New Literacies Project

The new literacy that I am researching with my group is Cultural Literacy.  I am learning

what cultural literacy is in general, it is being able to understand and appreciate the things

that are the same and different in someone elses's culture and their own including

the customs, values, and beliefs.  Cultural literacy is something I always knew was 

important but never really knew what to do with it beyond the typical project where every

student has a country and they write a report on their culture and possibly share that with

their class.  I think teaching cultural literacy can also bring a class together and promote 

an inclusive environment for all students.  I've seen in my classroom that the majority of 

books we read portray one type of nationality and not really much else.  It is important that

all students are not only able to read and see other cultures represented in the books that 

they are reading, but that all students in the classroom are able to read books that 

represent their cultural background, so that connections between the text and themselves 

can be made.  What I am learning while I am researching cultural literacy would be all 

of the different ways teachers can incorporate it into their classrooms.  Overall, I am 

learning just how important it is to incorporate cultural literacy into any classroom, no 

matter how young or old your students are.  I look forward to finding more resources

and ideas for how I could one day incorporate it into my classroom in new and

interesting ways for my students.      

 

The digital literacy my group decided to use is Weebly.  We are going to create a website for

teachers that gives them resources and ideas for how to incorporate cultural literacy into

their classrooms.  I am learning that Weebly is a very user friendly technology to use.  It is

not hard to figure out and it gives users a lot of options on making the website your own.

What I like is that I can easily add pictures, text, videos, links, etc without much hassle.  This

is really important because the majority of our Weebly is going to be providing these links

and outside resources to teachers.  I really like how Weebly can be easily published and 

easily found by educators looking for resources.  Weebly is nice because it is not like a 

PowerPoint presentation where we would have to upload it to the computer or anything 

like that, it is much easier because we can just push the publish button and people can use 

it as resource.  I am looking forward to learning more about Weebly and creating a website 

that can be a good resource for teachers!    

 

Reading Comprehension Processes

I am in a Kindergarten classroom so the reading that helped me the most in learning about the reading behaviors of the learners in my classroom would be Kindergarteners Can Do It Too.  I really liked how Mrs. Hope explained visualization to her classroom.  I thought that explaining to the students that when visualizing a story it is like making mind movies I thought was really creative and also a really simplified explanation of what they were thinking about while visualizing.  I liked how she would read them a few pages and have them explain what they were seeing in their mind movies and also have them draw out what they were thinking.  I think visualization is such a huge part of reading because as students begin to move away from picture books they need to be able to visualize what is happening in chapter books in order to fully comprehend everything that is going on in the story. I also liked how this Kindergarten teacher had the students do I wonders while they were reading. I feel like most of the time, my teacher asks the questions and students answer but from reading this I see that Kindergarten students have the ability to question the text which helps them interact with the text in a meaningful way.  What I learned from this article is that my class can do so much more than I thought they could.  Young students can visualize, ask questions, make connections, and infer when interacting with texts.  Even the article says that most people would assume that these things are all associated with students who are older, but seen in Mrs. Hope's classroom with a lot of explicit instruction even young students will be able to understand and interpret text. I learned that it is also very important to use visual cues when doing this process with young students like hand signals and charts written out for students to look at. I think this is really interesting to me especially because I am in a Kindergarten classroom because I was able to see that students are able to do way more while reading a story than I thought.  It is especially interesting to me because I will be teaching my lesson next week to my students and so it makes me begin to think if I could do more with my students and maybe have them ask the questions as opposed to me asking them all.

I also was very interested in the article by Applegate where I was able to read about different kinds of readers.  The categories they put readers into was really interesting to me because I have never seen anything like this.  I realized I have always been a literalist while reading. I never really dug that deep into the text and I always think that I will be able to find the answer to questions right from the text.  If someone had asked me a question about a fact about the text, like the reading said about which sibling was older, if I didn't know I would most likely think I missed that fact while I was reading and would go back to look for what I missed. I've always struggled think about an overall theme of the story and things like that.  I realized that for all different types of readers there are strategies teachers can do to assist their students to fully comprehend the text you are reading in the classroom.    

Stages of Spelling Development

My Kindergarten class has writing time each day where they write in their "orange notebooks" on a topic that is prompted by their teacher.  My mentor teachers usually starts out their sentence and they fill in the rest however they would like.  I took a look at three different writing samples from students in my class.  The first two writing samples I looked at were both examples of Stage 2 writers, the catergory called Letter Name-Alphabetic Spelling.  One student's writing looked like this: "I am specia because I love my famley" and the other student's writing looked like this: "My flufey cat turns into a big blakc cat."  It is clear that both students understand the alphabetic principles, that there is a link between letters and sounds.  It is clear that they are writing the words they don't know by sounding them out becasue one did not put the i in family and the other put a c on the end of black.  They struggle when a word isn't written out exactly how it sounds.   

The other student's writing that I looked at was an Emergent Speller (stage one).  His writing was just a bunch a letters without spaces in between words so it is hard be clear on what he was trying to write.  This student is able to make letters (all of his letters are written in the correct way) and there is a clear distinction between the drawing that he did and the writing he did above it.  He is writing from left to right on this journal page but there really isn't any clear letter-sound matches.

I feel that the majority of my class is either in Stage 1 or Stage 2 so I would do centers that assisted students in both of those areas.  For students who are in Stage 1 I would do a centers activity that focused on student's practicing writing words that are CVC words and their sight words. I would have students use the magnetic letters to build a word then they would have to write the word themselves.  This will give them practice with both spelling the word and writing out the word.  I would do a similar activity for the students in stage 2, I would have them doing build and write with words with consonant blends and digraphs so they would get more practice seeing that just because a word sounds like there is only one letter there can also be a blend of two letters making one sound.   

Adaptation Suggestions for Mrs. Potter

Mrs. Potter should make adaptions for each of these three "struggling" students.  Personally, it seems to me that Lupita is very bright and would be a very good student if her needs were met.  Since Lupita has little experience with toys, puzzles, paper, crayons, scissors and opportunities interacting with other children, I think small group work would be very beneficial for Lupita.  This case states that Lupita plays with puzzles during her free time and is patient when showing her classmates how to assemble puzzles.  Lupita seems a little shy because she is so quiet in class, but is able to help students when she is asked.  Small group work would give Lupita the chance to make friends in the classroom, experience with toys, puzzles, paper, etc. and the opportunity to help and be helped by her classmates.  After this boost of confidence, she would most likely enjoy being called on during class. 

            The second student, Jonathan, seems to be apprehensive to ask a question when he does not understand something.  Instead of asking for help from his teacher or classmates, he just sits at his desk confused.  Since Jonathan is good at piano, a star pitcher on his baseball team and is average in mathematics, Jonathan may be embarrassed to admit that he struggles with reading.  I think Jonathan would benefit from one-on-one time from his teacher, or help from his parents at home.  This way, Jonathan will be in a safe environment where others will not judge him or make him feel anxious to ask for help. 

            It sounds like the third student, Eddie, has trouble paying attention, or according to Breitfelder, attention deficit disorder (ADD), or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).  In the article titled, Quick and Easy Adaptations and Accommodations for Early Childhood Students, visual supports can be an “effective way to get students to process language”.   Breitfelder states that visual supports in a classroom setting can have “eased transitions, feeling of empowerment by having visual choices, clearly defined expectations, longer attention span, reduced anxiety, concepts can become more concrete, and the ability to help them express their thoughts”.  Since Eddie was excited about seeing the tadpoles, it proved that this visual aid encouraged Eddie to pay attention.  Mrs. Potter should try using more or multiple visual aids in her classroom to keep Eddie stimulated during class. 

            If these adaptions were made for Lupita, Jonathan and Eddie, Mrs. Potter would see advancements in their academic progress.  Small group work, one-on-one work time/parent involvement and visual aids could strongly benefit these students.  I think these are realistic adaptations because nothing is being taken away from her other students.  In Lupita’s case, students could learn from one each other, gaining problem solving skills, communication skills and teamwork strategies.  By adding more visuals into the classroom for Eddie, other visual learners could become more actively engaged in class discussion.  By altering teaching methods, one could make a large difference in another’s ability to learn.

Stages of Spelling Development

When collecting writing samples from my classroom, I noticed that there are students in various stages of spelling development.  The first student seems to be in Stage 4: Syllables and Affixes Spelling.  Overall, most words are spelled correctly.  The few misspelled words include, “clime” instead of “climb”, “the” instead of “then”, and “sculpters” instead of “sculptures”.  This student uses consonant doubling correctly, because he correctly spells words like “cannon” and “scrubbed”.  He uses inflectional endings in words such as, “riding” and “movies”.  Lastly, this student correctly spells compound words such as, “motorcycle”, and “everybody” along with using some common suffixes such as in the word “packable”, when describing snow.

            I would identify the second student to be in Stage 3: Within-Word Pattern Spelling.  This student mostly uses one-syllable words such as “like” and uses complex consonant sounds, such as “catch” and “walk”.  Use of words such as “like”, “ride” and “bike” also demonstrate student’s knowledge of long-vowel spelling patterns.  This student also confuses spelling patterns by reversing the order of letters.  For example, this student spelt California “Califorina”. I would not classify this student’s spelling to be in Stage 4 like the previous student because he does not understand common endings to words such as –ed, and –s.  This is shown by the student’s use of “visit” instead of “visited” and “plays” instead of “play”. 

            A literacy center activity that would be helpful for these students would be a game that focuses on word endings.  Students could a set of flashcards that have word endings and another set that has words.  With a partner students could try and come up with as many words with appropriate word endings as they could.  For a challenge, students would be asked to write sentences including these found words.  This would support students learning because both of these students have trouble with inflectional ending in their spelling development. 

Text Talk by Beck & McKeown Reflection

Text Talk: Capturing the Benefits of Read-Aloud Experiences for Young Children
-Beck & McKeown

In reading this article I quickly was able to grasp all of the benefits of read-alouds very quickly.  There were some concepts in which I did not think about when performing read-alouds with children.  Reading aloud to students is much more than just telling them a story, but rather it is helping them to develop their linguistic skills in an array of ways.  Performing read-alouds in the classroom is not only fun for the students, but it also benefits them in multiple ways.

Read-alouds are usually done with students who are younger, and ones who cannot read very well by themselves yet.  Therefore, by reading aloud to students, they can be improving their literacy skills by following along, along with also de-contextualizing language.  One of the most important aspects that students receive from read-alouds is how they construct meaning from what they are being read.  One element that has the tendency to sometimes hinder this area of constructing meaning is the presence of illustrations in children's books.  Rather than constructing meaning and understanding what elements are happening in the story, often times students will focus on the pictures and will not listen to the words being read.  When this happens and they are asked questions in which analyze their comprehension, they answer in ways in which reflect on the illustrations.  A better approach, which was mentioned in the reading, was to read the content of the story and then to show the pictures, so that the students are first understanding the story for the written words and then are applying the illustration to the words they just heard.  Focusing too much on illustrations can hinder students from constructing meaning from the linguistic content.

Another factor that can influence a student's overall understanding of the text is the ability to associate from one's own memory and draw upon those instances and experiences to explain what is happening in the story.  This is hindering to a student's learning, because it is enabling them to interpret the story in a manner in which is relevant to them, and they are not able to draw upon new ideas and scenarios.  In order to ensure students take the most that they can from a read-aloud, promoting questions is very important so that they begin to think about what happened in the story.  It is important for the teacher to continue to keep asking questions about a student's response in order to elicit a correct response, one in which is being looked for.  There may be vocabulary words present that students will not know, so it is important for the teacher to identify these and explain them to students and have them practice using the word to something applicable in their lives so that they understand to the best of their ability.  Repeating these vocabulary words is always important for the students to remember and be able to identify with them.

There are many factors to consider when performing read-alouds with students.  In order for students to receive the best experience for them developmentally, it is important to make sure that the material is set up in a way that they are able to understand and identify with.  Not only is a read-aloud fun for the students, but it is a very important part of constructing literature.