February 13th Extra Credit 401

Bissex: Patterns of Development

This article talks about patterns saw through the development of a student's writing. The patterns are processes of differentiation and decentration. Differentiation is essentially something that is big is taken and broken down into smaller parts. "Decentration is Piaget's term for this movement outward from the young child's egocentric view of the world. Decentration involves being able to take another person's point of new, which increases about age seven" states Bissex (page 198). The article talks about Paul and when he started writing, he used letters in form like to get a message across. These letters didn't represent any words or sounds. Paul went through a lot of obstacles and when he was five years old, he was absorbed in naming, naming the world around him in parts. He expressed his interest in different ways like informational reading. All in all, differentiation and decentration go together, hand in hand.

Bissex: Watching Young Writers

When children say their first words, parents are thrilled. It is known that without making constant corrections, kids will become accurate in the words that they use that may be different when they first start saying them. For example, "wawa" which we can also infers that it means water. The generating principle states, "that letters recur in variable patterns--so that with knowledge of only a few letter shapes a child can produce strings of print that resemble conventional writing."(page 103) Children learn so much about print even before they enter first grade. As teachers, their job is to find out what the children already know so that they can plan instruction around that. Children use things around them to help them process their spelling system. Children learn about writing and how text is read from left to right as well. Children learn about writing in more ways than one. As an end note, teachers teach what by knowing what the children know and what they are able to grow on.

Dyson: Pine Cone Wars

Writing can be a lot of hard work for the young children. Teachers, have to adapt to their students and accommodate them to have a productive play time that connects with school and their own cultures. Dyson states, "Play is a child's work, as the saying goes; that is, it is a prime mode through which children explore, organize, and stretch their understandings about the world." (page 306) When children play and when children work, they have a relationship. With play being an important part of a child's life, teachers tend not to be the center of attention in the school life. As the article talks about the pine cone wars, they also connect it with writing time wars. This talks about the anticipation of what was going to happen or what the child was going to do. When the children plan and enact, it demonstrates, "...the centrality of imagination and play to unofficial worlds." To end, the article stated that unofficial and official expectations are brought into play. This lets the children explore with each other in different settings.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVRYSC8YyYA I feel like differentiation needs to be explained more and I feel like this youtube video does a good job at explaining it and giving tips about it.




Veronica, Lauren, and Brittany

April 10th Extra Credit 401

Routman chapter 7

In this chapter, it talks about how you need to focus on teaching the writing part instead of focusing on the test part. The writing as a whole needs to happen first and then after that, you can go back and talk with the student about their individual needs. One of Regie Routman’s comparisons to this writing is like giving a child a puzzle to complete without looking at the picture. Through this, it allows the student to write everything down and then go back and tear things apart. Routman basically says to let the students write first before organizing. After they get all of their thoughts down on paper, they can then organize. Students tend to write more in something they’re interested in and when they’re given a choice in what they write, it might be more beneficial to them and the teacher. It is also stated that as teachers, we need to explain the importance of the tasks we make our students do. What we teach needs to be important and it can show the students that it is important to their lives. Just like anything else, when we are interested in doing something, we put more time and effort into it. In Routman’s list of what good writers do, they use descriptive words and make the beginning and the ending exciting and memorable. After writing a great piece of work, the next step is editing. Routman says that you should teach the editing process after the students learn how to write good work. To have them edit later allows them to write what they want and it won’t discourage them as they write. Lastly, as a shock, Routman says that you should limit how much the students use the thesaurus and dictionary. When these tools are used in the writing process, it slows things down and interrupts the writing, according to Regie.

Routman chapter 9

When students write, it is important to have conferences. When the teacher conferences with the students, it can be about many different things; positive or negative, about writing or about other things pertaining to writing. Routman suggests that one-one one scheduled conferences can be made with students who really need help or who are absolutely ready for it.  Regie’s suggestions are as follows, “Do everything good writers do, make it your best, reread several times for clarity/organization, follow directions, and complete all requirements.” When writing, having a conference about editing should be the last step. The students need to do their writing, work on it to their best ability, and then when they’re done, have it edited. When edited right away, it might take away from the flow of the student’s writing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9zwCVMT-wE This video ties into the chapter about teacher conferences. I really like this video because it allows us to see a conference in action and see what the teacher is doing and what the student is doing. We get both sides of this writing conference.  

Veronica, Lauren, and Brittany

401 Reading Response 6

This week we read chapters 8 and 9 of Fletcher and Portalupi's book "Writing Workshop". It was about different skills that students already know and how to teach new ones. There were writers' workshops for three days a week to focus on practicing new skills and keep exercising those. It was also about teaching the editing process which involves "1. Create a routine that gives students the responsibility to be their own first editors. 2. Teach them how to implement this routine. 3. Diagnose student needs based on their edited work. 4. In an editing conference, selectively teach one or two skills that students are ready to learn." (pg. 92). I really think that these rules will be great to use in my classroom because they really hit all the points that editing should cover. Once students are taught the editing routine, it is important to diagnose student needs and to conference with students and to teach skills. One-on-one teaching will help to focus on teaching a skill and generate it into the next workshop. It's also crucial to use assessment to inform teaching by holding a clear understanding of goals and to document observations of students in action. Students will also want to know what grade they will be getting, so be sure to have students self-evaluate so that they get more out of their paper than just a letter grade. Overall grading should take into consideration the quality of composition, the correctness of conventions, the use of a variety of composing and revising strategies and participation in the writer's workshop. Ask students to reflect on everything once they are finished and take into account how to improve on the workshop from their feedback.

In Assessment by Ray, one main key component that stood out was the fact that it is made clear that we want children to do things on their own.Seeing a child do it when asked to is one thing, but having them do it on their own without being asked is another. It is stated that we think about assessment in four ways. The following are, "Looking closely at individual pieces of writing, watching and listening as children are engaged in the process, asking children to be articulate, and looking across the work of a single child over time...These are simply the kinds of things we're thinking about as we're continuously assessing what's happening with children and their writing." As we look at our student's writing, the main question we have is what does this masterpiece show us the student knows? A list is made to show what the student knows. Also, when we watch and listen to a student write, it lets us in on some much more information and it helps us understand their process. As teachers, we are to ask the students to tell us about what they're working on. This we ask to maybe help us understand a little bit more about what the student is creating and to see if they have new possibilities. When asked to "tell me" about the writing, it also asks the questions of why and how. After awhile, the students just articulate the answers to the teachers. Our assessment directs our teaching, it helps in what to teach, it makes the teaching more richer, and it provides data. A lot of the assessment also helps with the parents and it shows the parents a lot more than what they're familiar with. All in all, assessment is key, because it allows teachers to keep track about how they teach. Tying in with this is Regie Routman's Writing Essentials Chapter 10, making assessment count. Routman states that assessments should be able to increase the quality of a student's writing. However, it doesn't. One key point that Routman makes is that having excellent teaching skills is the only test prep that is the best for the students to receive. According to Routman, assessment should happen every day. It takes practice before the students can be really critiqued. When they are being critiqued, just giving them a score for their writing isnt enough. Each student needs his or her own feedback so that they can learn from it. For teachers, a main goal for them would be to get their students to be able to do their own self assessments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P7hOPJ1Pb4 This video ties great into the topic of assessment, because it gives another side to the assessment of the students. It talks about the misunderstandings that are associated with child assessment. We read mainly what assessment was for, but this adds more to understanding assessment in a different way.

401 Extra Credit Post 3/20

The first article is by Linda E. Martin and Shirley Thacker and is called "Teaching The Writing Process in Primary Grades". Thackerville was created as a writing program in a first grade classroom. Thackerville has soft music in the background, a rug area, and a rocking chair to share stories. There are word walls and children's stories. I really like this idea because it separates reading and writing time and shows how enjoyable it can be for the classroom. "My first goal was to create a classroom environment that invited children to write." (pg. 31). Thackerville does exactly that. There also should be an established routine for young students, such as family time, and writing time. Mini-lessons help to develop specific needs and are only 10 minutes long to keep everyone's attention. It also models proper writing skills. Young authors should develop topics, plans, edit their writing, and reflect during conferencing. It is important to be patient with the students, to create a flexible writing environment, and connect writing and reading together. The next article was called "Writing Workshop and Children Acquiring English as a Non-Native Language" by Katharine Davies Samway. There was a sixth grade class that was English/Spanish bilingual. Ms. Ramirez, the teacher, reads some poems and made copies so that students can build up their poetry anthology. During her writing workshop time, she briefly meets with the children who understand and speak little English to evaluate their work and help them with new teaching and learning strategies. At the end of writing time, the class comes together to talk and reflect on what they have learned that day. The classroom shares several characteristics such as "write on a regular basis for extended, predictable periods of time, responsible for selecting own topics, confer with each other and with adults about their writing goals, processes, products, problems and accomplishments, write for many audiences, read a great deal and have many opportunities to talk about reading and writing" (pg. 89) and so on. These traits all keep the classroom on task and focused during writer's workshop. Writing should be a meaning-making process and be active and personal. It should also be a recursive process, meaning that it is not just a simple, linear process. As a developmental process it needs to have a variety of quality and quantity. As a process for children acquiring English it should just be aware that they are still emerging readers and writers and it is only harder that has not yet been mastered. Classroom set up for writer's workshop should be both solitary and social so the room needs to be set up to accommodate both functions. An editing center will also help out to refine mechanics and writing. An illustrating center can contain a variety of art materials and a publishing center will contain papers of different textures and qualities as well as writing utensils. The teacher will be a fellow writer and a mentor. Mini-lessons throughout the days will help to refine certain specific skills. Writing conferencing will help encourage writers to continue to write. Finally, assessing should be done so that the teacher can talk about the child to parents, teachers, and administration. The last reading was in the book "Writing Workshop" by Ralph Fletcher and Joann Portalupi. Chapters 3 and 4 both focused on writer's workshop. Short term goals should be "getting students to love writing time, establish a safe environment so that kids can take risks to their writing, and set up a workable management system to handle the flow of papers, folders, and so forth." (pg. 22). Student choice is also important because it drives the writer's workshop to success. Negative comments do not create a safe environment, so stick to specific praise, let primary children draw, read aloud from "from-the-heart" pieces of writing, use writer's notebook, and write with the students. A finished box is a place to put their work in a box without interrupting any possible conferencing with other students. Once it comes time to launch the writer's workshop, allow children to tell stories. "Storytelling takes advantage of this oral fluency." (pg. 36). It allows them to get comfortable with their own voice. Minilessons will help to set up the workshop. The teacher should also write with their students and confer with students as they go. Sharing sessions is also important because it will give them a real audience for their work and feedback should be positive and celebratory. Some possible rules can be: "use quiet voices, please don't interrupt, everybody writes." (pg. 44) Example of writer's workshop: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPRM2ZXyrS0

401 Extra Credit Post 1/30

The first article was by Daniel K. Thompson called "Early Childhood Literacy Education, Wakefulness, and the Arts" and was mainly about linking together early childhood literacy and instruction in the arts. Those in early literacy education have experience a change in understanding how children learn to read and write. "We have come to know that fostering literacy growth means to build on the formidable understandings children have acquired about language before they enter our schools rather than to master in a prescribed sequence andy at a time proscribed by mental age." (pg. 186). This means that we need to work on building what children already know and understand before packing on a ton of knowledge that they may not follow. Children also should be exposed to good literature instead of readings that are way too intellectually above them. They also should connect to authentic arts activities to deepen their understanding. There is an emphasis on hitting test scores and that may not reflect what teachers are capable of teaching to their students. Through poetry, students can go through certain steps such as competency and recognition of their learning as they process through greater knowledge. The arts is our means of expression and can reflect another form of knowledge and language. The next article was called "Contextual Worlds of Child Art: Experiencing Multiple Literacies Through Images" by Marni Binder. It examined multiple literacies in children's drawings. I think that there are so many benefits to using multiple literacies and she touches on some of these points. "This is especially useful in diverse classrooms where the linguistic and cultural resources of students may be in tension with approaches to literacy learning that are linear and one-size-fits-all, which often hinder children whose native language is not English." (pg. 367). Using drawings can keep children of all cultures involved in the classroom. Visual arts can also broaden the understanding of written text. A holistic approach attends to the whole child's aspects of physical, cognitive, emotional, social, and spiritual domains. A sociocultural perspective is understanding the norms of the learning community and the teacher's expectations. Multiple literacies theory will respond to diversity and technology, as well as connecting children to themselves, others, and the world. Children's artistic compositions can be self-directed, or based off as a response to poetry and picture books read in the classroom. The final article was called "And What Happens Next? Telling Stories Through Drawing" by Wilson. It talked about spontaneous story drawings and how even the early scribbles can be seen as a pretext to linguistic development. Children can better understand the world and create situations that are suited to their wants and needs. They can show in their drawings what they are trying to convey when words are not yet available to them. "In a careful analysis of the various kinds of meanings illustrated in the drawings of this six-year-old girl, we found that she dealt with nine separate meaning considerations such as time and size relationships, development, and location." (pg. 113). This goes to show how drawings really do represent such a bigger meaning and picture than may not be realized at first. It also evokes imagination, such as the example of Philip who was able to create superpowers and mold his superhero however he wanted to. He could also improve his narration skills by explaining the superhero story as he went. Story drawings are just as important as visual/graphic vocabulary, and they will be able to tell the tale of the story just as well as a narrative. This is a link to a video of a child drawing a picture and explaining what she is drawing as she draws to show how imagination and narratives come into play: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkekgslt0Ew

Reading Response 6

One article that I went back to and read was the Guidelines for Reading Aloud by Fox. I first want to start off with something that stuck out to me while reading this. She states, "If anything could be more important than the first line of the story, it's the last line." It just ties everything in together and gives that "ah-ha" moment completing the story. I also like how she talked about being expressive when reading. I know that when I read, I just read the words. In the article, she states that instead of just reading the words, pay attention to them. If a line in the book says "whisper", you wouldn't want to yell, you would want to whisper. She also points out that we need to be aware of what we are doing as well as the students. Our body position, our eyes, the student's reaction, our facial expressions, and our voice. These characteristics are all important when reading aloud and making it more entertaining. Something that I got from reading between the lines is that we learn by doing. When we hear someone else read, we tend to read that way as well and pick up on the things they do. After listening to her read Koala Lou, I couldn't get her voice out of my head. The way she used her voice to go up and down and how expressive she was. It was something that stuck with me and if I ever read that book aloud, I will copy the way she did it. "Expressive reading is reading that is remembered."

I'm glad I went back and read this article, because it gave me some insight on what to do when reading. It's more than just reading the words off the page, it's about being a part of the book and expressing that.

Lauren Foreman LLED 400 Reading Response 6

One of the articles that I did not have time to fully read and comprehend was Susi Long's "Passionless Text and Phonics First: Through a Child's Eyes". It was all about the journey of how Kelli, an eight year old, had to move from Ohio to Iceland. This is a huge culture shock, and will be a different type of schooling that Kelli is used to. Kelli's mother tracked her progress through transcripts, field notes, audio tapes, friends and family. Within the first month, Kelli was using Icelandic during informal interactions with peers. However, she did not attempt to use the Icelandic language in the formal school setting. Kelli refused to use this language because she was determined to withhold it until she felt she was ready and could properly speak the language. Her inability to read placed her in the category that five and six year olds are normally placed in, which was frustrating for Kelli because the content of this basal text was simple and targeted for five year olds and not eight year olds who can handle a greater content. Kelli wanted to be viewed as competent by her teachers and peers, and she really put in the effort to learn Icelandic. However, she was discouraged and embarrassed by the low level reading she was placed in, and claimed she was reading "baby books". This in turn caused Kelli to dislike reading. This did not lead to Kelli actually understanding any of this material. "Kelli had to rely predominantly on one cue system, graphophonemics, which was not enough to support meaning-making." (pg. 424). She was bored, embarrassed, and confused. I am so glad that I reread this article. I found it so interesting that her teachers wanted her to start off with such simple text meant for such young readers, which while it makes sense for her to learn the structure of Icelandic, it did not help her excel. She was so embarrassed by her work, and I felt bad for her and can understand her struggle. Learning a new language is never easy, and I think that if I were her teacher, I would try to find books that she normally enjoys reading in English translated into Icelandic, so she already understands the content and she can use her prior knowledge to connect the Icelandic language together. I would also use peer groups and tutors so that she can get a grasp of using Icelandic in normal slang conversation as well as making peer connections and friends that could help her along this literary journey. I would not want to bore Kelli and I would want to inspire her to keep learning the language, and using simple worksheets will not do the trick.