Assessment

I read through the book Running Records For Classroom Teachers by Marie M. Clay for this week's reading.  I thought it was a good tool for a beginner teacher to use when assessing readers of all levels.  It states that records are taken to see what progress the students are making, an essential part of the child's education.  It also shows that as a teacher it is important to compare running records of a student with others to see that different students are going to need different kinds of instruction and ways to assess learning.
In chapter two, "Taking a Running Record", Clay states that as a teacher one should stay away from trying to assess with printed text, due to lack of space to take adequate notes.  I thought this was very vital information to talk about as new teachers may not think about that until they are trying to do an assessment, and they are writing in any space available on the page, and it creates disorganization.
I noticed that some examples throughout the reading looked like similar tools used when assessing students who are deaf and hard of hearing, so I believe that recording like that of on pg. 11 would be beneficial for all types of readers and learners.  I think that as a teacher though, one must pick out an assessment that will be on the student's level so that it is actually going to benefit their learning and progress.  The reading also states that recording can be done for individual and group progress, in which one may be better for one student than another.  Overall, I believe that accurate and reliable observation is the key!

This is a video giving an example of a running record.

Source:  Clay, M. M. (2000).  Running records for classroom teachers.  

What types of running records can you think that would be beneficial and time efficient in the classroom?

Guided Reading

This week I chose an article called "Guided Reading:  A Research-Based Response to the Challenges of Early Reading Instruction", bu Anita Iaquinta.  This reading focused on children in the first grade who are poor readers.  As mentioned, the early years are the focus for the prevention of reading difficulties.  I feel that it is essential to focus on any difficulties at an early age to correctly build upon reading knowledge.  As stated in the reading, I also believe that providing guided reading in the classroom helps children of all reading levels.  With this instruction children are able to improve their fluency, problem-solving, decoding, and comprehension skills.  This may take place in small groups or with the teacher one-on-one.  With small groups, Iaquinta states that they should be temporary and should rotate.  When children are around other readers of different levels, it allows them to self-monitor, predict, and self-correct.  As a teacher, one must introduce the text before diving into the lesson.  This may include discussion and brainstorming.  Each group of students have different needs so guided reading starts with good teaching!

Some facts from the article:
1 in 5 children is estimated to have difficulty learning to read in school.
45% if our children are having difficulty learning to read.
Reading problems are more likely to occur among children who are poor, are minorities, attend urban schools, or arrive at school not speaking English.

Do any of the facts surprise you?

Do you remember any specific guided reading tools that your teachers used?



Here is a video about organizing your classroom for a guided reading lesson. 




Source:
Early Childhood Journal, Vol. 33, No.6, June 2006

10 Ways to Use Technology to Build Vocabulary

I chose to read the article eVoc Strategies:  10 Ways  to Use Technology to Build Vocabulary by Dalton and Grisham because from my experiences when working with students who are deaf is that vocabulary is something they struggle with and technology is something they love to use to build upon their knowledge.  As the article states, it is crucial to understand ideas to understand the text.  When teaching vocabulary, the teacher must remember to focus on even the smallest parts of language and provide multiple ways for teaching by using context clues and important words to know and remember.  With any student I feel that if they are provided with an array of reading materials they will find something they enjoy and will learn that reading can be fun and beneficial for they education.  Teachers can use graphic organizers, visual displays, word clouds, digital vocabulary field trips, comparisons, online vocabulary games (crossword puzzles, picture-word matches, and word scrambles), audiotapes, captions, photo essays, podcasts, PowerPoints, Visual Thesaurus websites, e-books, visual dictionaries, picture dictionaries, translation tools, book clubs, blogs, text-to-speesch tools, and vocabulary learning combined with social service.
Some websites available for these tools are:
www.wordle.net
www.wordsift.com
trackstar.4teachers.org
www.vocabulary.co.il
www.vocabulary.com
www.visualthesaurus.com
dictionary.reference.com/studenthandbook
www.thefreedictionary.com
www.wordcentral.com
kids.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/english
translate.google.com
kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids
www.naturalreaders.com
www.freerice.com


Did anyone ever use these technology tools while in school?  I feel like most of these tools can be used throughout many grades, as I used Free Rice when I was in high school.