Literacy Post: All About D!

What have you learned about your buddy’s needs, abilities, and interests? 

D is an enthusiastic learner who considers himself exceptional at math and science, but only average at writing or reading.  When it comes to literacy, though, D does say that he enjoys reading mysteries and some fantasy books.  However, it does not sound like D has found motivation to do reading outside of what's required for school.  

Looking at the results of D's various comprehension assessments, it seems that D needs the most help in this area.  He reads aloud with clarity, confidence, and intonation, but only with average/below average speed.  In retellings, D omits or confuses the main points and supporting details.  What's interesting, and I will investigate this further tomorrow, is that D's "comprehension" significantly increases when prompted with the right questions.  Thus, there is the possibility that D's comprehension is at or above grade level, it just does not appear so during the standard method of assessment.

D's writing shows his creativity, sense of organization, and ownership of his work.  However, as detailed in my previous analysis, D's convention errors detract from the meaning of his piece.  Thus, D is well on his way to becoming a clear, fluent writer, but needs to work on his grammar.

As a result of this knowledge, what learning objectives and materials are you considering using for your lesson? 

Based on the data I currently have, I think a comprehension lesson focusing on identification of main ideas would greatly benefit D.  This would provide a clear purpose to motivate D's reading and set clear expectations of an end product to help D focus on the text.  In finding main ideas, D would have to sort through supporting details and "discard" them so that he does not veer off-track or misinterpret the text.

Another possibility would be to help improve D's fluency.  It is possible, as we learned, that if a reader reads too slowly, it becomes harder to comprehend the text.  As we were told, the reader might forget what the beginning of the sentence was about by the time he gets to the end of it!  So, perhaps a fluency lesson would also provide D with the skills he needs to improve comprehension.

Literacy Project 1: Writing Analysis and Lesson Plan

Overview

D (abbreviated for confidentiality) is an enthusiastic 4^th grade learner.  His passions are math and science, although he says he also enjoys reading mysteries and other stories that make him think.  An analysis of D’s writing and spelling follows.

Analysis

Meaning of the piece:

In the piece of writing I analyzed, the author is responding to a prompt about a talking pet.  Even though this writing was initiated via a prompt, it would appear from D’s enthusiasm that he enjoyed writing this piece.  D chose to write about a talking parrot because he loves birds.  He wanted to convey to the reader a sense of adventure and suspense through his development of the story and share his love and amazement of birds with the reader.

Six Traits:

Ideas:

In this piece of writing, the topic is fairly broad since it is a “bed-to-bed” story, spanning the length of one day.  However, you can definitely tell that the author has chosen this duration because of the nature of the prompt (one day with a talking pet).  The author did stay with his topic and only included main points and details related to his interactions with the talking pet, which makes the story focused, even though it deals with a broad topic. 

The author also does a consistent job providing details to support his main ideas.  For example, the author writes that he was walking too slowly for his pet parrot, so the parrot picked him up and flew him around to save time.  The rest of the story is filled with details chronicling the day’s adventures.

Organization:

One of D’s strongest elements in his writing is his organization.  He has a clear and provocative opening paragraph and a paragraph to conclude the story.  From the first sentence, the reader wants to hear what happens next.  D writes, “I was sleeping all cozy and warm, when I heard a noise under my bed.”  D takes his time to setup the characters and setting of the story in the first paragraph before transitioning to more action-oriented scenes in the body of the story. 

In conjunction with a solid introduction and conclusion, D makes an appropriate choice in paragraph breaks and structure to suit the purpose and audience of the story.  He uses transition words such as “finally” to make paragraph transitions smooth and chose to break the paragraphs at points related to shifts in time and content.  D’s organization makes the story flow well and very understandable.

Voice:

D takes a risk with his choice of voice, using a very conversation tone with phrases that D uses in his own daily conversations.  Through reading this piece, the reader can tell when D is annoyed, “I said no way Jose!” and when the D is yelling, “I said PUT ME DOWN”.  Through his voice, D reflects himself in his writing.  D chose to write in the first-person so that the reader can follow the author’s adventures with his talking parrot throughout the whole day. 

D provides personifying details about the parrot and includes many action-oriented descriptions that make the reader become engaged in the story.  D stays focused on the topic, chooses interesting details to include, and writes with his own natural and engaging language. 

Word Choice

Looking at D’s 1^st draft compared with his final draft, a reader can see that D attempted to insert colorful language to provide more vivid descriptions in the story.  However, although the word choice it at the right level, it sometimes seems out of place.  For example, D writes, “There we were at the cheerful kitchen.”  D added in “cheerful” to help us visualize the appearance of the kitchen, but this descriptive word seems out of place and perhaps unnecessary to enhance the story. 

In conjunction with D’s choice of voice, the word choice remains very basic and is full of conversational phrases.  For example, D writes, “He just drop me on my bottom hard”.  There are only a few fine moments where the author’s word choice enhances the story.  For instance, “My parrot refused me” gives the reader a clear image of the parrot being demanding and stubborn.

Sentence Fluency

While D consistently includes smooth transitions between paragraphs (see Organization) he does not always include transitional words that would assist the reader in knowing how sentences interrelate.  When reading his own story out loud, D’s verbal expressions helped the listener understand the sequence and flow of the story.  However, upon reading the story without D, the reader questions how some sentences relate.  For example, D writes, “When he [the parrot] was carring me I saw the stairs.  I thought there was no way he’d carry me down the stairs, and he didn’t.”  The sequence of events in this quote make sense.  However, the choice of sentence breaks and lack of transitions makes the meaning of the sentences difficult to understand.

In this narrative, D often uses the word “I” to begin sentences since the story is about all of the actions and feelings that he is experiencing.  However, he does use the occasional transition word such as “So”, “Then”, and “Finally”.   Through the revision process, it appears that D inserted some varied vocabulary to begin sentences, although most of his sentence beginnings remain repetitive.

Conventions

In this writing piece, D struggles with many errors in grammar that affect the meaning of his story.  Most commonly, D switches between the past and present tense and inserts unnecessary or omits necessary verbs for creation of a complete sentence.  Here are a few writing samples that demonstrate these errors:

“I scream!  I was afraid he is going to drop me…” 

“I decided that better get him some food soon.”  

“We headed toward the kitchen and that’s was my day began the day all animals could talk.”

From talking with D, it sounds like leaving off the “ed” at the end of words happens in speech and reading.  Thus, this error is carried into his writing.  In analyzing the symbiotic relationship between speech and written language, Cambourne writes about how the natural development of speech translates into written language (p. 28).  Thus, this relationship in literacy development may be the reason behind D’s grammatical errors.  If these verb errors are stemming from D’s speech, making the necessary changes so that his writing is grammatically correct will be very challenging.

In terms of punctuation, D consistently shows appropriate beginning and ending punctuation.  However, his comma and quotation usage are lacking or incorrect.  This sometimes affects the fluency and interpretation for a reader.  For example, D writes, “He [my parrot] was jumping on my face and said, get up.  It’s time for breakfast.”  In this example, the lack of quotation marks makes it hard to distinguish narration from dialogue.  However, with moderate editing, this text would read smoothly and be ready for publication.

Ownership of writing:

D shows that he has ownership of his writing in a few different ways.  First, he chose his own details to suit his interests, like a parrot and flying.  Also, he used his own voice and expressions to show that it was really him in the story.  D was proud to share his story with me as well as show me the illustration that he did to accompany his story.  He is very motivated to do his work, which includes spelling, writing, reading, and other subjects and is proud of his accomplishments, even if he doesn’t receive very high grades.  Finally, D is very willing to do a lot of revising before writing his final draft, which shows that he is able and willing to manipulate his work with a purpose.

Spelling Development:

It seems that D does not hear or speak words accurately all of the time.  It seems that this is impacting his spelling mostly by the fact that he often leaves off or unnecessarily adds suffixes to words (most frequently “ed”).  For example, he spelled fortunate “forchened” and confident “confinded”.  In his writing piece, he wrote “I was freak out!” even though the expression either requires an “ed” or “ing” at the end of “freak”.  Because this error remained unchanged between his rough and final drafts, I don’t think D knows that he is saying the expression incorrectly.  This kind of mispronunciation is extending itself to both spelling and reading other words as well as resulting in past- and present-tense grammatical issues. Templeton writes about spelling and the benefit of learning patterns within words to assist in spelling development (p. 104).  One skill that would help D improve his spelling is listening and looking for the patterns (specifically, ending patterns) in words.

Works Cited

Cambourne, B. (1988). An alternate view of learning. In The whole story: Natural learning and the acquisition of literacy in the classroom (pp. 28-42). New York, NY: Ashton Scholastic.

Templeton, S. & Morris, D. (1999). Questions teachers ask about spelling. Reading Research Quarterly, 34(1), 102-112.

Lesson Plan

Objective: Student will become aware of different verb tenses and understand how to write in the past and present tense.

Standards: EALR 3.3.5: Knows and applies writing conventions appropriate for the grade level.  For example, Grade 3: Uses consistent verb tense.

Materials: Pencil and Paper

Instructional Strategies:

Explain the objective of the lesson to the student.

Provide 2 sample paragraphs demonstrating use of the past and present tense when writing a narrative. 

Talk with the student about the differences they notice between the two passages.  Lead the student to some of the key patterns (such as “is” vs. “was” and suffixes such as “ing” and “ed”).

When the student is comfortable recognizing some of these patterns, direct the student to write a paragraph about something he did yesterday. 

Review the paragraph with the student, first having the student read the paragraph aloud, then asking questions to guide the student to make any revisions to verb tense so that everything is consistently in the past-tense. 

When the student is satisfied with his consistent use of the past-tense in his paragraph, direct him to write the same paragraph in the present-tense (as though he were doing yesterday’s activities right now).

Review the paragraph with the student, first having him read the paragraph aloud, then asking questions to guide him to make any necessary revisions.

Bring the lesson to a close by having the student verbally summarize for you the key points from today’s lesson.  Instruct the student to keep these two paragraphs as examples of the past and present tense for his reference.

Assessment: When reviewing this student’s future writing (formally or informally), look for consistent and proper use of the past or present tense. 

Literacy Blog 5: Increasing Efficiency

Many of us have been blogging about time management.  It seems that there are not enough hours in the school day to accomplish all of the teaching and learning necessary!  I like Routman's suggestions in Chapter 9.  Conferencing is a wonderful tool to enhance learning and she has so many suggestions for ways to make conferencing time-efficient (see page 213).

One interesting point she makes is that we (teachers) should write suggestions for our students.  I've seen many teachers emphasize the need for students to copy work into their own journals.  I wonder if this is an effective way for the students to learn the material.  After all, if they aren't subsequently taught study strategies, then what are they going to do with the information they took precious time to copy down?

The expert teacher will apply Routman's recommendation that we teach and demonstrate on the spot.  I think that the swift and seamless integration of activities and being prepared to teach new concepts as they arise in discussion are very important skills to have.  I hope to have more time to practice this in my student teaching.

My favorite one of Routman's suggestions is to prepare students for the ensuing activity.  By preparing students for the task(s) ahead, they get to practice planning and organization skills.  They are held responsible for having the proper materials available (their pencil, journals, rough drafts, etc.) so that transition time between activities is minimized.  Also, students can spend their brainpower thinking about the day(s) ahead instead of moving through school task by task, disjointed lessons that may or may not seem to have a rhyme or reason.  I will definitely take this bit of advice to the classroom.  We need to give students the opportunity to practice preparing for the future!

What's even more fantastic about making processes time-efficient is that the students stay engaged because the process is less boring.  There is significantly less down time/wait time where we need to wait for the whole class to reach a checkpoint.  If we can expedite processes without detracting from the learning, shouldn't we do so?  Think of all the other engaging learning experiences we can bring to the classroom with all the time saved! 

Literacy Blog 4: The Right to Write

As I sit down to write my post, it strikes me as ironic that I feel completely uninspired by this week's readings.  Why, I ask myself over and over again, do I find Lamott so offensive?  Here's what I've deduced:

Lamott is obviously a strong writer.  Her book is a national bestseller, her advice is proven true, her examples are quirky anecdotes from her own life experience.  What else could a reader possibly ask for?  A writing style that the reader is aching to mimic, empathy that shows the reader that his or her life's challenges are understood and cared about, exemplar choices of words that challenge the reader's intellect, or simply a fantastical story that whisks the reader far from the mundanities of everyday life.  Is that so much to ask for?

Well, yes.  And I think that this may be one of the most important notions in teaching literature.  We teachers have been inspired by works of writing since...well...since before we can even remember.  The challenge we face is convincing our students that the literature we are having them read and analyze is worth their time and brainpower.  While one choice we could make is to find a way to translate our enthusiam into a convincing argument for studying the text, the other option we could take is to step out of our personal-opinion-box and see the literature with fresh eyes, from the view of our students.  In either case, we must find ourselves reevaluating our perception of good literature in order to provide our students with the rich boundlessness of literature that they deserve -- literature that is meaningful to them.

Speaking of which, how can we expect our students to grow into literate adults when they do not have access to materials that develop literacy?  Books are not cheap.  Although many are readily available at the library, have we taken into account other factors such as the cost and availability of transportation to get to the library? 

There is a website (and there are probably others, too) that is dedicated to donating money to promote literacy.  All we have to do is click a button once a day and sponsors will donate money to buy books or other literacy tools (such as computers).  You can visit the site by clicking here.  Isn't it astounding how little effort it takes each of us to provide such a wonderful gift to people across our nation?

So, back to Lamott.  Just as we want our students to write in a way that is purposeful for their own development as individuals, I must honor Lamott's choice to express herself in a way that brings meaning to her own consciousness.  Although I find none of the four admirable qualities stated above in her writing, I realize that it is my own pair of good-literature goggles that I am peering through, and I have yet to relieve myself of this filter which mars my ability to make her writing meaningful to me. 

I undeniably need to work on this.  I also know that this will be an arduous task, with perhaps only a small chance of success (due to my evident stubbornness on this particular subject).  How do we make sure our students do not wage the same war that I am fighting now?  Will their lack of an established stance on literature magnify the consequences for them?  While we are all developing as readers and writers, our students should be progressing through this at a far greater rate.  How do we make sure that they are studying meaningful literature that nurtures this growth?

Literacy Week 3: Writing Woes and Wonders

Let’s employ some of Lamott’s teachings.  I am going to “throw” my thoughts onto this page as they arise.  I have never viewed writing the way that she is describing.  However, I am forced to admit that if I had been taught the tips and tribulations that she expresses about writing, I would probably have enjoyed the process significantly more.

The way I was taught to write was a very systematic process.  We were told to use the four-square method for developing stories, brainstorm webs to generate ideas, and include X number of sources in our reports.  We were graded on the entire process, our rough drafts always under critique.  I felt compelled to follow the rubrics precisely.  As a result, I failed to create reflective, thought-provoking pieces of writing.  I could not journal; since it did not involve a complex order of operations from start to finish.  I could not write the way my favorite authors wrote.  I wanted so desperately to burst out of this conformist shell and say the things I wanted to say.

Writer’s Workshop has many elements of Lamott’s writing philosophies incorporated into it; of course, they are presented in drastically different ways.  For example, in the unit on writing fiction, the Writer’s Workshop method dedicates the opening lessons to guided reflection on one’s own life and the little moments that we have experienced.  The emphasis is on how fiction is derived from our own experiences, and is not an entirely conjured-up story that we’ve pulled from thin air.  In this way, writers learn to use inspiration from all around them and make their characters, settings, dialogues, etc. as realistic, believable, and relatable as possible. 

I think this is a superb method, and aligns well with Lamott’s concept of looking through the 1-inch frame.  Writers should focus on the things right in front of them and paint (with words) the images that they see.  Then, they can compile all of these vivid snippets into a sequence and elaborate their story from there.  I enjoy Lamott’s analogy of the development of a story to the development of a Polaroid.  As authors, we unfold our stories from a single thought.  Gradually, we reveal more to the reader, taking them along on this journey of discovery with us.  There is no need to write everything into the introduction, as many students are wont to do.  We should develop our story piece by piece, with the anticipation and excitement of wanting to know what happens next.

A struggle that I am having with the Writer’s Workshop curriculum is the theory that no one except the author has the right to write on their own paper.  On one hand, this method develops a sense of ownership; making changes is at the author’s discretion, they do not have to abide by other people’s suggestions/edits/revisions.  However, a huge part of the writing process is being able to obtain critique from readers and put yourself in your reader’s shoes.  Given, you should never have to make a change to your writing that you vehemently do not believe in; however, you should value and take time to consider what others have to say.  The fact that Writer’s Workshop conducts peer reviews using wads of Post-it Notes turns valuable insight into discardable (recyclable?), haphazard comments.

Literacy Week 2: Viscose Vernacular

Being a complete beginner in the area of literacy teaching, I found this week’s reading incredibly informational.  Astoundingly, it’s not that I wasn’t aware of the concepts behind phonics teaching, but rather, the text provided explanations for the literacy teaching methods that I received in my own schooling. 

One of the most intriguing tidbits of literacy learning is how much is natural to us.  Fox says that literacy skills such as rhyming actually develop naturally in children.  However, she also says that the consciousness of rhyme is not as helpful in developing literacy as other phonemic skills.  If a development is “natural” because it originates from spoken words, then phonics education does indeed seem to be the best means to an end (literacy) because it translates spoken word into written.  Phonics assigns characters to sounds that we already know from speech.  Does the high exposure to rhyming words in children’s books aid in our phonemic development or detract us from developing other phonics skills?  I am very curious to conduct the Emergent Literacy Profile and see how the child’s skills link to the theories in this text.

Phonics education also begs the question as to the linear nature of literacy learning.  Fox notes that many states complete formal phonics education in 2^nd grade.  This means that those 3^rd-graders and up who don’t know phonics will not have the opportunity to formally learn the concepts.  She says that phonics is a tool for building reading fluency, which then leads to a stronger vocabulary and better comprehension.  For those who did not formally learn phonics, what is the impact (if any) of learning phonics, developing vocabulary, and practicing reading/writing out of order? 

(On a side note, I wonder if the linear nature of literacy education lends an explanation for the reason younger children learn new languages with ease.)

It is also interesting to review student’s work and figure out where they correspond with and diverge from the theories on literacy education.  How do teachers of older students figure out how to fill in the gaps in their students’ knowledge so that they can all become better readers, writers, and communicators? 

When I was in grade school, I never thought of phonics as a tool for building comprehension.  I always thought its sole purpose was to help us sound-out words for spelling.  Now that I am revisiting the concepts behind the use of phonics to develop word identification skills, I see how phonics lays a foundation for an entire chain of events leading to literacy.

Literacy Week 1: Reviving Read-Aloud

I am puzzled with the unending dilemma of the effectiveness of curricula when taught by teachers who feel they are not trained to teach that curricula.  On one hand, teachers are required/encouraged to attend training sessions to learn how to effectively teach the given curriculum.  However, this training, which lasts 1 or 2 days, is never enough.  Not only do these training sessions usually only give a very broad overview of the curriculum materials and “how to use” the teacher’s guide, they often bore with information that teachers could readily find and learn themselves.  The trainings are not personal, since many teachers (from the whole district) receive training at the same time.  Most critically, though, many training sessions fail to give teachers a comprehensive understanding behind the theories of the method.  What happens when teachers leave the training session without the confidence to execute the curriculum effectively?  They end up trying the curriculum for the first time, in the classroom, and working the kinks out as they go.  This cannot be good for our students.

From the article we read for class, read aloud sounds like a wonderfully effective way for students to engage with their learning.  The read-aloud environment promotes inquiry and discussion of various topics.  It also is simply entertaining, drawing the students into the subject(s) being taught, and provides a different medium for students to learn.  Most uniquely, read aloud gives the teacher a chance to enhance the curriculum so that his/her students feel that their schooling is important and relevant in their lives.  Read-aloud is a tool that makes learning more meaningful.

So, how do we classify the various Language Arts curricula that include read-aloud texts?  Do these fall under the less-flexible category of “supplied curriculum”, or can they be modified such that students feel that they are invested in their learning?  For example, many writing curricula provide texts for teachers to read aloud as examples of elements of writing.  However, although these are good examples of the writing skills that we want students to learn, the texts are not chosen by the students (based on student-interest), the students may or may not be encouraged to interact with the text (inquiring before, during, and after the read-aloud), and the “modeling” approach to teaching writing may constrain many students (their voice, fluency, and creativity are stifled).  Thus, many of the foreseeable benefits to read-aloud disappear when the process becomes dictated by a given curriculum.  How can we modify these types of curricula so that read-aloud materials are transformed into effective tools that students become engaged in?  How can we make use of the curricula given to us and still ensure that students feel they have a personal investment in the texts and their learning?