Learning Log: Chapter 9

According to Vacca, Vacca, and Mraz (2011), "Writing facilitates learning by helping students to explore, clarify, and think deeply about the ideas and concepts they encounter in reading" (p. 279).  For the most part, I've taught kindergarten and preschool.  The students I've taught are in the very early stages of learning how to write.  We've always focused on modeling the writing process for students, teaching the writing crafts, allowing students to choose their topics, exposing them to different types of writing (fiction, non-fiction, persuasive, etc.), allowing students to choose their own topics, and giving time every single day to allow students to work on learning how to write.  More recently, there has been a bigger push to incorporate writing into every subject area.  We had journals for each of the subjects in the kindergarten classroom I taught in last year. 

References 

Vacca, R.T., Vacca, J. L. & Mraz, M.  (2011). Content area reading: literacy and learning across

the  curriculum. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Learning Log: Chapter 8

 

I've used list-group-label, brainstorming, word sorts, word maps, various graphic organizers while teaching vocabulary.  Teaching vocabulary is so complicated since it really requires you to teach words in many different ways, every day.  It's not something where you figure out one or two great ways of teaching it and then you have an effective way to teach vocabulary.  With each child being so different, having different needs, different backgrounds and knowledge bases, and then an endless supply of words to work on learning, it's necessary to evaluate which strategies will be most effective, and continue to reevaluate and change how you are teaching vocabulary.  The strong connection between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension is indisputable (Vacca, et al., 2011). 

References 

Vacca, R.T., Vacca, J. L. & Mraz, M.  (2011). Content area reading: literacy and learning across

the  curriculum. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Learning Log: Chapter 7

Vacca, Vacca, and Mraz (2011) discussed five basic steps when using think-alouds.  The first is to select passages in a text to read orally that include particular points of difficulty, ambiguities, contradictions, or unknown words.  Next, have students follow silently and listen to the teacher as the text is being read and think-alouds are being modeled.  Then students can with in pairs to practice this strategy.  Students should then work independently.  And lastly, think-alouds should be integrated into other lessons and think-alouds should be continued to be modeled as appropriate (Vacca, et al., 2011).  Frequently, I've used think-alouds while teaching and found the strategy to be very effective for the young students I've taught over the years.  With think-alouds, students are able to know what you are thinking about while reading and why.  I've always used think-alouds to some extent every single day of teaching.  I've used the K-W-L strategy as well, and that too has worked well.  I don't use it as frequently.

References 

Vacca, R.T., Vacca, J. L. & Mraz, M.  (2011). Content area reading: literacy and learning across

the  curriculum. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

OAR 3

Instead of using My Education Lab for my OAR, I viewed videos on teachingchannel. I found several videos on motivation in literacy and posted a few of them above. The first video talked about motivation in general terms while the other two videos discussed using creative movement and technology as motivators for students. Creative movement and technology seem to be things that students really enjoy engaging in, and if tied into literacy, I could see a big benefit to creating that motivation they need. I'm not of what other questions where asked on MyEducLab, but feel free to ask away.


I'm using think alouds as my strategy for my comprehension strategy paper and project. I decided to use this strategy because I felt that it's vitally important for us, as teachers, to model our thinking as we read to our students, no matter the age of our students. Also I feel that it's important for students to be able to tell us about their thinking as they read so that we can help better guide students towards become more effective readers. I have used think alouds in my teaching over the years, but I think it's something that I can improve upon. I would like my current and future students to benefit from having a teacher who is very effective at using think alouds as a strategy and teaching them to us the strategy as well. The student I am working with for this project seems to understand what she's reading, but has a hard time verbalizing what she's reading or why she does certain things as she's reading along. I think it would really benefit her to use this strategy.

Learning Log: Article on Self Efficacy and Motivation

 Afflerbach et al. (2013) stated that successful readers have high self-efficacy; "they expect to be challenged by different texts and tasks, and they expect to meet those challenges" (pp. 440).

 I focused on the part of the article that discussed a 1st grader (reluctant reader) and his teacher.  The teacher used both research-proven classroom strategies to guide her instruction plus she offered direct, formative feedback.  She helped the young student to realize his efforts lead to his successes.  All this combined resulted in an increase in motivation and engagement in reading.

I have worked with students who have struggled with reading and they, in large part, were not really motivated to read.  Moving them from a lower self-efficacy to a higher self-efficacy is certainly a struggle but it is possible over time and with patience along with the different factors discussed in the article.  It's amazing to me how much more students learn when they just believe in themselves.





References 


Afflerbach, P., Byeong-Young, C., Kim, J., Crassas, M. E., & Doyle, B. (2013). Reading: What else 

             matters besides strategies and skills? The Reading Teacher 66(6), 440-448.

Teachers as Readers: Self-efficacy and motivation

Last week, I read For One More Day by Mitch Albom.  I just finished reading I Will Carry You: The Sacred Dance of Grief and Joy by Angie Smith a few days ago, and have now begun reading The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd.


Vacca, Vacca, and Mraz (2011) states that a high level of self-efficacy in content literacy situations is exhibited in confident learners, and vice versa.  Science is one subject that I have always struggled with personally, and I cannot ever remember feeling confident when it came to learning something of a scientific nature.  Looking back, I do believe that it negatively effected my motivation to succeed in science.  I took the required two science classes in high school to satisfy graduation requirements but did not pursue any further science instruction beyond that.

Reading and writing were two subjects that I had a fairly high level of self-efficacy.  I was very motivated in those subjects and wanted to succeed.  They're also the two subjects I most enjoy teaching.  I love teaching children how to read and write.  In kindergarten, most of them go from children who can maybe write their name, read a word or two, and hopefully know several letters and sounds, and by the end of their year of kindergarten, they're writing sentences and reading books.  I love guiding them through that progress and watch that growth.

My daughter loves reading.  She's six years old; we homeschool.  Her and I sit together most days, and we each read our own books.  It's fun now that we're at the point where we can talk to each other a bit about what we are reading independently. 

References 

Vacca, R.T., Vacca, J. L. & Mraz, M.  (2011). Content area reading: literacy and learning across

the  curriculum. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Learning Log: Chapter 6

I found McGinley and Denner's explanation of story impressions interesting (as cited in Vacca, Vacca, & Mraz, 2011, p. 176).  It has be thinking about how I could adapt it to use with younger learners (kindergarten-1st grade).  For example, the story chain would need to be shorter (due to shorter texts, short attention spans, working with a very new idea for young learners).  A lot would need to be modeled (perhaps even an entire book modeled and then introduce a new book for students to try this with).  

References 

Vacca, R.T., Vacca, J. L. & Mraz, M.  (2011). Content area reading: literacy and learning across

the  curriculum. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Teachers as Readers: Interest before reading

Currently, I am reading For One More Day by Mitch Albom.  I read another book by Mitch Albom not too long ago, titled The Five People You Meet in Heaven.  One of my aunts and I were discussing books we both read recently, and she highly recommended The Five People You Meet in Heaven to me.  She told me just a little bit about the book, but it was enough to motivate me to want to read the book.  I thoroughly enjoyed the first book I read by Albom, and decided to look to see if he had written any other books of interest to me.  I noticed two that I felt would be worth getting on my nook and reading as time allowed, For One More Day and Tuesdays with Morrie.  I read the overviews for several of his books and also read several of the reviews.  Doing so motivated me to buy the books.  I also purchased another book just tonight titled I Will Carry You: The Sacred Dance of Grief and Joy by Angie Smith.  What motivated me to get this particular book was that I heard the author on a radio show tonight.  She talked about her book and the topic was of interest for me, but also of interest was her style of talking (which I'm hoping carries over into her writing).  Creating interest very often leads to motivation (Vacca, Vacca, & Mraz, 2011).  This statement is true whether we are students in fourth grade or adults just looking for a book to read in our spare time.

References 

Vacca, R.T., Vacca, J. L. & Mraz, M.  (2011). Content area reading: literacy and learning across

the  curriculum. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Learning Log: Chapter 5

Vacca, Vacca, and Mraz (2011) discuss a "B-D-A instructional framework" as what a teacher does before reading (interest and motivation are key), during reading (think alouds and active participation), and after reading activities (follow up is critical).  While previously teaching kindergarten and currently homeschooling my own child, very often I will use this sort of framework to plan out my lessons.  In my experience, the after reading activities can be the easiest to forget about.

Vacca, Vacca, and Mraz (2011) explained how explicit strategy instruction "attempts not only to show students what to do but also why, how,  and when."  It's so important to allow students the time to practice what they've learned and to give them real, authentic tasks.  Students need to know how they're doing as well.  It's been easy for me to do this with my daughter.  I found it more of a challenge in the classroom, giving students the feedback that they needed.  They would receive feedback, just not as consistently or often as I felt necessary.

References 

Vacca, R.T., Vacca, J. L. & Mraz, M.  (2011). Content area reading: literacy and learning across

the  curriculum. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.