Word Recognition

“Because young children cannot read many printed words automatically, we encourage them to use the context, any illustrations, and what they already know about language and the world to support their fledgling word recognition”

            Chapter seven of the Graves text highlights how word recognition can be difficult and some strategies that can be used to help students better recognize words when reading. If students are struggling with word recognition, they will miss important clues and parts of a story. The Graves text first discusses why listening is easier than reading. I know how much I enjoy being read to every Wednesday and Friday in class. It is easier for me to imagine and wonder about what is being said by my professor. The Graves text states that when listening students can both receive and give immediate feedback. Students can also contextualize meaning and visual cues from speaker in order to understand a message or story better. When being read to in class, my professor sometimes raises her voice, or makes faces at certain parts of the book. If the character is angry not only can I hear her say the words, I can also see the expression on her face. The listener can use the speaker’s features, voice, lip movement and body language to better understand a story.

                     The Graves text continues to discuss that such task as word recognition is not a problem for skilled readers. I chose the quote above because young children are not skilled readers yet. I work at a child daycare and I see that the children are more interested in the pictures than the words printed on the pages of a book. A little boy once read me a story, the story that he created did not exactly match with the words printed on the paper. I noticed that he was aware of all of the characters and objects in the story. He could tell me what every picture was about, but could not read the words. In this case he was using the illustrations in the book, prior knowledge and his everyday surroundings to classify objects and people in the book we were reading. The Graves text continues on describing the structure of printed words, such as how are words formed. The Graves text also highlights some important components of language; phonemes, vowels, consonants, word families, and morphemes.  A student’s knowledge and awareness of these terms will make reading a lot of easier.  With every chapter that I read in this text book, A teacher’s knowledge of his or her student seems to always be key in helping students improve at different task. It is important as future educators to know your students reading level, strengths and weakness.

Building Fluency

“Fluency is more than just automatic word recognition; it requires the ability to read with proper phrasing, intonation and stress.”

“Fluency is the ability to read rapidly, smoothly, without many errors, and with appropriate expression.”

       The Graves text introduces several ways to help students become more fluent in literacy. Teachers reading aloud to students, students setting literacy goals, and students reading in a comfortable environment are some of the few methods that teachers can use to improve student literacy. The graves text describes many different methods that may also help with fluency such as repeated reading, echo reading, partner reading radio reading and many more. As you all may remember, we practiced some of these methods in class. Some of them were really difficult to do. My group had the radio reading method and we discovered that that strategy was very difficult to do with our book. After describing the different methods that could improve student literacy, assessing a reader’s fluency is then discussed. In the Graves text, it is written that when assessing fluency; rate, accuracy, expression, and comprehension are some of the components that should be looked at closely.

             I really liked the “The Poetry Academy “article. I think that the program at this particular school was very good because students were using literacy strategies to improve their fluency in literacy. To many people poetry is viewed as being fun and creative. I therefore think that these students were having fun and improving their reading skills at the same time. Poems were assigned to students that focused on where they needed to improve the most. The graves text mentions that environment and pressure can definitely have an effect on fluency progress. This is another reason why I think that these students were doing very well because the environment in which they were practicing was fun and light.

Classroom Assessment!

 

  “It is easy to build a test that fails students; it is much more difficult to find ways to discover what students know and can do” p.79

 

     I really like this quote from the Graves text. Every year graduation exam, midterms quizzes and finals are given to students throughout the United States as a form of assessment. The purpose of these exams is to see that the students have fully gained an understanding of the material taught by his/her teacher. I think this quote is interesting because when students are being assessed, one exam usually given. Therefore every student is taking the same exam even though some students may not be at the same level or have the same understanding of a topic. As future educators we need to keep in mind that students are individuals. These assessments that are given statewide are not focused on individual learning.

            The question that arises with this is, how should educators test for student progress? The Graves text gives some really good examples on how educators might go about assessing students and monitoring progress. It is written in the Graves text that “the best information about student learning often comes from looking and listening.” Simply observing student’s interaction in a class room or how much they participate in in-group activities can show teachers if the students have an understanding of what is being taught.  The Graves text also gives some information on rubrics and how students should be scored. The Graves text pretty much just highlights different assessment types and which work best for students and teachers. I also read the Literacy Rich Adolescence text which also discussed assessments and the progress of students in the classroom. I thought it was interesting how this text gave scenarios of different students and what strategy best helped them. I think that both authors agree on the importance of knowing your students and how they learn. Each student learns differently so a strategy that works for one student might not work for another student.