Guided Reading Article

The article I found on guided reading for this week is titld Guided Reading with Emergent Readers by Jeanne Clidas. I found this article to be extremely insightful and informational. It will be one of those articles I will hang on to for my professional library in the future. It discusses what exactly is guided reading, how guided reading supports beginning or emergent readers, when children are ready for guided reading, as well as how we can support ESL students as they begin reading. One of the parts of this article I liked best is that it gave characteristics of books at the emergent level. I feel that this is very important when teaching younger children as I implement guided reading and begin to collect children's books for my classroom. By choosing great literature to use in guided reading you can support your students even more as they learn to read. Clidas mentioned that "guided reading should be thought of as a time for children to practice what they know about reading in front of a supportive person." She goes on to say that the teacher's role is to help students develop effective strategies which can be used to comprehend what they read and to solve problems for themselves. She states that the children should be doing majority of the work while the teacher guides and encourages their efforts. Have you ever seen guided reading implemented in your classroom? If so, do the students and the teacher take on a similar role as the article mentioned?
I highly recommend this article so I have copy and pasted the link to it below. Enjoy!
http://www.leeandlow.com/images/pdfs/intro.pdf

Ten Important Words

My favorite article this week was Ten Important Words Plus: A Strategy for Building Word Knowledge. The article gave some great ideas to use in the classroom to support students word knowledge. I really enjoyed the idea of students identifying 10, 5, or 3 important words in the text as they read and writing them on a post it to create a class graph. It's a great way for students to learn the words they choose as well as other words they might not have choose. I also enjoyed the idea of giving groups of students a particular target word and using colored card that read prompts that ask them to think about and use in various ways the words that are on the class bar graph. Students get great feedback through this activity as they learn through other students and gives the teacher an idea if they understand the word or not. If the student misuses the word, it enables the teacher to clarify the word's meaning and appropriate use immediately. This activity is something I would definitely want to implement into my classroom! It's an engaging activity that encourages group collaboration as well as promotes students word knowledge and in turn comprehension! Has anyone seen a similar strategy/activity used in a classroom?

Kindergartners Can Do It, Too! Comprehension Strategies for Early Readers

In the article by Gregory and Cahill I read several engaging comprehension strategies to engage the children. While reading, it enabled me to reflect and recall some of the comprehension strategies my teacher uses in the classroom I work in at Christenberry Elementary. In a particular center was a book that the children had previously read. They were to choose a part of the story and write it on lined paper. Then, they were asked to illustrate what part of the story they wrote about. It was interesting to see how the children interpreted the story in their minds as they drew it on paper and rewrote the part of the story in their own words. I also spoke with the children at the center as they were writing and drawing thee parts of their story they enjoyed. The children loved hearing about which part of the story their friends were writing about and how they "remembered" that part of the story and what they liked about it. Additionally, in this article I found the pictures the author included of the various strategies the teacher used with the children to be very interesting. One of the strategies the teacher used that I would enjoyed the most was the sheet of paper the teacher gave the children that included a poem they had written with a blank space for the children to illustrate their interpretation of the story. Rather than doing a poem because"full-length stories can demand to much cognitive attention", the teacher could choose a particular page or part of the story and have children write about it.

Vocabulary Lessons

I found the article from Blachowicz and Fisher to be very interesting and insightful. It gave tons of great activities and ideas on how to help teachers build their students vocabulary and an appreciation for it. While reading this article it made me think about if there is any vocabulary instruction in the classroom I'm currently working in and I could recall very little instances of vocabulary instruction. I was surprised when I reflected on this because vocabulary obtains a strong connection between children's reading comprehension. One of the quotes from the article I found to be very powerful from Blachowicz and Fisher (2004) was, "Just as a house needs a strong foundation, so reading comprehension depends on a strong base of oral language and concept development." It also stated a research study on how implementing a high-literacy classrooms can help those students living in low-literacy homes. It is clear that vocabulary instruction and high literacy environments are very important. If vocabulary is so crucial to children's reading skills, why do you think in many classrooms there is little vocabulary lessons or instruction?
The last thing that I really liked about this article was the idea of a "word wall" where children can add words that they hear in books, conversation, television, or their daily experiences. This is an activity that I would love to try in my classroom. I think it is a great inexpensive and valuable way to implement vocabulary instruction even if I have little time to implement direct vocabulary instruction in my curriculum.

Great Idea for Using the Promethean Board During Reader's Theater!

http://www1.prometheanplanet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5570

As I was searching for a reader's theater activity online,  I found this great idea on Promethean Planet for using the Promethean Board during reader's theater. In many of today's classrooms teachers are using the Promethean Board or the Smart Board during their lessons. A teacher on this site suggested using the Promethean Board as a backdrop/setting for stories! It is much more convenient than setting up major backdrops every scene change! You can choose one or you could even have the kids in your classroom draw their own and project them! On this site there are even a few examples of some reader theater teachers on this site have done. 

Enjoy!