Week 5: Alphabetic principle, Phonemic awareness, Oral reading fluency, Comprehension, and Vocabulary

<Alphabetic Principle>   

           In the area of the alphabetic principle, as children learn about alphabets, they can identify letters in upper and lower cases. They also learn phonics which is the sounds related to each letter and automatic with practicing recognizing letter sound relations. Because alphabetic principle is one of the basic academic skills for reading, it is very important to children.

           Teachers can ask children to name letters that they see, to pronounce sound of letters, and to choose letters that have specific names. For instructional options, teachers can provide specific activities such as alphabet books are good for children to develop their vocabulary skills. Teachers may want to use songs, chants, rhythms, poems, and oral language for memorizing letters easily. Using sand or shaving foam is another option for the activity. When children are provided audio, videotapes, or computer, it will be helpful for the pronunciation.

<Phonemic Awareness> 

           The definition of phonemic awareness is that knowing sounds and putting them together. With this skill, children can identify the specific phonemes with printed text. The reason it is important is that phonemic awareness can improve children’s reading skills. As children improve their reading skills, they can read books effectively.

           There are several ways to access phonemic awareness. Teachers should observe that the child can recognize consonants and vowels in words, the child can produce rhyming words, the child can blend phonemes and make some words, and the child can re-create phonemes as they adding or dropping consonants or vowels. Teachers also can use commercial or state-designed assessments. It is standardized and easy to access. Practicing rhyming, segmenting, and blending phonemes are the most common instructional options. I think if teachers use instructional options well, children may really enjoy learning phonemic awareness.

<Oral Reading Fluency>

           Oral reading fluency is one of the reading skills that lead children to read smoothly, quickly, and correctly. If children do not have this skill, they may have understanding problems when they read books. As well as that, oral reading fluency is related to recognizing automatic words, decoding words, and recognizing syntactic and semantic units so it is important.

           For accessing this skill, teacher can document children’s strategies of what works and does not work. It helps teachers put out materials appropriate for each child and diagnosis problems. Teachers can ask children to read books silently, aloud, and together in group reading as the instruction options.

           As the article mentioned, I also think CBM assessment is a great way to access this reading skills. Teachers and children take some time for checking time and understanding reading levels.

<Comprehension>

           If the child has comprehension skill, then s/he truly understands what s/he read. If the child does not have comprehension skill, s/he can read books but does not know what the stories of the books. Children also can reflect their previous knowledge or experiences to the book they read. That is why this skill is important for children.

           Teachers can access reading comprehension as doing retellings, asking questions, discussing key ideas, review questions, and testing. For instructional options, “Question-Answer Relationships (QAR)” or some specific lessons about strategies such as detecting or summarizing can be used.

<Vocabulary>

           Vocabulary is definition and meaning of words. If the child does not know definition of the word, then s/he will be stuck. Vocabulary is one of the fundamental things for reading.

           Teachers can ask children to read, define, and used words for making sentences. Posting new words of difficult words on the walls or board will lead children to see the words and memorize the words quickly. Providing small cards is one of the great ideas of instructional options.

Week 4: RTI Model vs. Traditional Method

Last week, we talked about traditional and RTI approaches. As we did that, we could compare their differences. For the traditional way, teachers just have special programs and methods if students are unable to succeed with curriculum. Teachers also just deal with the same instructional approach and randomly check the students’ outcomes. Because teachers not very often collect and consider students’ data, teachers are hard to find out the students’ problems. As well as that, teachers gather the students’ information in isolation way and only the special education teacher take responsibility and care about it.

         On the other hand, Response to Instruction has some better instructional approaches for the teacher. When children meet with unsuccessful curriculum, teacher review the students’ data that teachers have been observing and collecting. With the information, teachers can re-create or change their instructional practices. Unlike traditional methods, teachers identify, support, and develop the instruction based on individual student needs. Also, the students who have challenges will be checked and considered by weekly or biweekly. When teachers need to decide or have some help, they get together and share their opinion. As they share their concerns or thoughts, they can hear other experiences that they have not met yet. Besides that, every teacher has responsibilities for the students and they absolutely want to help other teachers.

         To conclude, I think RTI is a much better model than the traditional model. As a future early educator, I should learn about RTI and be interested in it. When I look at the things about RTI, I think teachers have more work to do with their instructional practices with RTI; however, it will be a better idea and lead a better outcome as using it. I especially liked sharing other teachers’ thoughts and experiences. For example, even though I am a college student, I learn a lot of things from my colleagues and it helps me to think another ways or new approaches. I believe everyone’s experiences are special and have a lot of meanings. So giving some ideas based on their experiences will be great for developing other teachers’ instructional practices.

Week 4: Waiting Rarely Works: Late Boomers Usually Just Wait

          

             Developmental lag theory insists that children who are not performing at a typical reading level for their age are behind their peers. With this theory, children are thought to eventually catch up with their peers naturally; they do not necessarily need early or emergency instruction. On the other hand, early reading weakness as a skill deficit theory has a different viewpoint. Because children who have reading difficulties do not catch up to their peers according to research, they really need to receive support for their challenges. The theory claims that just waiting is not going to help the children to improve their reading skills. Rather, help is needed early on to ensure the student does not fall farther behind than they already are.

            Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness in which listeners are able to hear, identify and manipulate phonemes, the smallest units of sound that can differentiate meaning. Separating the spoken word "cat" into three distinct phonemes, /k/, /æ/, and /t/, requires phonemic awareness (Wikipedia).

            If I have a student in my class who is struggling, I think I wouldn’t agree with my colleague based on my knowledge from this assignment. If my student is a late bloomer, I should approach the child with the “developmental lag” theory. However, a child that is a late bloomer is very rare. If I do that, it will most likely increase the risk of the student having problems later and it will be too late and much harder for them to catch up. I should first understand his/her reading problem and observe what s/he needs. Then, I can make lesson plans for improving his/her phonemic awareness, decoding, vocabulary, and comprehension skills. For my lesson plans, the child may be required to read books aloud. Dividing words using phonics like “ra/in/bo/w” will be helpful. Also, I will repeat any difficult or long words. If they have a problem with distinguishing some similar sounds, I would show them how the sound is different. For example, “ttttt-train” and “dddd-drain.” Finally, I would consider about whether there is anything I missed or if I should change my instruction depending on how well the child responds.  With this information, I will be able to vary the method and intensity to bring them up to a typically performing level.

References:

Phonemic Awareness. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved September 24, 2011, from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Phonemic_awareness

Week 3: Indiana Department of Education's Article 7

http://www.doe.in.gov/exceptional/speced/laws.html

(There are two version of the article 7, Enlgish and Spanish.)

Indiana Department of Education's Article 7 is about Indiana's special education law.

Week 3: Indiana Department of Education's RTI Guidance Document

http://www.doe.in.gov/rti/index.html

This document helps teachers to learn about how to impement RTI for their class as they explaing the three tiered model of RTI. It tells how RTI affects to all students, parents, and teachers.

Week 2: Example of a school Implementing RTI

http://www.readinghorizons.com/rti/

This video is about the three tiered model of RTI, showing an example of Iron Springs Elementary. In tier 1, every child reaches their achievement and abilities of the appropriate level for their age.

In tier 2, children need additional instruction and assessment for improving their abilities of reading. I tier 3, students really need have special supports on their weak points.

This video shows us how teachers can assess their children and how they can collaborate with children and other teachers.

Week 1: RTI in Action

This video is about RTI and the director of the Lehigh University explains why RTI is important and how they practice RTI with their students. RTI is practiced for all children. In the video, all teachers in the school have a meeting after the class and talk about how they can improve and set better instructions for students.