EDLI635 Theory and Practice of Literacy Instruction

Click to view my ELL Case Study report.

The Running Record assignment was an interesting experience, as recorded in my reflection here . After the initial running record assessment, including the story retell form to assess comprehension, I was able to determine a specific area to help the reader with a customized mini-lesson .

This is my comprehension strategies lesson plan focusing on using the main idea to improve overall comprehension.

View my lesson here .

K-W-L charts are a great way to introduce a new topic. It helps students connect the new material to previous knowledge so they don't feel completely lost and are better able to comprehend the lesson. It also gives teachers an inkling to where the students are holding at the beginning of the lesson, as well as providing a means of self-assessment for students at the end of a lesson or unit to see how far they've come (Shaaban, n.d.). I would implement this strategy in my classroom for these purposes, as well - pre-assessment and self-assessment. This lesson is an example of how to use K-W-L charts in the classroom. References: Fisher, Frey, & Williams (2002) Seven Literacy Strategies That Work. Educational Leadership. Vol. 60 pp. 70-73 Shaaban, K. (n.d.) Assessment of Young Learners. The English Teaching Forum, Bureau of  Educational and Cultural Affairs

1) All words can be categorized into three levels. The first level encompasses all familiar words most children already know. These words obviously don't have to be taught because children automatically pick them up as they learn to speak and build their vocabulary. The second level indicates words that are a bit harder but come up a lot in books, the news and daily conversation that children should learn and know. The third level are unique words specific to certain disciplines or highly technical in nature and don't necessarily have to be taught as part of vocabulary instruction, but rather students will learn them as they come up in different subject areas. The ELA teacher should focus on the second group since students are not so familiar with those words but it would certainly expand and enrich their vocabulary. 2.   "Chunking" is a great way of decoding unfamiliar words. Instead of isolating each letter, students who have advanced beyond the initial early ...

1.   How can you ensure that your struggling readers have access to texts they can easily read? By setting up a class library with age appropriate books divided into categories and genres, children can choose books they are interested in and feel comfortable with to practice reading and improve fluency. It is important for teachers to carefully select books for the classroom library to make sure they will pique students' interest and align with the overall grade level as well as span the different levels ranging among individual students. 2.   How can you foster a learning environment in which students have many opportunities to practice reading? By making sure students have access to texts they can actually read, teachers increase their students' opportunities to practice reading. It is also beneficial to use various methods of reading instruction, including whole group and small group instruction, as well as individual coaching.  3.   Describe ways i...

Click here to view my phonics lesson.

The child did a pretty good job reading the passage. There were just a few minor errors that could probably be improved with more practice and concentration, such as confusing must for most and live for lived. His comprehension was outstanding. He was able to give detailed responses to the questions the teacher asked, based on the passage he had read.

My career in education began as administrative assistant in a Head Start early childhood program. I worked alongside the educational coordinator, supporting her in curriculum design, assessment strategies, and professional development trainings. Mastering these skills eventually helped me become better teacher when I chose to go into the classroom. I am now an Early Head Start Teacher in a thee-year-old classroom. I find that at this age, a child's brain is literally like a sponge and they absorb everything I learn, even beyond my wildest expectation. I use a lot of scaffolding in my instruction, as well as learning through play and teaching by example. My Teaching Philosophy

Shared Reading: Ms. Perez reads a poem with her students together as a whole group activity, and then branches it out into a short phonics lesson. The lesson addresses the essential components of oral language, phonological awareness, word identification, and phonics. Since it's shared reading, everyone reads together with the teacher so everyone feels comfortable, even the weaker students. During the explicit phonics lesson, Ms. Perez supports her students' problem-solving skills as we see in the following examples: - When a student confuses "d" for "b," she explains his reasoning and helps him reach the right answer on his own. - She encourages students to sound out each letter seperately, and then blend the sounds together to form words. Shared reading promotes literacy by introducing harder words that children wouldn't necessarily be able to read on their own. It also boosts their confidence in reading, because no one will scrutinize their mist...

Carolyn Wilhelm provides an outstanding lesson plan for Grades K-2 that seamlessly intertwines all the areas of the ELA Standards. Creating a found poem by sifting appropriate words out of a text is a genius idea to promote literacy. First, it focuses on reading comprehension, since the reader must determine which words and phrases make sense to transfer to the poem. Then, of course, it helps children expand their writing skills, as they create a brand new work from their reading. Speaking and listening skills are developed in conjunction with all this, as the text is read aloud and the poem created together as a class before continued as individual or small group projects. The lesson can also be adapted to older grade levels with an extension of challenging students to create a parallel poem with original text.

Shiela Owens' classroom is a literacy-rich environment filled with fun and empowering activities for her ambitious kindergarten readers and writers. Her goal is to help her students learn to read and write independently and she uses various methods and techniques to achieve that goal. She provides a seamless curriculum between reading and writing and uses scaffolding to tap into and expand her students' fullest potential. First she does a read-aloud with the class, opting for a book that would be challenging for the children to read on their own but stimulating enough for a group conversation and to maintain their interest in the story. While she reads the story, she asks relevant questions and connects the story to the children's real lives. Next she continues to shared reading where she reads together with the whole class from the board. She uses this opportunity to point out new rules they've learned about sentence structure and grammar, such as punctuation. I fo...

Becoming literate is arguably the most important objective of our current education model. Illiterate is almost synonymous with uneducated, right? This is because the purpose of education is to prepare students to become productive members of society. Language and literacy are often used to judge a person's intelligence and success. The ELA Standards were established to ensure proper learning of all aspects of the English language across the United States. The Standards focus on 5 key components to proper ELA instruction and then proceeds to explain the expectations for each component at every grade level. Reading - The goal in teaching reading is to help students master comprehension skills and apply what they read and learn to their real world. As students advance and acquire more sophisticated comprehension skills, they learn to think critically and use textual evidence for reasoning and comprehension. Writing - Writing can often be a response to reading, as well as an ori...