Literacy Intervention

Gabriella Fecher

Final Reflection

Literacy Intervention

This semester has proven to be challenging and rewarding.  I was not aware of just how little I knew about literacy before taking this class.  As we were reading and looking into topics, I found that these topics were directly correlated in any subject matter. Literacy is crucial to every discipline.  Students are always going to need to have reading, writing, and communication skills.  This semester has really enlightened me to strategies that I can do to help build those translatable skills.

Literacy is a growing process.  Students learn at different rates, and struggle in different areas.  Some student readers rely mainly on visual clues, but ignore syntax and meaning clues (as in the case of Brittany, for whom we applied reading intervention this semester).  Others may ignore prosody, inflection, and punctuation.  These ultimately hurt their fluency, and, in turn, their comprehension.

Comprehension is the main goal of reading and writing.  Every skill that students practice in terms of literacy is serving to highlight comprehension.  Therefore, we should regularly be monitoring for comprehension.  Some students may require explicit strategy instruction and 1:1 interventions.  Others might benefit more from partner activities and think-alouds.  There can be combinations of multiple strategies to best ensure comprehension.  We can diversify those strategies, listen to students, and recognize what strategies they are or are not implementing in reading.

Fluency is far more complex a subject than just speed.  It is a vital component of comprehension. The goal for all reading is comprehension.  If a student reads a portion of text, and cannot understand the main points and supporting details of the text, there is little value.  “Automaticity” is pretty crucial for comprehension.  Students need to be able to read a word “without conscious effort”- typically within three seconds (McKenna, 2015, p.163).  Beyond that, they are putting more emphasis on decoding the word and less on the comprehension of the text.  Furthermore, “prosody” is crucial because it is also an indicator that the student in “understanding the meaning of a sentence” (McKenna, 2015, p. 164).  When a student is decoding words, they have to use automaticity (the ability to recognize words in three seconds or less) and prosody.  The combination of those skills result in better fluency.

This semester has also really inspired me to consider the role of student choice in the classroom.  In order to best ensure engagement, my students should be interested in what they are learning.  It is important for students to have a wide selection of reading materials to choose from.  This “communicates to students that reading is a worthwhile and valuable activity” and allows them to choose subjects and reading levels and types that best suits their characteristics (Gambrell, 2011).  Students should be able to pick activities and reading.  We should constantly be striving to have their attention and interest via engagement.

There are several literacy strategies and activities that can seamlessly be incorporated into any lesson or discipline.  These activities include dramas, singing, social activities and partner activities, games, read louds, and think alouds.  Any of these strategies are useful for students and can administer to individual needs.  The more students work with literacy strategies and skills, the more they can learn and apply their knowledge. 

All of these activities can serve as progress monitoring.  This also ensures that the interventions we implemented for particular students are, actually, benefiting them.  Progress monitoring is an important tool in identifying strengths and places for improvement in each student.  When teachers are regularly checking for understanding, they are in turn modeling the importance of checking for understanding for the students themselves.  Students become “increasingly aware of monitoring their own understanding.”  The result is typically a higher level of thinking, understanding, and processing (Ferlazzo, 2012).  Checking in entails more than generic, surface level questions.  Our questions should consistently be open-ended and thought-provoking, as well as targeted for each student.  Listening to the students allows for student voice.  We can shape individual learning goals around that voice—noting concerns and strength areas.  We can collect evidence of both progress and student confusion—both of which are valuable in determining where to progress as a class.  Furthermore, we need to really work to make sure our assessments are not subjective. Children are “mindful users and processors of language.”  It is no surprise, then, that each user and processor is different.  We cannot always generalize the needs of our students.  Each student is going to have their own struggle.  Even students who appear to read fluently both silently and orally can struggle with areas of comprehension.  It is comforting to know that we can analyze both oral and silent reading, and identify miscues therein.  We can create a “detailed portrait of the reader” and assess information about both “reading products” and “reading processes” (McKenna, 2015).  We provide measures of reading rates and fluency rather than relying on our own judgment alone.

It may be necessary to assess our individual students differently.  For example, while we were studying the potential needs of ELL students within our classrooms, we recognize that certain summative assessments, in particular, may put ELL students at an immediate disadvantage.  If a test, for example, is structured in a way in which students are required to write extensive essays in a specific time period, ELL students may struggle.  Therefore, we should constantly be providing other forms of assessments.  We need to be aware of all of our students’ individual strengths and weaknesses in order to ensure reliable assessments. Formative assessments and progress monitoring are vital guides to progress for students.  We can regularly be checking in with our students to establish areas of confusion. 

Assessments, collectively, are a “systematic approach for guiding student learning” (Larson and Keiper, 2013, p.74).  However, the systematic approach may be different for every student.  Tests may have to be administered orally.  We may have to use certain technologies or rework the way certain assessments are put together. In order to “make the assessment of student learning more valid and reliable,” it is important to use “different techniques for determining how well students have learned” (Larson and Keiper, 2013, p. 76).  Furthermore, we should be allowing for accommodations and modifications that help our students.  We use the information from our assessments to plan for future lessons and activities.

Ultimately, literacy is vital in and out of the classroom.  There are many things that we as teachers can do to help all of our students achieve success.  We have strategies to incorporate into every lesson plan.  Moreso, we should constantly be monitoring and assessing our students to evaluate areas for growth and areas of success.  Components like punctuation and inflection are not unimportant.  On the contrary, they are integral parts of fluency, and comprehension.  Reading, writing, and communication are huge parts of society.  My biggest takeaway from this semester was simply the realization of how easy it is to incorporate those skills into the classroom.  We can do it on a regular basis.  Our planning should be intentional.  Our vocabulary choices, text sets, and activities should be designed with our individual students in mind to ensure maximum success.

Works Cited

Ferlazzo, L. (2012). Do’s and Don’ts for Teaching English-Language Learners. Retrieved May 4, 2016. http://www.edutopia.org/blog/esl-ell-tips-ferlazzo-sypnieski.
Fuglei, M. (2013) How Reading for Pleasure Helps Students Develop Academically. Image. Web. 10 May 2016. http://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/news.how-reading-for-pleasure-helps-students-develop-academically.

Gambrell, L. (2011). Seven Rules of Engagement: What’s Most Important to Know about Motivation to Read. The Reading Teacher, 65.

Larson, B. and Keiper, T. (2013). Instructional Strategies for Middle and High School (2^nd ed.). New York: Routledge.

Mattes, L. (2013). How I Work with Students to Self-Monitor While Reading. Group Firsties. Image. Web. 10 May 2016. http://growingfirsties.blogspot.com/2014/07/how-i-work-with-students-to-self.html. 

McKenna, M.C., & Stahl, S. A. (2015). Assessment for Reading Instruction (3^rd Ed.) New York: Guilford Press.

Miss Alyssa's Classroom. (2011). Image. Web. 10 May 2016. http:// missalyssaclassroom.blogspot.com/2011/09/formative-assessment.html.

Tyson, Kimberly. (2013). Freddy Fluency: A Fluency Tool for Primary Students. Image. Web. 10 May 2016. http://www.learningunlimitedllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/fluency.png .

Teaching Toward Democracy

Gabriella Fecher

Reflection

            Before this semester, I did not adequately draw a strong connection between democracy and the classroom.  Throughout the experiences of Teaching Towards Democracy, however, I now realize that democracy is an integral component to the learning process.  American society thrives on values of democracy, capitalism, and Protestantism.  These values, then, are both directly and indirectly woven into every aspect of life, including the school system.  When we enter into the classroom, we have our own biases based on our values throughout our lives.  These biases will influence how we teach.  While it is impossible to completely remove those biases, we must be aware of them and work to limit their power as much as possible.

Democracy is centered on particular values of deliberation, compromise, and diversity.  This third value is a crucial component.  Differences are essential to a strong democracy.  We should be welcoming multiple voices and multiculturalism.  Democracy, after all, is rooted in the “principle of moral, self-directing individuality” (Dewey, 1987, p. 377).  Curriculum, then, should be taught in a way that “values the full range of learning and thinking abilities” and provides freedom for individual growth (Sternberg, 2001, p. 338).  Democracies should exist securely within the classroom, encouraging students to “be willing and able to work with others cooperatively” and effectively voice their individual positions.  Students will be coming into the classroom with different values, ideas, beliefs, and needs.  Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model recognizes the interrelationships between different influences in an individual’s life—both immediate influences and broader influences like societal values.  All of these influences affect human development, and influence the mind and behavior of the individual (Gauvain and Cole, 2005).  We need to recognize that the home-life and other factors in a student’s life is going to have an effect on how they learn in the classroom.  Schools “form one of several institutional linkages” between the household and the public sphere for students (Dreeben, 2001, p. 88).  As a result, we must work to create an environment that best teaches principles of democracy, diversity, and individuality that will help students to see new perspectives.  Rather than closing off ideas or individuals that do not support the majority perspective, we should embrace the differences.  Their individual voices have to stand out, as well as their individual strengths and needs.

            Our students are different.  Some of these differences are more directly obvious than others, but all are different, regardless.  One sure way to encourage these differences is allowing multiculturalism within the classroom.  A classroom setting, as its own unique micro-culture, is comprised of “considerable diversity” with cultures and perceptions of cultures “distributed among people in a group” (Corsao and Eder, 1990, p. 211).  In acknowledgement of this fact, educators need to be both prepared for, supportive of, and active towards differences between students. 

Our classrooms should be multicultural and as unbiased in nature as possible in order to promote an equitable, learning environment for all.  Postmodern ideals include the value of difference rather than universality and regularity.  There is strength in diversity.

            The advocacy project helped me to understand the role of colleagueship and collaboration.  Our group had to investigate societal norms, identify existing power structures, and speak out for change.  We investigated subjects through a narrow lens at the beginning, and unveiled an issue far bigger than we previously considered.  We had to work as a team, remain flexible in shifting goals, collectively generate ideas, and evaluate differences and commonalities.  This project provided real-world experience and highlighted the importance of collaboration.  Our group, Girls on the Move, was organized to raise awareness about existing stereotypes about women in sports.  We created a blog, spoke out on social media, and made a movie highlighting the existing problems and our efforts to change existing stereotypes.  To view our project, check out: Girls on the Move Blog and Video.

            Colleagueship became particularly interesting to me when I considered the possibility that I will not be assuredly working in schools with many resources or structures in place.  Some school districts provide multi-tier systems of support (RTI) that allows for differentiated instruction as well as additional supports for varying interventions.  These types of systems are important to “activate homeschool-community relationships and bring together partners” that ultimately encourage success from students through encouraging relationships between schools and services (Averill and Rinaldi, 2011). It is possible that I will go into a school district that does not provide these resources or connections.  It is still my responsibility, at that point, to foster connections and work to provide resources that allow for the best learning experiences for my students.  As an advocate for my students, I need to be regularly seeking out areas of current inequity and encouraging my students to do the same.  In these inequities, we will undoubtedly find skewed power systems and outliers that have probably been overlooked.

            Advocacy is a vital component of being an educator.  We must advocate for our students as individuals.  We need to be providing opportunities for growth and success.  We should be participating in the community, and encourage our students to have both a social and learning community, as well.  It is our responsibility to hear our students and advocate for them.  They should know that their thoughts and feelings are important, and they should contribute. 

Undoubtedly, to not advocate for the individual’s needs is to subject them to “feelings of alienation, isolation, and exclusion” or encourage them to bend to peer pressure and majority beliefs (Ribak-Rosenthal, 1994).  Our expectations for our students, and our encouragement for our students, translates to them.  They need to know that they have a voice, and that voice should be heard.

            Teaching Towards Democracy has been one of my favorite education classes thus far.  It challenged my way of thinking and perceiving the world around me.  We were encouraged to critically listen, identify problems, participate in discussions even in uncomfortable roles, and advocate for those around us.  I came away, realizing more than ever that teaching may bring up many uncomfortable situations.  To really value difference and democracy, we have to embrace individuality.  That may entail standing against a majority.  It may mean that we have to stand up and speak up when no one else does.  It also may mean that we have to stand up against traditionally accepted ideas and norms.  However, it is our responsibility to do all these things, and to teach our students to do the same.

Works Cited

Averill, O., & Rinaldi, C. (2011). Multitier System of Supports. District Administration Magazine. Professional Media Group, 15.

Corsao, William A. and Donna Eder.  (1990). Children’s Peer Cultures.  Annual Reviews Inc.

Dewey, John. (1987). Democracy in Education. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Diabetes Foundation. Advocacy. 2016. Image. Web. 10 May 2016. https://www.msdiabetes.org/advocacy-0.

Dreeben, Robert. (2001). The Contribution of Schooling to the Learning of Norms: Independence, Achievement, Universalism, and Specificity. Prentice-Hall, NJ.

Gauvain, M. & Cole, M. (2005). Readings on the Development of Children. New York: Worth.

Multicultural Council of Saskatchewan. Strength in Diversity. 2016. Image. Web. 10 May 2016. http://mcos.ca/saskatchewan-multicultural-week-2015/.

Ribak-Rosenthal, N., & Russell, T.T. (1994). Dealing with Religious Differences in December: A School Counselor’s Role.  Elementary School Guidance and Counseling, 28 (4), 295-301.

Sternberg, R. & Grigorenko, E. (1999). Learning Disabilities, Schooling, and Society. Reading: Perseus Books.