Chapter 5 + 6 Learning Log

Chapter 5 and 6

1. As children read the same types of books repeatedly, they begin to recognize certain sound structures of language.
a. I notice this when I have some weaker students read aloud. With many middle school texts, it seems that a familiar structure is used to make the reading passage easier. Then, every once in a while a student may be reading a text aloud in class with some more complex sentences and they take pauses in the wrong spot in the sentence when one is not indicated. Also, many students may read right through a comma or a period without any pause. The sound is not the only problem here; it sometimes confuses the thought or idea of the sentence(s) for the child, and we often have to go back, reread the sentence, and then check for understanding.

2. Children at the transitional spelling stage (using phonics) usually have a vowel in every syllable, but the word is not always spelled correctly.
a. This seems to be the stage that most students are at. I remember learning how to spell from memorization quite a bit when I was young with spelling tests every week, but I don’t know if teachers at the primary level are using the phonics approach now or not. It seems to be very suitable to get the foundations down, but after many students get to the transition stage they hit a brick wall. In my opinion, students do need to approach spelling at a certain level with recognition of words, either repeated in a text or through some memorization strategy. I see a lot of my own students making the transition level mistakes and we have a tough time getting through this. I usually try to spell the word out for them on a rough draft, hoping that now they can both see and hear the word they can spell it correctly in the future.

3. Retelling a story is a strategy used to check if a student can understand the meaning of the passage as he reads it silently.
a. This is a strategy used at all reading levels, and I even find myself doing this from time to time as I read for pleasure. It is interesting to see how different students write such a variety of summaries, and also how each individual student includes certain facts or ideas and leaves out others. After all students write out their own individual summaries, as a class we can construct a final one, taking thoughts and ideas from all of the passages to get the main idea or theme of a story. Furthermore, when we continue reading a novel, I ask the students to retell what happened in the previous chapters to their partners so that we are all on the same page, so this strategy also clearly works with a larger, more difficult text.

4. If meaning processing is a major concern, the diagnostic teacher conducts a think-aloud assessment.
a. I feel that this is the most common type of strategy that I have used over the past two years. Many of my students in both high and middle school have been able to read the words in front of them, but they don’t think of the meaning or purposes “behind” the words. I have divided texts up into different segments, and it really begins to challenge most students to think about a text while they are reading and not after. I started by giving questions at the end of a reading, then over time moving questions into the middle of the passage. When using the former strategy, students have to do a lot of flipping and re-inspecting of the text, while the latter has them think about the small section they have just read and briefly review it. This way has them do less re-inspecting of the text and teaches them to rely on the main points they focused on while reading.

5. Sometimes a student’s interpretations fit what she already knows and not what the text says.
a. I have seen this with a few students over time. This happened the most when a student is given an open-ended question and is asked to answer it using textual evidence. I also have them do this a lot when writing body paragraphs for essays. They rely too much on their own thoughts and not enough on what is said in the text. I use a very concrete outline for body paragraphs that has them begin with a claim (topic sentence) and then back it up with evidence and details from the text. This way, the student is forced to use some ideas from the text, and I then have them finish up the paragraph with an analysis – what they think about the evidence and details. This puts all of the emphasis on the text and not their previous knowledge or opinion coming into the reading and writing event.