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 In the past there has been a sole focus on traditional methods of print in the cars room, however with the technology so rapidly evolving new conceptions of reading and wringing have emerge. Because the internet was so rapidly adopted over so many places, teachers must confront this new type of literary. While most schools today have internet access the average student in the U.S. spend about twelve minutes a week at the computer. This is hardly enough time for students to learn the new literacies that the internet brings.

            While there are problems and challenges with trying to bring new literacies into the classroom, the teacher can over come these challenges if they realize the importance of these new literacies and embrace the changes that come with it. This article, "Literacy Instruction with Digital and Media Technologies" by Diane Barone, and Todd E. Wright, focuses one teacher that has successfully intergraded technology into his classroom. Todd Wright is a teacher at Fernely Elementary, in Nevada. In his classroom students are issued their own personal laptops. The laptops are used by students throughout the day. Students up load files to be used for the day, do constrictive bell work activates, use instant messaging to discuss with partner, sequence events of a story, blog about books that they are reading, participate in Internet-based center activist all during the first part of the day. The students use the internet respond to an interactive writing prompt, which they save electorally into a folder for later visitation. Students download their home from the classroom server for the night.

            Fernley Elementary School's goal is that 80% of instruction would be supported with technology in the fourth and fifth grades. The school started by investing n a computer lab, and moved to having several classrooms with one-to-one laptops. Todd says that brining technology to the classroom has been a source of creativity and enthusiasm. Apple as worked with Todd to provide professional development for all of Fernely Elementary. Students at Fernely have become so proficient with new literacy because the school carefully scaffolds new literacies for all students. New literacy instruction begins in kindergarten.

            The question on everyone's mind of course, is if this new technology increases student leaning. A lot of the new literacy skills not those that are assessed on standared test so it is hare to measure the additional knowledge that the students might have gained. Since 2002 Fernley has made adequate yearly progress every year.

All in all Todd's class room exemplify integrating new literacies into the classroom. We know from our reading and class lecture that it is really important to teach student use of new literacies that come with technology. Solely using paper and pencil is highly impractical for preparing students for the world we live in to day. Even though students are not assessed on the skills that new literacies bring, it is still important to teach them. A good literacy teacher can certainly prepare students for standardized test using these new literacies. 

I read the article Respecting Students' Cultural Literacies by Elite Ben-Yosef.  It was a very interesting article.  Literacy is the knowledge that a person has about text and their ability to read.  Due to the fact that literacy has multiplicity, Ben-Yosef states that "there is no one Literacy, but many different literacies that represent groups in our society and topics in our culture" (Ben-Yosef, 81).  He gives family literacy, computer literacy, and religious literacy as a few of the different types of literacy.  The article also talks about literacy being social and personal.  "The way in which each of us understands text and language is grounded in our cultural, social, and historical backgrounds" (Ben-Yosef, 81).  All of the things in a reader's life add to their literacy.  The things in a reader's life supply background knowledge and knowledge that the reader can draw from to understand a text.  I had never thought about there being multiple literacies until I read this article.  It makes a lot of sense because people grow up in different environments, surrounded by different types of text or lack of text.  These different upbringings lead to some of the different literacies and makes literacy social and personal.

So how can teachers use this knowledge about literacy?  In the second part of the article, Ben-Yosef explains how we as teachers can use the multiple literacies to increase the learning of our students.  Children from different cultures have different literacies.  Teachers should draw on the knowledge of literacy that these students have instead of forcing our knowledge of literacies on them.  Teachers should draw on the knowledge of all of their students.  Ben-Yosef explains that we need to create bridges between the literacies of the students and the school literacies, "We can create bridges by opening our minds and the doors of our classrooms to local and vernacular literacies and using them as building blocks on which to construct our teaching." (Ben-Yosef, 82).  The article talks about a teacher who used student's home literacies to teach reading.  The teacher had students bring text from their daily lives and homes to the classroom to discuss and learn from.  It is very important for teachers to draw on the literacies that the students know and understand.  This will make it easier for the students to learn new information.  Another teacher in the article had her students teach her the rules of writing rap before she taught them the rules of Shakespeare and sonnets.  This is a very effective teacher practice.  She was using the literacies that her students already knew and understood to learn new information.  To end the article, Ben-Yosef concludes that "Building bridges between home and school literacies ensures a meaningful educational experience for all students" (Ben-Yosef, 82).  In my future classroom I will make sure to build bridges of literacy and I hope you do too!

Ben-Yosef, Elite. "Respecting Students' Cultural Literacies."  Educational Leadership.  61.2.  (2003): 80-82.  Print.  

Early Literacy Instruction in the Climate of No Child Left Behind by Margaret Taylor Stewart

            In this article, its main focus is on the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 five research-based components of reading and oral language which are:  1) Phonemic awareness, 2) Phonics, 3) Vocabulary, 4)Fluency,  and 5) Comprehension, based from the National Reading Panel. In the beginning, it also talks about Title 1 and having a high-quality education for all children, and throughout the article it talks about effective teacher practices.

            To start off, Title 1 states "...is to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging Stat academic achievement standards and state academic assessments" (pg. 734). This basically says, in the subpart, that every child needs to be reading by grade three and that by having research-based. Teachers need to be knowledgeable in the proven research approaches with reading; that they need to reach out to the students on an individual basis and that using word study is one way on how a teacher can incorporate phonemic awareness, vocabulary, spelling, and high-frequent word recognition within a lesson.

            Moving on to the five research-based components that the National Reading Panel. According to the article, Cunningham and Hall (1994), states that making words has three empirical supports (pg 735). The first support is that learners understand the onsets and rimes better than phoneme isolation. An example given in the text is D-an rather than D-a-n. The second support is that 37 rimes can be found in approximentally 500 words. Some examples given are: -op, -ot, -ack, -ake, and -ice. The final support is the patterns of spelling by using an analogy (735).

            Vocabulary is an aspect of comprehension and vocabulary instruction and is deemed to be a measurement of importance as described by the National Reading Panel (735). Beck and McKeown sayd that effective teachers should use explicit instruction and that they should "take advantage of the students' listening and speaking competencies to enhance their vocabulary development" while providing the students with friendly definitions and explanations to expand the context. The article notes that the teachers promote vocabulary growth (and language development) through authentic and meaningful experiences (737).

            Next is fluency. Repeated readings and giving formal efforts are the two approaches that are to help the students read at a silent reading level while reading books for recreational and instructional use. Pressley stated that being fluent is important because the reader will not have to decode every word within the text before being able to comprehend the text. Samuels (2001) has also reinforced what Pressley said that word recognition comes from the amount of reading that the reader has done (738). Teachers should scaffold what fluent reading sounds to have a good effective practice.

            Comprehension was the final one that was talked about in this article. This article states that "comprehension has three subparts: vocabulary instruction, text comprehension, and teacher preparation of comprehension strategies" (738).  Comprehension needs to be taught explicitly to the students since it is the goal of reading and it needs to be relevant to the students. Discussion of the texts is one effective assessment and way of working on the comprehension strategy (739). Working with small groups is a good way to explicitly teach the students and the groupings need to be flexible (740).

 

Source:

Stewart, Margaret Taylor. "Early Literacy Instruction in the Climate of NO Child Left Behind." International Reading Association. 57.8 (2004): 732-744. Print.

   Many elementary age students, as well as secondary and college students, dread the thought of having to read text that is nonfiction.  I know that I personally hate reading about dry dates, facts and statistics.  For many, myself included, this may be due to the fact that I was never introduced to nonfiction reading in a cooperative and inviting way.  However, a third grade teacher in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, recently conducted her own small study to see if she could foster a love for nonfiction texts in her third graders through the use of literature circles.  This teacher understood that literature circles provide optimal environments for students to share what they find interesting in the books that they read; however, literature circles often involve the use of fiction texts and students are often more enamored by fictional literature.  So to begin with, this teacher suggests that a classroom have two goals for students: to feel ownership and to take responsibility his or her learning.  Both of these goals may be accomplished through the use of literature circles.

"Literacy Instruction with Digital Media Technologies," by Dianne Barone and Todd E. Wright, told the story of a student in a classroom which used computers as the main tool for instruction.  The student was described as having been introduced to his laptop (every student was issued one) on the first day of class. Every class day was described as consisting of mainly computer-based instruction, including reading books online, accessing vocabulary words for the week through the class web page, and instant messaging discussion buddies.

I liked the idea that the article posed, which was that technology is a natural occurrence in our everyday lives, so it only makes sense to use it in the classroom. We already use overheads and computers, but these are things that the teacher mainly uses and what this article emphasizes is to put technology in the hands of the whole class-community. This way, the class can become more easily connected through methods such as instant messaging and class-web pages with links to vocabulary and stories.  

My only concern with the scene depicted in the article was that more traditional methods of instruction were only briefly mentioned. I wonder what the effect will be when students have the option to type instead of write (or to IM instead of speak) at all hours of the day--especially for those who have internet access at home. How will their handwriting skills be affected? And does this matter in the long-run (that is, will we all just end up using computers and typing as a means of writing anyway)?  

Although the amount of computer-based instruction that should be used is debatable, the idea of allowing the students--and not just the teacher--to use the computers makes practical sense and would definitely help motivate students in the classroom because they are using a fun tool that they are familiar with for educational purposes. 

Images of Reading and the Reader by Frank Serafini, is an article that talks about the importance of showing children what reading is and what good readers do.  This article is not so much about parents and teachers showing students how to be good readers but literature showing children who to be good readers.  He investigated children's books that depicted reading and analysis what the book was showing through the hidden curriculum.  Although these books were excellent books, showing the fun things that could be accomplished by reading, they never depicted children talking about the text.  They showed that reading took time and practice and that if one stuck at it one would get it.  But they never showed children having classroom discussions about the text.  This was a problem that Frank Sefafini saw in children's literature about reading.    

I thought these were very interesting findings.  I had never thought about this before, but it is an excellent thing to look at.  What else are children getting from the books they read and that we read to them?   We have talked and read a lot about modeling in this class, showing children how to be good readers and showing them that we are also good readers.  This article goes one step further then just those around children but also challenging the texts to be modeling good readers.  Not that there are not texts that model good readers, but more text that model good readers in a sociocultural perspective.  More texts that are showing children who share what they know and discuss topics with others around them.  We have also talked and read a lot about the importance of collaboration in classrooms, that most children learn better if they are able to talk about their findings with others.  The shred and collaboration aspect of learning is crucial for student learning and should be modeled by what they read.

I never realized how many books there were on just showing children what a complicated process reading was.  This is very important to keep motivation of the child going so that the she or he does not get discouraged when learning to read.  However if there were even more books on this topic and more books that stressed the sociocultural aspect of reading that would be wonderful as well. 

 

There were many effective practices for literacy instruction discussed in Word Study Instruction in the K-2 Classroom. First off, in order to best teach word study in a K-2 classroom this article suggests using multiple assessment tools. Using multiple assessment tools allows a teacher to learn what a student knows, for example "it doesn't make sense to teach students the r-controlled vowel pattern it they don't understand the alphabetic principle." Using small group instruction is another tip this article gave; a suggestion was to "separate word study lessons for each developmental spelling level." Other suggestions were make time to prepare word study lessons and teach word knowledge. The last tip I noticed was how word study can be used during reading and writing times. Students need to understand the relationship between these processes. Using word study during reading and writing times not only supports word study but furthers reading and writing development as well.

                I agree with most things the author has to say in the Word Study Instruction in the K-2 Classroom article. The things I mentioned above are just a few suggestions the author gives of effective practices for literacy instruction but these are tips I thought were most important in the article. Overall, I thought this article had many good points to it and I agree with what the author says.

This article, SEARCHing for an Answer by Laurie Henry, is about how there are all sorts of text on the internet and even though it is a great source for learning, it might not be the greatest place for students because of their reading levels.  It has suggestions for teachers to help students to comprehend what is on the internet so they can effectively use this resource while working on homework.  One way they describe to help students is by asking five important aspects to look for while reading on the internet: identify important questions, locating information, critically evaluating information, synthesizing information, and communicating answers.  It goes on to say that Eagleton and Guinee suggest six aspects to follow while on the internet: be specific, be exact, be direct, be distinct, be succinct, and be concise.  Besides instructing students with these different approaches, teachers can also help by giving students opportunities to try them out in supervised settings.  "Practice makes perfect" as they say, but really it should be good practice makes perfect and that is what is needed when students are on the internet.  The article also goes on to explain the main framework to use while on the internet SEARCH.  S-set a purpose for searching, E-employ effective search strategies, A-analyze search-engine results, R-read critically and synthesize information, C-cite your sources, H-how successful was your search.  With this method students are covering all of their bases and not only making sure the information they are gathering is worthwhile, but also giving credit where credit is due by citing sources. 

            This article shared very true points.  Technology is becoming a part of everyday life, in and out of school.  Our students need to be able to use this technology to help them not only with school work, but also in everyday life.  These methods need to be taught to our students to ensure that they are getting the most out of their experience on the internet and other advanced resources.  By teaching these methods and strategies in school, students could benefit greatly from what they learn from these new resources on the internet. 

In reading Barbara Taylor's article titled, Looking inside classroom: reflecting on "how" as well as "what" in effective reading instruction I have discovered many effective practices for literacy. Among those are making learning goals clear, asking students questions to monitor understanding of content or skills covered, and providing feedback to students about their academic progress. The article also suggested the use of modeling and demonstration, higher level thinking skills, small group instruction, and systematic instruction for phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, and comprehension. As we have mentioned many times in class teaching students self-regulation to monitor their understanding and use of strategies. Other important characteristics are to coach and not tell and to engage students in active manipulation of their reading and writing skills. In addition, the article suggested specific practices in relation to grade levels. For kindergarten, small-group instruction and word skills work are particularly needed. For first graders active responding is the most effective practice. Fourth through sixth graders responded best to higher level questions. The article ends with a quote that summarizes the demands of literacy teachers, "Ongoing professional development in which teachers work together within buildings to reflect other practice is one important piece of the total package that is needed to ensure that the No Child Left Behind Act is satisfied" (Taylor 278). As we have learned in class and through multiple texts in Reading Methods these are all researched effective practices. Many of these effective practices can be matched up with numerous building blocks such as fluency, vocabulary, and the other 3 building blocks. Multiples testimonies and research results showed that all of these were effective practices.