Friendly letters to soldiers!
Friendly letters written to soldiers by Mrs. Croon’s 5th grade class.
Students were eager to write to an “actual soldier” and express their gratitude and appreciation for their service.
As a class, we discussed:
- The five branches of the military and their roles
- The daily sacrifices made by service men and women
- Childrens lives in Iraq and Afganistan compared to your own
- Components of a friendly letter
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I really liked this article, because as it denotes, there is often little attention paid to fluency and its importance in developing a strong, healthy readers who subsequently comprehend what they are reading. As I have mentioned in some of my other posts, I am not much of a fan of randomly selecting students to read, mainly because as a student I despised it. Now, some students enjoy reading aloud, even if they stumble through the words, but the majority of students who are not confident in their reading ability understandably do not like reading aloud in the classroom. Hey, I don’t blame them! As someone who has experienced this as a child, I can say that once the random selection process begins, my mind is not focused on the text; it is focused on wondering if I would be the next student to be called on, or reading ahead to make certain that I would not stumble through the text. As a child I enjoyed reading aloud, but in a private setting or the comfort of my own home, not in front of my peers reading unfamiliar content text. My point in saying this is that there is a time and a place for oral reading, and I do not feel that it through pin pointing self-conscious reader to orally read in front of a classroom of their peers. Talk about making a negative association to reading!
I feel that the best thing a teacher can do for his/her students is to, as stated by the text, model fluent oral reading. In doing so, students will better understand the attributes necessary for reading fluency, and through time it will translate into their own reading ability. So often I hear oral readers rushing through their text, as if to show you how fast they are capable of reading, but consequently they are unable to explain what they just read because they were sped through punctuation and did not make note of the sentence structure. One aspect of this article states the importance of modeling oral reading to benefit your students and as stated by the research if implemented daily in the classroom, and through multiple exposure, students will eventually begin to show signs of improved reading fluency and comprehension. You would be crazy not to use this technique and others mentioned in the article to improve your students reading! It is also very comforting to have this research to back up these methods in the classroom. I don’t know why, but some people believe in the point and pick sort of reading selection method, but as this article reiterates, that can leads to readers self-conscious readers who are unable to comprehend the text, and no one wins in that game!
-MLH
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Breaking Down Words to Build Meaning: Morphology, Vocabulary, and Reading Comprehension in the Urban Classroom, by: Michael J. Kieffer, Nonie K. Lesaux
Last Wednesday we began to delve deeper into the introduction and instruction of vocabulary to students. For me, vocabulary is something that I am frequently tuning into, and to be honest, this is because I have recognized it as one of my weaknesses. This class has helped me to conceptualize the correlation between reading and vocabulary. I mean, the two go hand in hand. Without vocabulary, reading will be difficult for students to comprehend. As I previously mentioned, in my situation I struggled with vocabulary and often times I would rely on context clues to aid me in my comprehension. On rare occasions I can remember “breaking down” the word (the concept of morphology) to help me understand the unknown vocabulary. My implementation of this concept in elementary school was intermittent, as I still found it difficult to decipher the meaning of the different word parts: prefix, root, and suffix. I believe I have struggled with this because it is a concept that was not heavily focused on throughout my education. However, because I struggled with this concept, I feel that I am more aware of how to help the students succeed in understanding the notion of morphology. I want my students to understand that morphology is not limited to simply understanding the prefix, root word, and suffix. I want to students to view morphology as a game. If you can decode this word, then you will likely be able to understand the word without looking it up, (now this is not to say I want students to disregard the dictionary, but I want students to understand that one will not always be accessible, and if looking a word up is not an option then they will have the knowledge to implement other techniques, such as morphology). I want students to see morphology as a way of using their own background knowledge to construct a definition, this will prove beneficial all throughout life, from EOG’s to SAT’s, Profession Peer Reviews, and beyond, being aware of common prefix’s, root words, and suffixes will help students immensely throughout their educational endeavor.
-MLH
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Hey guys.. I just wanted to share some of the exciting things that are taking place in my internship classroom. A couple Fridays ago, my cooperating teacher, Mrs. Croon (who has previously had Dr. Frye as a professor) introduced to her 5th grade classroom the wonderful world of journaling. Along with Mrs. Croon’s introduction of how the journal/writer’s notebook is a safe place for students to express themselves and practice writing techniques she also introduced the books Diary of a Wimpy Kid by: Jeff Kinney and Amelia’s Notebook by: Marissa Moss. The students orally expressed their fondness of the two books and a few have even begun to model their journals after the ones in the stories they read. :) Another concept Mrs. Croon was sure to introduce concurrently with the writer’s notebook was a “Heart Map”. After sharing with her students the “Heart Map” she created, the class had the opportunity to create their own. The whole experience of seeing innovative techniques we have learned about in class implemented in an elementary school setting was such a wonderful opportunity. It was exciting to see the positive responses from the students and how eager they all were to get their journals and being creating their ”Heart Maps”. This entire opportunity has made me even more excited about teaching and one day trying these techniques with my own students. 
YAY!
Below is a picture of the class with their journals. As you can see, they wanted to show off their “Heart Maps”! (FYI: They all have signed a photo release consent form, per Mrs. Croon.)
Mrs. Croon's 5th grade class, Gamewell Elementary
-MLH
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What If You Met a Pirate?
Written and illustrated by Jan Adkins
This is such a great book!! I love how the author designed the layout of the text. The factual content is presented in a fun and engaging way with short, to the point paragraphs that informs students of the various components of piracy. I believe students will appreciate that this book covers the many aspects of being a pirate on a day to day basis, discussing everything from how pirates sail their ships to where on the ship they might use the bathroom.
On a side note, the back cover of the book is hilarious. I love the “book reviews”, my favorite being Captain Henry Morgan who says “It’s fortunate for you that you made my name large. Otherwise…”
Pirate Diary: The Journal of Jake Carpenter
Written by Richard Platt, Illustrated by Chris Riddell
This book, like the previous, is packed with informational text that is expressed in an entertaining way. I now fully understand why you said these two stories should be discussed over an expanded period of time. There is a lot of information to extrapolate (shout out to Leslie and Peggy) within this text and it is simply not feasible to read these stories in one day. Now, because this book is written in the form of a journal, I believe it would be beneficial to have students read the story What If You Met a Pirate? before beginning this book. Reading the other story first would provide students with some background knowledge on pirates that they will be able to apply while reading this story.
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A response to the article, Shared Readings: Modeling Comprehension, Vocabulary, Text Structures, and Text Features for Older Readers, by: Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, Diane Lapp
I could not agree more with this article. I absolutely believe that modeling reading is an imperative aspect of literacy instruction. I just wish that when I was in elementary school my teachers were using these strategies. Nevertheless, it is up to current educators and pre-service teachers to implement these affective, research based methods in the classroom.
My mom was very influential in my reading success. She did a lot a lot to develop my reading literacy, one of which was informing me of how to use the content of the story to my advantage when I was having trouble understanding certain textual elements. She taught me how to use context clues to help me understand words while reading, and also how to use additional resources, like a glossary, when context clues were not enough. No matter where these skills are developed, school or home, it is important that classroom teachers are modeling them in all aspects of their instruction.
Lastly, model, model, model is all I can say. This article does well in proving that students learn through their observations of others. It all goes back to the age-old saying, “Practice what you preach.” I mean if you are telling your students that these are key components of literacy comprehension that they should practice, well then why not model ways in which they can apply these strategies? I believe it is important for teachers to help their students understand that these “self-monitoring reading strategies” are ones they will use all throughout their lives.
-MLH
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Higher Order Thinking blogging is such a creative way to academically engage the 21st century student. Prior to reading this article, and creating my own blog for our class, I really had no desire to every blog a day in my life, much less in a classroom setting. However, prior to reading this article I did intend to create a classroom website where students would be able to access classroom information. Please note that prior is the key word in the preceding sentences. This article helped me to realize that blogging is a multifaceted technological tool and one of the main advantages that it has over a standard website is its interactive capabilities.
Another advantage to blogging that I found beneficial is that parents can easily enter the web address and follow along with classroom discussions. I believe that this capability will provide parents with the opportunity to continue their child’s literary discussion beyond a classroom setting by talking to them about different types of activities they are doing at school. No longer can students say to their parents “nothing” after being asked “What did you do at school today?” The blog will serve as a tool to initiate a compelling discussion, in or outside the classroom setting. I am a fan of HOT blogging!!
-MLH
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“If you hear a good word that belongs to someone else, write it down somewhere so it belongs to you, too.” – From the book Sahara Special, by: Esme Codell
(Shout out to the ladies of the Sahara Special presentation group, thanks for sharing this quote with everyone, I just love it!)
-MLH
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I really connected with this article, because when I was in elementary school I was not very confident in my reading ability and I can remember experiencing some of the same emotions as Jon in Mrs. Green’s class. I personally have never been a fan of “round robin reading” or “popcorn reading” because I feel that through time the students who are uncomfortable with these act ivies will start to subconsciously associate negative emotions with reading. I think it is great that this strategy allows you to fill your classroom with children’s literature that coincides with a certain thematic unit. I believe this modification is imperative because as we know, students learn best when being taught at their instructional level.
As a Pre-service Teacher, I am always looking for ways that I will be able to accommodate all of my future students and their diverse learning needs. In fact, this is one reason that I am especially excited about our Piratical unit. I think it is great that this unit accommodates “mixed-ability classrooms” and incorporates a variation of literature genres in relation to the same theme so that students are able to understand the unit content while becoming immersed in a story that is intended for their instructional level.
-MLH
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