This course was a great start to my continuation of my education and I have definitely benefitted greatly from all the great articles that we have read. The additional views that I have read from all of my course-mates was so beneficial. This course has definitely changed my philosophy about teaching reading and my view on how literacy is obtained. In my undergraduate courses we aren’t really taught what reading really is until you are in the classroom. After participating in this course I am taking away so many wonderful suggestions and ideas that I have encountered over these past eight weeks. Two articles that stood out were Applegate & Applegate’s Peter Effect as well as Anderson’s Role of the reader’s schema in comprehension, learning and memory. Andersons article reminded me how the schema theory can be applied in a practical teaching environment. The Peter Effect focused on the importance of teachers being a positive example of being enthusiastic about reading. After reading the Peter Effect article I thought about my practices even outside of the classroom and how I stress at home reading a book with my daughter every night.

Over these past eight weeks my thinking about the reading process has changed and it also has reminded me what it means to be a part of the process of making children literate. As a teacher I am often so busy through the day with teaching and giving assessments that I forget that these children come into my classroom sometimes not knowing anything or remembering anything. As their teacher I need to teach them the very basics of how to become a successful reader. At the end of the year it really does not matter if the students can pass an assessment if they have not learned the process of how to read.

A concept that I am walking away is the knowledge of schema. In my setting it is common that my students come in with little background knowledge. I forget sometimes that they all don’t have the benefit of a solid background of knowledge that I was afforded as a young learner.

One thing that I have already incorporated in my classroom that I have taken from this course is to be my students reading role model. I have been encouraging them more and I have seen a difference in my students. I have a little girl or is on the lower reading level that has really had a boost of confidence and wants to read more. She had asked to read with me and also wanted to read to the class. She accomplished this task and did an amazing job, something that may not have happened if I had not taken this course and been more mindful of my modeling.

The purpose of this article was to make the reader think about how students think about thinking.  If you read that line and see a lot of thinking, that is the point. The authors point out the research through the article showing that having students become more aware of their process of learning will facilitate more efficient learning in the end. The authors reviewed the Tanner method for explicit instruction including the type of questions that would be useful to have students ponder in each stage. After much review of other concepts the authors come to the final conclusion that metacognition is an externalization of internal mental processes.

After reading this article and thinking about how I can best apply the strategies outlined in the article I believe that I can mostly use the Tanner activities. My students will benefit from the identification of things they already know to reinforce previously learned material. They can then benefit by identifying the content where there is confusion so that they can focus their attention on those things that they need to clarify. They then can be introspective about the new content they have learned which will reinforce the new content and cement the concepts in their minds. Finally, having the students reflect on the parts of the learning process that went well and what they would do differently next time will help them identify how to change ineffective strategies and promote those things that worked for them. This process will serve the students well as they continue on their process of lifelong learning by thinking about the process that they undertake in knowledge acquisition. I think that having students who can think more critically of themselves is an important skill to develop early in the learning process so that when more complex subject matter is presented they are able to draw on their previous experiences.

The article assigned this week examined the disparity of testing scores between low-income students and the rest of the population. The authors point out that their research showed that low-income students are disproportionately African American and Latino. The authors point out the success stories in improving underachieving student’s scores across a wide variety of publications were mostly related to collaborative learning environments lead by groups who share enthusiasm with achieving success. The case of the implementation of In2Books was examined in the District of Columbia Public Schools. The review of I2B, how the program works and the research on I2b was then explained in detail. The problem that the authors identified with the statistical research was that while the numbers showed that there was a statistically significant improvement, it did not show what it took to achieve that statistical outcome. Finally, the authors revealed and expanded upon the three elements that produced the positive results: practices, principles, and persistence.

This article and the results hit home with me since the school I teach in is Title 1 in an urban environment.  I can see the value of the I2B program even if it is not implemented in the full scale. The use of pen-pals would be a program that would take considerable time and effort to establish but implementing the portions of the program where students are encouraged to read books repetitively for different components of the curriculum is something that I apply in my everyday work. I particularly enjoyed the portion where the students were encouraged to read then write statements starting with “I notice, I like, I learned, and I wonder” to have students think more about what they have read. After reading this article, I believe this is something that will be easy to bring into my classroom in the coming weeks.

The purpose of this article was to explain schema theory to the reader, provide the associated research behind the theory, and propose how schema theory can be applied in the practical teaching environment.  The author provides a background to schema theory as a basis of the article pointing out that text taken out of context has no practical meaning and that there are conceivably multiple ways to interpret the same text based on previous experiences.  The author then explores different levels of schema and the proposed six functions of schema with a brief explanation of each for the reader’s benefit.  The article then provides the evidence behind schema theory and concludes with recommendations for the use of schema theory moving forward. After reading the article and thinking about how I may apply schema and metacognition in my teaching practice I believe that I can better use the six functions of schema theory. I believe that I can better provide an ideational scaffolding for assimilating text information by highlighting the slot in text information that might fill in the slot for a main point of a story for a student.  I can facilitate selective allocation of attention by sharing with students where the main plot points of a story are commonly found.  I will be able to enable inferential elaboration by discussing the student’s thoughts on what they were imagining what else was going on in the story beside the main content. I should be able to help the students in finding a way to search their memory in an orderly fashion. I can focus on having the students summarize topics to work on the fifth function. Finally, I can help my students work on inferential reconstruction by having students practice remembering components of a story by recalling other associated items in the story.

The purpose of this article is to introduce the reader into the world and exploration of literacy over the previous 30 years and how the developments and theories over the years frame the way that we understand literacy.  The authors take us on a journey through the assorted disciplines that have tried to make sense of what we know to be literacy. They explain how the different disciplines built from previous theories and also contradicted previously established norms. The thought that reading started out as a straightforward perceptual progress and worked its way from the linguists to psychology to sociology to combinations of the three to the politicians and critical theorists is explored in great detail as well. The authors end their exploration of this topic by posing a wide ranging series of questions on how we follow through today in our everyday practice of teaching. After reading the article and reflecting on what I have read I think that I can now take the perspective that reading and literacy is not a simple solution or one that allows application of one simple theory or philosophy. I think that I will be more aware of incorporating a multidisciplinary approach to teaching reading. I believe that I sometimes fall into a comfort zone focusing on associating reading with comprehension of the spoken language but realize that I should be more aware of the sociological and psychological components that determine the success in acquisition of literacy.

Theory to Practice

Hello and welcome to my blog! My name is Erinn, I am a second grade teacher in a very diverse community school in South Philadelphia. There are at least 25 different languages that our students speak. This is my sixth year teaching. I have a dual certification in Early Childhood and Elementary Education. I have taught Pre-K, third grade and this is my second year in second grade, which I love. Although I do miss my little 3, 4 and 5 year olds.

The purpose of this blog is to share our ideas with each other while we are taking this course, Psychology of Reading. Through this blog we can share ideas of what is working and isn’t working in our classrooms with regards to Reading. We also can highlight the different activities that our students do and that we’ve found successful in our classrooms.

This past week I did try to take something that I read in Carroll’s article, “The Nature of the Reading Process” and apply it to how I taught my students. The part of the article I focused on in my real time application was the concept that how the essential skill in reading is getting meaning from a printed or written message and also the spoken message.  I applied this during my shared readings with my class by focusing on the content of the message that was printed in the books. I made sure to pause and speak with greater emphasis in my voice when there was some part of the story with a vital plot point. This change in my tone demonstrated to the students that there was something in that section that they should pay attention to in the print where they were reading along.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton