TEMS520

"With this strategy students will have a chance to: remember, understand, analyze, evaluate, and create. Students work in teams of four to answer four questions about an article they read, a chapter from a novel, or a video they just watched (or whatever you want to assess). After careful analysis of their teammate's work, students will come up with a summary of each question to share with the class."

This is an excellent (and fun!) reading comprehension activity!

This article focused on a study done in a second grade private school over a four week period. Two different instructional practices were implemented by the researcher (who was also the teacher), and observations, focus groups with students, assignment evaluations, as well as student surveys were used to collect data. The instructional practices were student-centered instructional model and skills-based instructional model. The student-based instructional model focuses on student interest in reading, small groups and personal reading time, and student driven goals with their reading. I love the idea of student -centered instructional methods in the classroom, especially in an elementary setting when student attitudes towards reading are formed and develop into life long habits. In the article, students expressed feeling better when they were allowed to make choices about the reading that they do. Observations also showed that when students were forced to read aloud the students who were struggling mouthed the words and were too intimidated to participate. Also, the advanced readers were disinterested in the reading that was given by the teacher, as they had moved beyond it. If educators expect to create enthusiastic and self directed readers, then we must allow them to feel empowered by the reading they do in the classroom. I did an article previously on given boys choices in what they read, and this practice seems to ring true in this article as well. Allowing students to read in smaller groups with peers at their reading level allows for students to gain self esteem that is so important when moving forward with their reading education.

Second-Language Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Learning with Multimedia Lee B. Abraham Hispania , Vol. 90, No. 1 (Mar., 2007), pp. 98-108 Published by: American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20063468 This article presents a research study where ESL students were put into 3 groups a control group, a forced look-up group, and a choice look-up group. The study was trying to find out if using multimedia would aide in the increase in vocabulary in ESL students. The study found that students in the control group had little vocabulary growth, but the students in the two other groups had the same percentage growth of 18%. When I first started reading this article, I was interested to see if using multimedia tools would increase the vocabulary. I was specifically interested in the use of technology. There is no differentiation about which types of multimedia are better. As I further read, I thought that the students who were given a choice of what to look up would make more growth, because they would be working off their own motivation, but the study showed that whether they were forced to look up words or had a choice, they made the same growth. This reinforces the importance of teaching my students to use context clues, but when that doesn't help, to learn how to use a dictionary and the computer to find the meaning for words.

Vocabulary building is valuable, not only for second-language learners but also for many clients we serve, from young children with developmental delays to older stroke survivors and every age between. Check out these free online pictures of vocabulary words, picture dictionaries, flashcards, games and activities, and more. Kuster, J. M. (2011, November 1). Building vocabulary with online tools. A S H A Leader, 16(13), 2. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA272738779&v=2.1&u=lom_saginawvsu&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w

"The Teaching for Learning Framework, a project of the Michigan Department of Education - Office of Education Improvement and Innovation, was created to support effective instruction in challenging content across all grade levels and content areas. The Framework outlines 77 research-based Essential Skills (organized into __ Fundamental Processes and three Core Elements) that can be learned, practiced, and utilized by classroom teachers to efficiently and effectively deliver instruction."

PowerPoint that talks about OLD and some techniques to use including vocabulary development activities. Describes the 3 tiers of vocab words as well.

INSERT is a strategy with several uses. Students mark a text (with pencil or sticky flags) with symbols such as +. -. !, ? to monitor their comprehension during reading. These marks can then be used by the teacher to help students engage in discussions, and clarify understanding. Students can also use the marks to make notes after reading.

Mrs. Meacham's website has a fantastic section on reader's workshop with units that focus on: front loading, fix-up strategies, connection, visualizing, questioning, determining importance, inferring, and synthesizing. Each unit has a link that takes you to the materials she uses while teaching each mini lesson. I especially like that you can print out all of the material and use it in your own classroom.

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Collection of resources related to CCSS. Includes links to various state Common Core sites as well as instruction strategy sites.

Here is another Symbaloo collection!

This website allows you to create a "corkboard" page where you can link all your favorite websites for your students to use.

Well done, Jamie! This could also be a way to curate resources for a content unit.

What an interesting idea! I would love to create one for the math classes I teach. I always have parents asking what they can do at home for review. Having a central location for them to go to would be a great educational tool. Thanks for sharing.

"Speakaboos is an educational resource for the classroom and home. Our award-winning videos teach reading skills, life lessons, and creativity in a fun and safe environment. Each story comes to life with educational worksheets, activities, and games. Speakaboos timeless tales are ideal for kids of any age."

"Part of the reason my students have such a hard time reading is because they bring little prior knowledge and background to the written page. They can decode the words, but the words remain meaningless without a foundation of knowledge. To help build my students' prior knowledge, I assign them an "Article of the Week" every Monday morning. By the end of the school year I want them to have read 35 to 40 articles about what is going on in the world. It is not enough to simply teach my students to recognize theme in a given novel; if my students are to become literate, they must broaden their reading experiences into real-world text." Includes links to articles used as well as articles used in previous years.

Here is a very helpful link. It talks about all of the ways to teach reading in the elementary classrooms. It describes shared reading, readers theater, and guided reading just to name a few. I found it very helpful and a great resource,

Suggested activities for engaging students in historical narrative.

Our topic next week is read-alouds and shared reading. This page has some activities dealing more with oral language, but the skills of summarizing, determining importance, sequencing and more are also in play.

just an article I stumbled across...additionally, the page contains a platform for a bevy of opinions on this "hot topic".  Poke around if you get a chance. 

Cool Book on Reading Comprehension

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Carnegie report follow-up to Writing Next. This report provides evidence answering the following three questions: 1. Does writing about material students read enhance their reading comprehension? 2. Does teaching writing strengthen students' reading skills? 3. Does increasing how much students write improve how well they read?

test

The Café Book is written by The Two Sisters, Joan Moser and Gail Boushey. The book is written in conjunction with The Daily 5, also written by them. The Daily 5 is a management system for a readers workshop style literacy block. The Café Book is the content to go along. Café is centered around the Café Board. Each letter for Café represents a reading strategy, which are also the heading on the board. The four heading are comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and expanded vocabulary. The idea behind Café is that during the Daily 5 mini lessons the teacher teaches different strategies to go under each heading on the Café board. For example, one of the first Café lessons taught to the students is "Go Back and Reread." This strategy goes under the comprehension heading on the Café Board. This board gives students a reference for all of the different reading strategies that they learn throughout the year. Along with the mini-lessons and Café Board, The Café Book also focuses on strategy groups and reading conferencing. The Two Sisters suggests that rather than meeting with students of the same abilities, meeting with students that are focusing on the same reading strategy. Along with the strategy groups, the teachers meet with individuals during reading conferences. During this time the teacher can ensure that each student is reading just right books and practicing the reading strategy that they are focusing on. I run both The Daily 5 and Café currently in my classroom. I believe both are amazing. Although I have not tried it, I think that Café is most successful when The Daily 5 is also implemented. My students reference the Café board daily. They use the strategies to help them be more successful readers. This year was the first year that I have used The Daily 5 and Café. I have not fully implemented all aspects of Café. I am using the board, but have yet to use strategy groups. I am still grouping my students based on ability

Love Steve Peha, he writes like he speaks! Very interesting blurb about teaching reading in the content areas. I like that I am trying to focus more on non-fiction in my room, as was mentioned here, but realized I need to really make it explicit the differences between reading fiction and non-fiction.