know given the right supports. 

I’ve been working with the cutest little kid this week- we’ll call him “Alejandro”….he is 7 and in a cross-cat classroom for kids with disabilities.  He has Down’s Syndrome and is fairly low functioning- he has a very small verbal vocabulary- mostly just consisting of words like “me”, “mom”, “snow” (they’ve been working on a winter-themed unit in class recently).   He uses a lot of gestures and some picture communication as well.  As far as literacy goes- I did a test of early achievement skills (the Bracken)  with him and one of the subtests shed a lot of light on his abilities- on this test, I said a letter such as “A” and he had to point to it, choosing from a group of letters.  He was pretty unsuccessful at this, and the only letters he chose correctly were “S” and “A”.  When I told him to point to S, Alejandro made the corresponding, correct sound for the letter s.  to get a better picture of his abilities, I then read a few familiar books with Alejandro.  He obviously was unable to read and mainly focused on the pictures.  He was able to match animal picture cards made by his teacher to the animals in the book.  He also correctly turned the pages from front to back and ran his finger along the text from left to right and made noises as he did so.  this shows an understanding of some concepts of print, such as what the cover of the book is, reading left to right, and the significance of pictures in telling a story.  In speaking with his teacher, she said that Alejandro has been taught his letters, but not a lot of them seem to “stick”- as we could tell from the formal assessment.  Thoughts on how to help him or what further assessments would be helpful?

Hello everyone!  Well, I’ve successfully created an account- I think it’s safe to say this is my first blog experience! (Unless you count facebook wall posts, which i am admittedly somewhat addicted to.)  A little bit about me- I’m a second year school psych student….I love it here in Chapel Hill but I’m just about ready to be done with classes- I came straight from undergrad into this program so I’ve been going strong for about six years now!  Next year I’ll be starting my internship with Alexandria City Schools outside of DC, and I can’t wait!  I AM pretty excited to be in this lit class…I’ve never taught before, so I’m excited to learn more about how kids’ literacy skills develop and what kinds of assessments and interventions are appropriate in a variety of situations.  Anyway, I’m ready to get started!