Reading Comprehension

Before reading today’s readings, I did not realize that there is a process in reading. I simply thought that people get meaning out of the text/story in a book by just looking at the words on a page and grasp the meaning. However, now I realized that reading is not that simple and requires many different things. “Reading is a constructive process of creating meaning that involves the reader, the text, and the purpose within social and cultural contexts (Tompkins p.42). In Tompkins chapter 2, Tompkins has described the reading process. In the reading process, there are five different stages which are pre-reading, reading, responding, exploring and applying. In reading, comprehension is the goal why people read. Comprehension also involves different levels of thinking and the most basic level is literal comprehension which is readers pick out main ideas, sequence details, notice similarities and differences, and identify explicitly stated reasons. Today’s readings help me understand the reading behaviors of the learners in my classroom because now that I can tell by students’ behavior, where they are in reading process or what/which comprehension strategies are the best for the students. So that students can easily comprehend readings and find more interest in reading as well.

What do you think?

Looking at the three students situations these are some ideas I have to help foster their learning:

Lupita I would say has “limited formal schooling” (Freeman 2004). She is far behind most of her classmates as far as being exposed to the English language because she grew up with her grandmother in Mexico. She is showing that she is capable of learning and accomplishing in other areas, but she just isn’t talking. Lupita needs to develop conversational English to catch up with her peers. It seems the language barrier is one of the main things that is holding her back. Someways to help foster this English language development include having themes so that Lupita can grasp what it is the class is focusing on over an extended period of time. This can also help Lupita to categorize information and vocabulary. Having culturally relevant books and lessons can also help Lupita to connect to what she is learning. Being able to see herself and her culture in any books or other materials can help her in the classroom. Organizing the materials and activities in a visual way that is easier to comprehend can also help Lupita to understand what is going on throughout the day and give her confidence.

If reading is Jonathans main area of struggle the teacher can focus on this. He isn’t asking for help whichi tells me he might be embarrassed or ashamed of his inability to read at his age level. Mrs. Potter can help Jonathan by boosting his reading confidence. Call on him for reading that you are sure he can do. Play literacy games where everyone participates all together so he feels part of the group. Raising his confidence will be very important to get him to be okay with asking for help. Even when he doesn’t ask for help Jonathan should be a student that Mrs. Foster remembers to keep an eye on whenever there is a reading task. Also getting his parents to really be reading with him at home would be beneficial. Sending Jonathan home with books (and the whole class for that matter) might really push for his parents to read that book with him every week.

Eddie has trouble sitting still and paying attention. Activities where he can get up and be physically involved might help him to be in tune with what is going on and being taught. For example: Mrs. Potter talked about the development of frogs verbally. Perhaps if she had had students physically pretend and go through the stages of frog development and/or used a select few students (including Eddie) and had them hold up pictures in front of the class, Eddie may have been more engaged with the activity. Also with Eddie since he was not able to process her question/possibly wasn’t listening in the first place because he was paying attention to the tad poles, she could make sure Eddie is focusing on her words, possibly stand behind him and/or lightly touch him on the shoulder so he is listening then ask him the question and give him time to answer. (He might be processing the question then thinking of the answer then thinking about his response)

Writing Samples

In my 3rd grade field placement, I collected two writing samples to analyze. The students were prompted to write about their favorite season. The first student, I will call him Ryan, had a good writing piece about summer. Here is a sample of his writing:

“…we can eat icecrem my favorite icecrem is spencalls whith vinelly icecrem in the cone. We can go to the bech and we can srim in the water and lay in the sun and have coold drenks.”

This writing sample has many spelling errors. The main thing I noticed in this piece was his vowel use within some words. For example, Ryan is unfamiliar with the vowel team found in ‘cream’ and spells ‘crem’ instead. Likewise, he doesn’t spell the vowel team, ‘ea’ for the word ‘beach’ and spells ‘bech’ instead. I also noticed his spelling of the word ‘cold’ as ‘coold’. These vowel mistakes seem to place Ryan in stage 3 spelling stage because he is still confusing spelling patterns within words. He is still working on his long vowel sounds and needs to work on vowel teams as well.

The second writing piece comes from another student named Jessica. She was also prompted to write about her favorite season. Unlike Ryan, she chose to write about the winter being her favorite. Here is a sample of her writing:

“I enjoy winter because every week I go sleding on the fantastic, steep hill. I also build snowmen with my brother and sister with buttons, berries, and some carrots. And the best thing I do is skii. We go skiing sometimes…”

Jessica wrote a great piece and had overall good spelling use. The issue she is still having is with rules for inflectional endings. I noticed that she indeed knows about some of the more difficult rules for word endings. For example, when she spells the word, ‘berries’, she knows how to change the word, ‘berry’ into plural by dropping the ‘y’ and adding ‘ies’. Likewise, she knows that the word, ‘skiing’ requires you to add an ‘ing’ even though the word ends up having two ‘I’s. But Jessica made a few mistakes with this concept as well. For instance, she spelled ‘sledding’ as ‘sleding’. It seems she is unfamiliar with the ending rule for that word, that it requires you to add a ‘ding’ to ‘sled’. These mistakes place Jessica in stage 4 of spelling development as she is already working and seems ready to learn more on inflectional endings to words.

Spelling Analysis

I have collected three different levels of students in my placement which are above average, average, and below average. Since I do not see much readings and writings on in my classroom, I had no idea who to pick. I told my CT that I need to collect students’ writing samples and she picked three students for me to take them to the hallway to do some writing.
Both Student A and Student B who are above average and average student are in stage 2: Letter Name-Alphabetic Spelling. Both of them know how to write their name in Chinese and English correctly and also few English words such as I, like, and etc. I noticed during writing time, Student B sounded out the word into each syllable and try to write out the word which was a good start to spell out words.
Student C who is below the average in the class could barely write her name in only English. When I asked her to write anything that she can write in Chinese or English, she said she does not know how to write anything. And she starts to draw her favorite foods. Thus, I think she is in stage 1: Emergent Spelling.

Spelling Analysis

Looking at my writing sample, I am struggling to decide which category this student falls into. He spells most of his basic words correct such as: the, I, was, we, to, with, he, then (these are some examples from his writing sample). But he also does not spell some words I would consider basic for 3rd grade such as: they (thay), their (thare), our (are), there (thar) -stage 2 strengths and weaknesses. For stage 2 he also shows that he is still using letter name-alphabetic spelling with words such as: erevy (evre), and watch (woch), and chocolate (coclit). He shows that he knows endings such as -ing in the word "winning" that he spells "wening" (stage 4).
I would say he is probably somewhere in stage 3 but his spelling does have certain qualities of stage 2 and stage 4.

Digital Denizens

After reading the information from the ‘Digital Denizens’ website, I found out that I belong in two categories, ‘digital native’ and a little bit in the ‘digital addict’ category. I began using technology when I was a kid. I worked with things such as with video cameras, tape recorders, projectors, video games, computers, etc. Since computers were still very new for personal use around that time, I did not use them that much. It wasn’t until my high school years that I became very familiar with computers, internet and some software programs. Today, I use even more forms of technology but I know there is still a lot that I am unfamiliar with and a lot to learn. Thankfully, growing up around various forms of technology allowed me to build a firm foundation and to this day, I feel comfortable and ready to learn and explore new things. Through all my technology experiences I was able to see how useful and important it can be. I think it’s so important that I find myself relying on it more and more, to the point that most things in my life depend on it. I am to the point that I may be able to fit into the ‘addict’ category, as I often get frustrated and feel lost without it. (Lol)

Tompkins talks about emergent literacy as being the way children learn how to read and write. It explains that emergent readers and writers accomplish things such as developing an interest in literacy, acquiring concepts of print, developing book handling and hand writing skills and more. Tompkins also explains that a child’s meaningful experiences with literacy such as a parent reading to them every night or by watching a parent write can benefit an emerging reader/writer and allow them to reach the above accomplishments sooner. Immediately after reading this, I made the connection that technology learners and language learners can both benefit from past experiences and exposure early on. For me, it was my early experiences that served as a foundation to build new digital knowledge. They allowed me to have the knowledge, ability and confidence to use technology. I think it is the same for a child who already had a reading and writing foundation to start out with before school starts. With a solid foundation already in place, a child can be ready much sooner to take on more reading and writing challenges and perhaps be more comfortable doing it compared to less equipped students.

In regards to my own digital literacy, the term, ‘emergent’, seems to apply to my past and future. In the past, the emergent stage was the part of my life where I was introduced and became interested to technology for the first time. It was the time in my life where I began to practice and develop my own experiences. It was through this stage that helped me get where I am today with technology. In my future, the emergent stage will continue to exist as technology is forever changing and there will be so many new things for me to learn.