Fluency

I found the reading that we did this week very interesting. When I related it to the kinds of fluency instruction that I have seen in my placement classroom this year, I found it difficult to see connections at first. Then I thought back to some of the lessons that I overheard my MT teaching small groups of students. Whenever she pulls individual grades to give them their homework for the week and new spelling words, they always review word patterns (such as CVC) and the definitions of words like syllable, root, base, prefix, and suffix. The older the students, the more advanced fluency concepts they cover. One thing that was mentioned often in the fluency chapter but is absent from the classroom where I am currently placed is a word wall. At first I thought that this was only a staple in younger grades, where students are learning how to read and spell an abundance of words throughout the year. However, after reading the Tompkins chapter, I believe that they can also be used effectively in the upper elementary classrooms.

I believe that the most effective way to enhance accuracy in the upper elementary grades is to be sure that students have resources to figure out how to read unfamiliar words. If students simply skip over words that they do not know or understand, they are not going to develop into more fluent readers because their accuracy will be stagnant. One of the ways to be sure that students know how to read unfamiliar words is to teach them how to segment words into roots, suffixes, and prefixes. If students understand and can identify what the root of a word means, they have a much better chance of identifying what the word as a whole means. One way to enhance a student's reading speed is to engage them in repeated reading. I found this to be a very effective way to help the second grade student that I worked with last year become a more confident and knowledgeable reader. It was amazing how much her comprehension improved by simply reading through information more than once. If students know that they are allowed and encouraged to read through information more than once, their experience as readers and their reading speed will improve. The aspect of fluency that the students in my placement classroom need the most work on is prosody. Many of them read either with no expression or take a short break after each word that they read. I think that chunking certain passages of text together could be a very effective way to help students develop their prosody. Also, educating students on what to do when they are reading and reach different punctuation marks can be an effective way to teach prosody.

Mini-Lesson (book club novel: The Hundred Penny Box by Sharon Bell Mathis)

• Objective
• Students will develop their prosody through phrasing and chunking.
• Rationale
• I chose to focus on prosody in this lesson because that is the aspect of fluency that I have noticed a majority of my students struggle with.
  
• Materials
•  Copy of book for each student
• White board/dry erase markers
• Lesson (brief overview)
• Today we are going to work on being more expressive readers. It is important to read with expression, especially when we are reading out loud, to keep both ourselves and our listeners interested in what is happening in the book. Right now I'm going to take you through a passage in the book that we have already read together and we are going to work on reading it more expressively. Please turn to page 34.
• I am going to "chunk" one of the paragraphs on this page to make it easier for everyone to see where they should take a breath or a short pause. One thing to look for when you think about pausing is punctuation. Commas and periods give us a natural place to stop and take a breath while we are reading.
• [Write on board]
• His mother didn't answer.
• But Michael heard her sigh.
• "You don't even care about Aunt Dew's stuff,"
• Michael yelled a little.
• He even pulled away from his mother.
• He didn't care at all about her hugging him.
• Sometimes it seemed to him that grown-ups never cared about anything
• unless it was theirs and nobody else's.
• He wasn't going to be like that when he grew up
• and could work and could do anything he wanted to do.
• Now I am going to read through this paragraph taking pauses at the end of each line. [do so].
• Now I want you, as a group [which is also mentioned in Tompkins ch.6] to read this paragraph to me, making a pause at the end of each line.
• Now we are going to alternate sentences. I will start, and when I get to a period, I want you, as a group, to read the next sentence. When you reach a period, I will take over again.
• [If students are still not understanding this concept, continue to have small groups of them read this passage together--split them in half, all the girls, all the boys, etc. If they are behaving and can handle it without hurting feelings, have the students critique each other on how they are reading. This will help them notice what expressive readers sound like].
• Conclusion
• You all did a great job reading today. Now, every time that you see a long paragraph with a lot of information in it, remember that you can split it up into different parts. Try to get through each sentence without pausing, and use your best expression if you are reading out loud. That will make it much more interesting for the person or people who are listening to you.
• Assessment
• I will continue to read with this group of students, and will pay attention to their expression and prosody as they read aloud. If they are still struggling with their phrasing, a similar lesson may be necessary.

Literacy Thoughts and Lesson Plan

In our Tompkins book, literacy is defined as “the ability to use reading and writing for a variety of tasks at school and outside of school”. That is basically the definition of literacy that I carried with me into this class. If nothing else, the New Literacies project has taught me that literacy encompasses much more than simply reading and writing, although those are the topics that are emphasized the most in regular school instruction. Through my research of emotional literacy, I have realized the grave importance of educating students to be literate in more than reading and writing. If students are not emotionally literate, they are at risk of bullying and being bullied, which has many awful consequences. Looking at my other classmates' projects has opened my eyes to just how many forms of literacy there are in the world, and has given me the information that I need to become the best teacher that I can be. The different lesson planning skills that I have learned throughout my time in teaching classes at MSU can all be applied to the lessons that should be focused on developing political, social, visual, emotional, and other types of literacy. I believe that though these literacies are different than the traditional forms of literacy, both the traditional and new forms depend on each other for successful implementation. Many of these new literacies (perhaps with the exception of visual literacy) depend on a person having a certain level of reading and writing literacy in order to be considered fully literate.

I think that the basis of providing effective literacy instruction is being sure that all students understand the purpose behind learning about different and expanded forms of literacy. If students have had experience with a certain form of new literacy (for example, if a student watches the news and then realizes that they are not politically literate enough) they will be more motivated to learn more about it. In this way, students will take more control of their learning and it will be more meaningful to them. It will also make our job as teachers easier, because students will be more independent if they have invested their own time and effort into researching a new form of literacy. I was under the impression with this project that we were learning about these new forms of literacy in order to become more well-rounded teachers, leading us to include ideas about new literacies in our future lessons. However, this prompt leads me to believe that students should be researching these topics themselves and coming up with their own conclusions based on what information they find. Unless the students are in the upper elementary grade level, the sources that I used to research my project would be much to advanced for them. In order to read some of the information that was given on the websites, students would have to have an advanced reading level and be able to understand basic mathematics (to understand the statistics). I do believe that this would be an effective project for older students to undertake, especially if they used a prezi to present their findings. PowerPoint is quickly becoming outdated as more people are looking for ways to stand out during presentations. I also think that prezi would be more effectively used if it was supplemental to a prepared speech about the presented topic. I found it difficult to include all of the information that I wanted to when I knew that they people viewing it were not going to be receiving any additional information, as they would if I were doing a formal presentation on emotional literacy.

Brief Lesson Plan (centered around Emotional Literacy and prezi):

• Objective:
  • Students will be able to relate to different characters in the book "Nothing but the Truth" by Avi by presenting different viewpoints using a prezi.
• Materials/Supplies Needed:
  • A copy of "Nothing but the Truth" by Avi for each student
  • Pencil/paper for each student (for their personal use to write notes)
  • One computer with prezi for each student
• Outline of Key Events:
  • [Students will already have the background knowledge that they need to successfully navigate prezi.com.]
  • [Students will already have read through the book "Nothing but the Truth" by Avi, and we will have had various small-group and whole-class discussions centered on the different things that happen as the plot progresses.]
  • Students will be assigned two characters to analyze using prezi to illustrate their findings. Students will be asked to related to the characters in the book on an emotional level. Guiding questions will be given:
    • What do you think he/she is feeling (at this point in the book)?
    • Why do you think that he/she feels that way? Is there anything from the book that you can use to prove that this is how they are thinking or feeling? If there is, please include this information on your prezi, along with a pager number.
    • Have you ever felt the way that this character does (at this point in the book)? Think about including this in your prezi, or tell a general story like what you went through.
    • Can you relate what is happening to this character (at this point in the story) to another character in a different book you have read? Please include this information on your prezi.
    • How did you feel about this character at the beginning of the book? The middle of the book? The end of the book?
  • At the end of their prezi, I will ask students to include what their individual feelings were (in general, not just about their two characters) at the beginning, middle, and end of the book. How did their own emotions change as the book progressed?
  • [This is a good book to do this type of activity with because there are so many different viewpoints already included in the book. Students will not have to stretch their imaginations too much to find the information that they will need to compile an interesting, encompassing project.]
  • All students will present their findings to the class through their prezi (this will probably be done a different day), and we will have another class discussion based solely on the emotions and feelings of the characters throughout the entirety of the book.
• Closing Summary:
  • You all did a fabulous job on your projects! I can tell that you all learned a lot about different viewpoints through what different characters were thinking and feeling. I also think you all have a good idea of how to use prezi to communicate your thoughts with others. I am very impressed with your dedication to this book and to this project.
• Ongoing Assessment:
  • This would be a very informal assessment, but I would start to try and recognize when students are noticing the emotions and feelings of the characters in other books that they are reading (either individually or as a class). I would continue to focus on being educated about the thoughts and feelings of others, and present the students with books that have varying viewpoints or ideas that would be different from their own. I would use various journal entries or discussion inputs to guide my assessment, and if I determine that the students have not really grasped the emotional literacy information that I wanted them to, I would design another lesson that applied directly to more "real-life" situations.

Here is an image from my placement classroom, where bullying is defined and posted for students to see!

Emotional Literacy/Intelligence

For my new literacies project this semester, chose to research emotional literacy. I have found this topic to be interesting and engaging. Even though I have never heard of this area of literacy before, I am very interested to complete my research on the topic. I remember having weekly social and emotional lessons when I was in elementary school. Although I did not find much use in them because I never had any emotional or social difficulties until middle school, I can see through my research that these lessons benefited me and my entire class during that time and also into the future. Daniel Goleman has done a lot of research on emotional intelligence and authored several books on the topic. A lot of the information that I have included in my project so far has come from his website. He considers five domains when defining emotional intelligence:

• Knowing your emotions.
• Managing your own emotions.
• Motivating yourself.
• Recognizing and understanding other people's emotions.
• Managing relationships, ie., managing the emotions of others.

From this list, it seems obvious why having emotional literacy is important in school and everyday life. The recent emphasis on emotional intelligence has led schools to implement Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) programs. These programs, which emphasize self-awareness and making sound social decisions, have been proven to increase pro-social behavior by nine or ten percentile points, while negative social behaviors decrease by about the same amount. Most importantly, especially for administrators who decide how much time should be spent on each subject, SEL increases academic achievement by 11 percentile points. It also works better for students who need it most, effectively closing the seemingly ever-present achievement gap. I found the above information in a short video of Goleman talking about and advocating for SEL (view it here). These types of lessons can support students who experience depression or struggle with bullies, and also have long-term benefits. A lot of the more recent information I have found about emotional intelligence relates to controlling emotions in the workplace and establishing rapport with coworkers and clients. It is obvious that there are many positive long-term ramifications of SEL. I am very excited to find out more about emotional literacy and the SEL program, hopefully applying what I have learned to my teaching in the future.

Most of my time spent on this project has been dedicated to researching emotional literacy, but I have spent some time compiling the information on my first prezi. It has proven much more difficult than I thought. I still have not gotten used to the different editing tools, and find myself zooming in and out of the presentation unintentionally, along with changing the size of the titles and text when I am trying to just move around the presentation. However, I believe that as I spend more time with the program I will be able to master all of the different tools that are available. Another thing that I am having difficulty with is condensing the information that I have gathered into a presentation form. I have written long paragraphs that are relevant to the topic, but are not very audience-friendly. I will have to continue to brainstorm different ways of effectively presenting the valuable information that I have learned.