Theory to Practice

During this course, the two articles that had the greatest impact on my philosophy for teaching were, “Role of the Reader’s schema in comprehension, learning, and memory “and “Metacognition”. After reading both articles I realized the importance of both practices and the need to put more of an emphasis on them in my classroom. My reading program has many resources for building background that I was not utilizing. Now, I will make the time to activate schema so that my students are better able to comprehend, make connections, and retain what we are reading. If they have background knowledge on the topic it will also help them to ask their own questions and build metacognition. By using metacognitive practices in my classroom, it will increases my student’s ability to apply their knowledge and the strategies they are using to learn to other higher-level contexts. Metacognitive practices will also increase my student’s self-awareness of their strengths and weakness as a learning. I know see how important metacognition is to my student’s success and plan to be more mindful in explicitly teaching it.

Over the past eight weeks in taking this course, I have learned what a complex process reading is. It has so many different components that all work together to creative the magic of reading. What makes the process so challenging is that no student will learn to read exactly the same. As a teacher I need to take so many factors into consideration such as their prior background knowledge, culture, age, gender, family values, and academic ability. There are so many factors that can makes this even more challenging such as socioeconomic status and learning and mental disabilities. One concept that can make the reading process positive for all students is building their motivation. Loving to read can happen with any reading ability. To help build that love and motivation I will make sure to provide my students with texts that meet their individual interest and give them lots of opportunities for choice in their reading and related assignments.

Perhaps the most important realization I have made during this course was that in order to teach my students to love to read, I need to show and emphasis my love for reading. After reading about the Peter Effect, I realized that I am guilty in not reading as much as I should. I let the chaos of daily life get in the way and use it as an excuse not to read for enjoyment. Over the summer I had no excuse not to have read more. It is a goal of mine to “self-care” and take the time to fall in love with some new books. I also plan to keep building my read aloud collection with amazing mentor texts that my students can see me light up when I read.

The article, “A Test for Assessing Phonemic Awareness in Young Children” by Hallie Kay Yopp, stresses the significance of acquiring phonemic awareness in young children. Research has shown that phonemic awareness is strongly related to success in reading and spelling acquisition.  Studies indicate that it is not just a strong predictor, but a necessary prerequisite for success in literacy. In order to promote success in literacy teachers need to include instruction and activities that facilitate the development of phonemic awareness. In this article, Yopp provided teachers with a tool for assessing phonemic awareness, to better guide their instruction. This tool is called the Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation. This assessment measures a child’s ability to separately articulate the sounds of a spoken word in order. The test is administered individually, is simple, and takes only 5-10 minutes to complete.

I would use the Yopp-Singer assessment in my classroom to learn more about my students. Especially my students who are struggling with literacy-related tasks. Even though I teach second grade, I have majority of my students reading on a kindergarten level with very little phonemic awareness. I like that the test takes only 5-10 minutes and is simple. I could administer the assessment during my small group time. I could then use the data to develop differentiated word work centers based on my students phonemic awareness needs. The data could also be used to guide my instruction during small group. Something that I currently do but could put more of a focus on would be to use read aloud books. They are a great tool to draw my students’ attention to the sound structure of language used in the book.

The article, “Metacognition”, stresses the importance of metacognitive practices. Metacognitive thinking is an awareness of the material you are learning and the strategies that you are using to learn and obtain the knowledge. By using metacognitive practices in your classroom, it increases your student’s ability to apply their knowledge and the strategies they are using to learn to other higher-level contexts. Students who learn strategies and actually “know” them are much more likely to then put those strategies to use. Metacognitive practices also increase a student’s self-awareness of their strengths and weakness as a learning. When a student is aware of their strengths and weaknesses they are then more likely to work to actively monitor their learning and assess their ability to succeed and improve.

To promote student metacognition in the classroom it is important for a teacher to practice explicit instruction. Some tools for explicit instruction are pre-assessments, the muddiest point, retrospective post assessments, and reflective journals. It is also important to develop a classroom that is grounded in metacognition. This goal can be obtained by allowing students to identify confusions in their learning, integrating reflection into classwork, and metacognitive modeling by the teacher. Another useful strategy is using cognitively passive study strategy and cognitively active study behavior. Being cognitively actives means the student is being present and aware of what they are learning and being cognitively active refers to questioning and being aware of how and why they are learning the present material.

I can incorporate metacognitive learning in my classroom be asking more questions. I can have my students answer questions such as, “What are we learning?”, “How are we learning?”, and “What is difficult or confusing about what we are learning?”. It would be beneficial to discuss these questions not only with myself but also with their classmates. I could also incorporate metacognitive learning into my classroom my having a reflective journal where my students could answer given questions and prompts regarding their learning process.

The article “Raising urban students’ literacy achievement by engaging in authentic, challenging work”, by William H. Teal and Linda B. Gambrell, discusses the significance of the successful In2Books program that was used in urban public schools to improve the student’s literacy. Schools could choose to use the program for one year or for a few years to be more effective. The programs curriculum consisted of using 5 mentor texts which the students received throughout the year. The books chosen were of different genres that spoke to the culturally diverse students who were using them.  The teachers were also given related read aloud books to use throughout the year. The teachers had a huge responsibility in implementing this program with fidelity. They went to extensive professional development throughout the year in order to effectively instruct their students and score their work. Another major component of this program was the writing. Students wrote to volunteer adult pen pals who were trained in In2Books program. Students would write to their pen pals about the books they were reading. This proved to be an engaging and motivational aspect of the program. Students loved and looked forward to reading their letter’s and other students’ letters. Students were also motivated to put effort into their writing since they had an audience other than their teacher. The letters also forced students to reread and discuss their books on a higher level, as the books were the subject of their letters. The In2Books program proved that urban students could make gains on state testing without “teaching to the test”.

I was able to fully relate to this article as a teacher from an urban school. I love the idea of the pen pal to give my students a new audience. As the article discussed, many urban students had never received a letter before. I know my students would be so excited to receive a letter and motivated to respond back no matter what the topic. I also see the importance of choosing books that are culturally relevant to my students. They are so much more engaged and invest more in their related assignments when they can relate to the material that they are reading.

“Role of the Reader’s schema in comprehension, learning, and memory” by Richard C. Anderson seeks to explain schema theory to improve instructional outcomes for students. It provides the reader with evidence that helps to support the theory and offers advice on applications and design of instructional materials to activate schema. The article does a great job with giving examples on how information can be interpreted differently based on different schema that an individual may have. The schema that an individual has to help them comprehend information depends on their culture. The individuals age, sex, religion, nationality, and occupation all play a major role in how they will learn and remember information and ideas that they read in a text. The article explains that’s there are six functions of schemata: schema provides ideational scaffolding for assimilating text information, facilitates selective allocation of attention, enables inferential elaboration, allows orderly searches of memory, facilitates editing and summarizing, and permits inferential reconstruction. These functions help us to better understand the complexities of applying schemata.
Working in an inner-city school, I have a very culturally diverse group of students. The most important take way after reading this article was how mindful I need to be when I expose my students to different types of literature. To give them the skills necessary to comprehend what I am having them read, I need to build their schema. I can do this by asking questions and having classroom discussions where everyone can share their experiences and knowledge on the topic. Pictures and diagrams would be another tool I could utilize to not only activate their prior knowledge but lead the way for students to develop questions that they may have on the topic. I also plan on using graphic organizers such as KWL charts to have the students make connections with what they already know and ask the questions for what they want to learn more about.

The article “Learning About Literacy: A 30- year Journey”, discussed how the theories of learning to read have evolved throughout the year. We went from teachers who just dumped their knowledge onto students like “containers”, to teachers who simply assist their students in the process of learning to read. Teachers now learn as much from their students as their students do from them. This article discussed the change in looking at students’ mistakes in reading as errors to a learning opportunity for the teacher to better understand and learn where there is need for help. Teachers should not just “dump” their knowledge into their students but help them by teaching strategies to assist in the reading process. This article also discusses how students learn based on their prior knowledge. The theories of using schema to aide in teaching reading has evolved over the years. Instead of a teacher thinking “What does a child already know and how can I use that to teach new ideas”, they now should think “What is it that they do not know and how can I expose them to that”. One final theory that this article discusses is that students who are exposed to books as a child prior to and during preschool are the students who are most successful in learning to read during their career as a student.

After reading this article I have realized the importance of choice. Students need to be reading books that speak to their interest or that they had a say in choosing. This enables them to reach their highest potential as a reader since they are engaged. If they are invested in their reading I can learn how to best assist in their learning to read. When they are putting fourth their best effort, I will be able to analyze their errors and decide on strategies that will assist them in the reading process. I find it so interesting that back in the days of early reading interest was not as important. Students didn’t have social media or tv’s to hold their interest. Books were one of the only ways for a child to enjoy a different world. That was all the motivation they needed. Now, books compete with computers, phones, and tv’s. For a student to choose a book over one of the electronic options, it must be very engaging text and geared to their specific interests. Moving forward I will be very mindful of the importance of choice, and try my best to make sure that my classroom is filled with rich engaging literature.

Hello! My name is Allison Ashman. This is my first year teaching second grade and fourth year as a teacher. Prior to teaching second grade I was  a fourth grade teacher. I teach in an urban school district with students who come from diverse background and have vast educational needs. This year I decided to start graduate classes to obtain a master’s degree in education with a reading specialists certification. I am excited to implement my knowledge learned in my courses into my classroom to better meet the needs of all of my students. I intend to specifically use this blog to analyze, share, and reflect on my learning throughout my journey of earning my master’s degree.

Reading “The Nature of the Reading Process” by John B. Carroll, I was able to better understand some of the theories behind the reading program that I currently use in my classroom. In my reading program I am able to level my students into their independent reading levels. Within those different levels, the program provides the teacher and students with the skills and strategies that need to be mastered before testing into the next level. Prior to reading this article I had a basic understanding of the reasoning behind teaching those specific skills in each level. However, now that I have had the opportunity to learn about the eight components of learning to read, I will be more mindful with my implementation of those components within each reading level group. I now realize that just because I have students in the same group it does not mean that they have mastered the components to the same degree. Each student is different and it is my job to demine which skills pose the biggest challenge for each individual student.