Creating a Literate Environment

Carrie FergusonWalden University EDUC 6706

Getting to Know Your Students

O In order to create a literate environment you need to get to know your students.

O For students to be successful, it is important for students to have a positive self-concept and be motivated to read (Afflerbach, 2012).

O It is important to understand what types of literature students enjoy in order to help them find books to read.

How did I get to know my students?

O I used academic and non-academic tests to get to know my students.

O The academic assessments I used were the CORE (Consortium on Reading Excellence) Phonic Survey (Honig, Diamond, & Gutlohn, 2000) and our district wide EasyCBM (Curriculum Based Measure) (University of Oregon, 2013)

O The non-academic assessment I used to get to know my students was the Elementary Attitude Survey by McKenna and Kear (1990).

O This assessment allowed students to express how they felt about reading in a student friendly format. Along with this, I also interviewed each student to gain a deeper understanding of their likes and dislikes.

O I feel that having meaningful conversations with students will often times tell you much more than a normed test.

Selecting texts for students to read

O Research indicates that students need to be exposed to informational texts at an earlier age (Duke, 2004).

O Through my conversations with the students, I learned that they liked to read about animals.

O Their interests led to a great opportunity to expose them to informational text that

they would enjoy.

Rain Forest ThemeO To capitalize on students’ interests, I

chose a region to focus on: The Rain Forest.

O I chose three texts for students to learn about the Rain Forest, and to foster critical thinking about the importance of the rainforest.

The three texts I used with students are as follows:

O The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry (1990)

O Going to the RainForest (2013)

O Life in the Rainforest by Christine A. Caputo (2013)

O These texts allowed students to learn about Rain Forest animals, explore informational texts, and to think about different social issues concerning the Rain Forest.

The Interactive Perspective

O The interactive perspective of literacy deals with the skills and strategies necessary for students to be successful readers and writers.

O In the interactive perspective students work on becoming fluent readers and writers so that they can comprehend texts more fully (Laureate, Inc., 2011b).

O The major goal of the interactive perspective is to teach children how to navigate texts independently.

Planning a lesson to address the Interactive Perspective

O Students that struggle to read find reading tedious if lessons are not carefully planned.

O To help struggling students become confident readers, lessons need to be carefully planned that address necessary skills, provide them with the strategies to understand what they are reading, and still allow students to read interesting texts (Laureate, Inc., 2011a).

Metacognition: thinking about thinking

O One goal of the interactive perspective is to have students think about their thinking (metacognition) (Laureate, Inc., 2011a).

O When students are able to conscientiously think about the best strategy to decode words or understand a text, they are able to become more fluent and accurate readers.

O The lesson I planned addressed decoding words with beginning blends fluently and accurately.

O By helping students think about the strategies they use to decode words, they will begin to more fluently decode text.

O Increasing their fluency will increase their comprehension which will allow them to think more critically about their reading.

The Critical and Response Perspectives

O Although the interactive perspective is very important, I want students to move to the next level of thinking.

O In our world of technology, students need to be able to be evaluative of information presented to them on the web.

O Therefore, it is imperative that I move my students to the critical aspect of reading.

Response PerspectiveO In order for my students to move to

the more critical aspect of reading, they also need to be able to respond in meaningful ways.

O To respond in meaningful ways students need to make personal connections to text.

O Students need to laugh, cry, or be outraged by what they are reading (Laureate, Inc., 2011).

Thinking about texts differently: A critical and

response perspective lesson

O My goal was for students to move beyond basic comprehension questions and think about why the author wrote the book The Great Kapok Tree (Cherry, 1990).

O Was it written to entertain, inform, or persuade? Was it a combination of all three?

O In order to make judgments on why the author wrote the texts, students had to critically think about the text and go beyond basic comprehension questions.

O By choosing a theme and working on various aspects of the theme, students were able to build background, explore areas of interests, and think about social and cultural issues that surround the Rain Forest.

O Students were asked to determine the author’s purpose for writing the text and to respond both orally and in writing.

O For second language and struggling readers it is important that they be able to respond not only in writing but orally as well (Dutro, 2010).

O Several different strategies were used to help students think and respond more critically to the text.

O One of the strategies I used was a grand conversation. The grand conversation is a strategy in which students have an opportunity to prepare for a conversation about the text, respond in small groups, ask questions, and then reflect on the conversation (Tompkins, 2010).

O To facilitate this conversation, I had students think about their reading and then write questions on sticky notes about the text.

O Sentence frames were also used to guide students in responding more critically to the text. EX. The author wrote____________ so that _______ can ________________.

All three perspectives

O The interactive, critical, and response perspectives are all very important for students.

O Teachers must plan and implement lessons that conscientiously target these perspectives to help students move from basic skills to advanced thinking and responding.

O ALL students can accomplish this task with the proper guidance.

ReferencesAfflerbach, P. (2012). Understanding and using reading assessment, K-12 (2nd ed). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Caputo, C. (2013). Life in the rain forest. New York, NY: Scholastic, Inc.

Cherry, L. (1990). The great Kapok tree. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Inc.

Duke, N. (2004). The case for informational text. Educational Leadership, 61(6), 40-44. Retrieved from the Education Research database.

Dutro, S. (2010). Constructing meaning: explicit language for literacy instruction handbook. San Marcos, CA: E.L. Achieve, Inc.

Honig, B., Diamond, L., & Gutlohn L. (2000). Teaching Reading sourcebook for kindergarten through eighth grade. Novato, CA: Arena Press.

Going to the rainforest. (2013). New York, NY: Wild dog.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (20011a). The beginning reader, pre k-3. [DVD]. Interactive perspective: Strategic processing. Baltimore: Author.

References

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011c). The beginning reader, pre k-3. [DVDS]. Response perspective. Baltimore: Author.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (20011b). The beginning reader, pre k-3. [DVD]. Interactive perspective: Word study . Baltimore: Author.

McKenna, M.C., & Kear, D.J. (1990). Measuring attitude toward reading: A new tool for teachers. The Reading Teacher, 43(9), 626-639.

Tompkins, G. E. (2010). Literacy in the 21st century: A balanced approach (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn& Bacon.

University of Oregon. (2013). EasyCBM: Progress made easy for RTI. Retrieved from http://easycbm.com/