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 Department
of Language EducationPracticum in Language X425/L525 Dr. Hope Elkins |
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1. In this module we will learn about: *The implications of being a professional. *The definition of reading. *Principals of intervention/remediation. __________________________________________________________ 2.We will: *Reflect on the role of literacy in our lives and its effects on our beliefs about language and teaching. *Examine our literacy behaviors for one day. __________________________________________________________ 3.Reading Assignment: Choose one of the textbooks and begin reading it in depth. Use information from your chosen text as you answer discussion questions. In addition, later in the class you will complete a review of the text that you have read. __________________________________________________________ 4.Discussion Topic: Look back in your own experience and talk about someone who has struggled with reading or who was learning English. Discuss this person (do not use real name) in terms of causes and correlates of reading difficulty, i.e., psychological, physical, sociocultural, educational, or other. Share with the class your memory and what it says to your present beliefs about teaching reading. __________________________________________________________ 5.Progress Check-list: As the class is in the beginning stages, I strongly recommend that you keep up with the readings. Most assignments are connected to readings, and getting behind will cause frustration and poor performance. __________________________________________________________ 6.Comments: Through the years I have found that students learning to teach those with reading and writing difficulties often lack confidence in themselves as teachers. Working with troubled readers is at times frustrating and time consuming. It is easy for the tutor to feel progress is not possible. The temptation is to grab for instructional straws rather than logically thinking through an instructional plan. For this reason I usually begin each semester by discussing what a professional is and how you can have the confidence to make and support instructional decisions. Teaching is considered a profession, but what is a professional? Before you read further, think of someone you would term a professional, and briefly list why you feel that way. Now read the following discussion and decide if your chosen person could still be considered professional.
Professionals are responsible, knowledgeable, ethical, and rational. *
Responsible A responsible person is accountable for the care and welfare of others. This doesn't mean teachers cannot make wrong choices, but it does mean they take time to think through decisions, asking if a decision is good for the students or simply easy or convenient for the teacher. Accountability implies having good reasons for decisions and being able to support those reasons to peers, administrators, parents, students, and others concerned with the learners' well being. A responsible person can act without guidance or superior authority. This does not mean that a good teacher never asks for advice or help and can ignore input from administrators. It means that a good teacher does not require a curriculum guide, test scores, administrators, or other factors to dictate every classroom decision. Professional teachers have good reasons for their instructional choices, looking beyond the buzz words of the day to what is good instruction. Responsible teachers can make rational decisions based on knowledge of the field and logical thinking. They can stand above controversy, politics, misinformation, and personalities to see the whole educational picture and reason through to what is best practice. A professional is reliable and trustworthy, a person who can be depended on to act consistently in doing what is best for the students and the educational setting. This kind of teacher is prompt, prepared, and can be counted on to do his part in the classroom, the school, and the community.
Knowledgeable Teachers should have three kinds of knowledge. Teachers must know facts -- facts about the field and facts directly connected to the subject area. For example reading teachers should know major models of reading instruction, and an elementary teacher should be familiar with a wide variety of children's literature. These are two different kinds of facts, both necessary to good teaching. We live in a world of information overload where it is impossible to know every fact needed to adequately teach. For this reason teachers should be able to find facts, be widely read, able to collaborate with others, and know how to quickly find and verify information. Praxiological knowledge has to do with what effective education is. If we are to be the best teachers possible, we cannot live in an isolated classroom. In the past few years there has been a move toward research-based teaching. Reading research literature is one way to learn about effective practice, but it must be remembered that a research study is not the ultimate truth. Research studies vary in quality with good practices being supported by many studies over time. Teachers who refuse to look at what research says, however, are doing themselves and their students a disservice. Be an informed educator, going to conferences, reading widely, talking with others, and learning all you can about what good teaching is. Practical knowledge has to do with the "how to" of teaching. For example Miss Smith has read several articles about guided reading; however, she has no idea how to implement the approach with her students. What is the best way to get how-to knowledge? Probably practice. The reason students in this course are asked to work in a field setting is so you will receive practical teaching experience along with learning facts and what effective practice is. There is no substitute for practical knowledge, so make the most of your tutoring experience.
Ethical Professionals are ethical. The term "ethical" signifies right conduct. We live in a world where what is right is perceived as relative. How do we as teachers know what right conduct is? First, right conduct is not governed by self-interest but by what is best for the students in our care. How does one arrive at what is best? An ethical teacher is objective, carefully weighing her knowledge in a rational way. Sometimes we view teaching in a subjective way. Our instructional decisions are colored by illogical personal preferences and prejudices. To be ethical, we must stand above feelings and look at the whole instructional picture to the ultimate good.
Rational Professionals are rational. Rational thinking is cohesive and coherent. Cohesive thought agrees with known evidence. Teaching is a complex process requiring reflection, study, inquiry, and evaluation. Evidence comes from many places: hands-on experience, research, theory, and observation to name a few. A true professional will always be alert for evidence to support and improve classroom practice and will be continually realigning her teaching to what the evidence suggests. Coherent thought has to do with recognizing logical relationships. Does practice make logical sense? For example, some teachers tell students that it is good to read, but these teachers show little interest in reading themselves. This kind of teaching sends opposing messages. Logically, strategies should build and support one another which is evidence of coherent thinking.
Teaching struggling readers or English as a new language can be a trial and error kind of teaching that requires some educated risk taking on your part. As you work with your learner, you will probably make some wrong teaching choices, but if you strive to be professional throughout the tutoring experience, both you and your learner will benefit. ___________________ *The definition of professionalism was developed by Elizabeth Steiner, Professor of Educational Philosophy (1985).
Reading is a complex process encompassing not only the physical act of identifying the words in text, but also involving one's cultural and psychological orientation to print. We could say there is a theoretical and a social component to reading.
Cueing Systems Theoretically speaking, reading is the act of constructing meaning from print. The cueing systems in language allow the reader to efficiently gather meaning from a piece of text. Have you ever encountered an unknown word in text and used the context of the sentence to figure it out? You were using the semantic cueing system (meaning within context). Maybe after rereading the sentence, you still didn't know the unknown word, so you looked at the letters and tried to sound it out. The letter/sound correspondence in language is called the graphophonic cueing system. Sometimes when reading, the first reading doesn't sound like language, and we immediately go back and reread the text. The natural flow of language or grammar is called the syntactic cueing system. If I began a piece of text with "Dear Mary," you would immediately know I was writing a letter because you know how written correspondence typically begins. The cueing system related to the purpose of text is called the pragmatic cueing system. For example, a list will look differently from a road sign or a piece of correspondence. Very young children often know how correspondence is formatted and how friendly letters begin and end. It is important that children, and all new readers for that matter, read and write for a variety of purposes. All the experiences we bring to the text refer to the schematic cueing system. Have you ever read a highly technical article without having background knowledge of the topic? Difficult, isn't it? Students who are given difficult texts in the classroom without having been provided background feel the same. All readers, especially struggling readers and ESL students, need all the background information possible when reading new text. Also, it is good when the reader can identify with a book's background. A good reading teacher builds on the student's existing strengths He uses the inherent structure of language and students' personal experiences to design lessons that connect to and support each student.
Three Models of Reading Most models will fall into three basic categories: 1) subskills, 2) skills, and 3) holistic (1). It is important that you know the three models and can identify them in practice because their underlying beliefs will greatly influence your teaching. Imagine a triangle horizontally divided into three sections. At the bottom is phonics, in the middle is word recognition, and at the top is vocabulary. This subskills model represents a teaching style in which students are first taught letters and their sounds. When this skill has been mastered to a certain point, students learn to recognize words. After word recognition has been mastered, students may advance to learning vocabulary. A subskills classroom is usually highly structured with little student choice. Authentic literature is seldom at the center of instruction; rather the teacher relies on skill sheets, practice exercises, games, computer instruction, and other strategies to reinforce skills. Now imagine a circle divided like a pie. One piece of pie is vocabulary development, another is phonics, and another is comprehension. This is the skills model, best represented in traditional basal-focussed classrooms. Vocabulary is controlled, and students work on mastering independent skills which are introduced in structured stories. Instructional materials often include basals, workbooks, skill packs, and mastery tests. Instruction is rather prescriptive; however, teachers have the option to choose enrichment activities from the teacher's guide. The skills model is often associated with leveled reading groups, and children again have limited choice in their instruction. Finally, imagine a concentric circle with semantics or meaning in the center, syntactics in the next circle, and graphophonics in the outside circle. When a piece of this pie is cut, all three cueing systems are included. This system is called the holistic model. Holistic classrooms are child centered, based on authentic reading material, inquiry focussed, and highly responsive to students' backgrounds and interests. In a holistic classroom, you would likely see reading and writing fully integrated. Children would be publishing their writing, sharing their reading reflections, and investigating topics of interest. The setting would be unstructured. The teacher would most likely be the resource person, helping facilitate group tasks and providing mini-lessons when needed. Children in a holistic classroom would be totally immersed in print in every area of the curriculum. At this point you are probably thinking, "In which model would I best fit?" or "Which model is best?" You might have had experience with one or more of these models and have already decided which you like or dislike. Before gravitating to a model, however, think on some of these questions, and you might discover that reading models, like other aspects of life, have trade-offs. Ask yourself: 1.Which model demands the least/most from the teacher? 2.Which is least/most cost effective? 3.In which is it easiest/most difficult to measure student progress? 4.Which would demand least/most teacher knowledge and skill? 5.Which is least/most time consuming for the teacher? 6.Which would be easiest/most difficult to justify to an administrator or parent? 7.Which would create least/most active engagement from students? 8.Which would be least/most likely to develop a love for learning? 9. Which is least/most challenging in terms of resources? 10. Which model would fit best with the discussion of professional-ism? 11. Which would you prefer as a teacher and why? 12. Is it possible to draw from each model in designing a course of tutoring?
Emergent Literacy Too often we look for the emergence of reading and writing at the time when formal schooling begins. Beginning reading instruction would be greatly facilitated if we would look at what the child knows about print on entering kindergarten or first grade. Children have extremely diverse experiences before entering school (2). Many children have been read to extensively, recognize letters and some words, know much environmental print, know several purposes of print, and can critically examine a piece of text with no trouble. Unfortunately, other children come from homes lacking print, have never held a crayon or a pair of scissors, have never sat on someone's lap to hear a favorite story, and do not have a clue that one can make meaning with text. Each child comes to school with a certain stance toward print. Teachers can encourage literacy by building on what children know. In working with struggling readers and ESL students, it is helpful to know their print backgrounds. What is their stance toward print and how can you build on it?
The Purposes of Reading Were you ever asked to complete a task that had no purpose? Did you feel it was a waste of time? We teachers sometimes forget that there are learners who do not see the purpose for literate activities. Not all students want to read and write. We must give them a relevant purpose. What are some purposes for reading and writing? * Communication. - Allow students to see the social advantages of communicating through print. Let them write letters, make and send greeting cards, advertise an upcoming class book fair, contribute to the school newsletter, or make a class book. Teach them that authors communicate through books, and they can better understand the author's intent by studying her books and writing to her. Most people want to have social interaction with others. Show your students how reading and writing can facilitate a rich social life. *Gaining information.- There are many ways to gain information. We must show students that gaining information through reading can be especially rewarding. Allow students to inquire into topics of interest. Teach and support them in finding, organizing, and presenting information. Students see a purpose in learning about something they care about. Make learning fun and rewarding, and your students will become lifelong learners. *Day-to-day survival.- Students need to know that reading and writing are necessary to a full life in a literate society. How can we show them this in the classroom? By showing them classroom survival can be greatly enhanced through literacy. For example, make a class bulletin board including the daily lunch schedule, weather forecast for the day, the day's to-do list, student helpers for the day, special student of the day, and any other information of immediate interest to students. Plan a class garden with children selecting garden seeds from a catalog, filling out the order form, and making out the check. Let everyone participate. For adult students and, think of the many ways reading and writing are used in everyday life. Learning workplace skills, reading medicine labels, shopping, corresponding, taking a driving test are a few activities on which to build survival skills. Include survival literacy in every aspect of the curriculum. *Inspiration.- Reading and writing can be a major source of inspiration. Think about your students. What are the affective needs in their lives? How can reading and writing be used to meet those needs. Try displaying an inspirational quote on the bulletin board each week or reading and discussing an inspiring book during reading time. Combine reading and writing with discussions of community issues and concerns. Social action can be tremendously inspiring and purposeful and can be easily combined with relevant reading and writing instruction. *Enjoyment.- I would guess that most accomplished readers have become so in part because at some time or another, they have enjoyed reading. Most people want to do what they enjoy doing. Can we teach students to enjoy reading? I doubt it, but we can set up a climate that surrounds reading with pleasant feelings. You will find that most struggling readers do not enjoy reading because they associate it with struggle, frustration, failure, and embarrassment. Before these students can enjoy reading, they must become convinced they can learn to read. For example, the philosopher Vygotsky proposed that there is a gap between what a learner can do on her own and what she can do with help. The teacher must be sensitive enough to identify the places where a child can advance with support and be knowledgeable enough to know what kind of instruction will provide that support. If we are to see students enjoying reading, we must begin instruction where they can be successful and provide experiences to sustain success. Our classrooms will show it if we are serious about promoting reading enjoyment. If you are a classroom teacher, ask yourself the following: *Do I have a special reading corner in my room with plenty of interesting books at a variety of levels? *Do I have a publishing center with attractive writing materials? *Am I consistent in publishing student work, and do I display work around the room? *Do I allow students to choose reading materials? *Do I provide the time for active discussion of authentic literature with everyone in class taking part? *Do I give students time to read on their own, supporting those who need extra help? * Do I read often to my students, reading with expression and feeling? *Do I encourage language risk-taking in my class? *Do I connect text to students' lives? *Do I provide a positive language model? *Do I encourage students at all reading levels to actively participate in reading/writing activities, treating each with respect and consideration? *Do I focus on student strengths? *Do I present myself as a caring teacher so that students can connect reading and writing with pleasant classroom associations? *Do I celebrate the uniqueness of each person in my class through reading and writing?
If teachers can promote reading enjoyment, they will promote reading. When students read more, they read better. When students read better, they will read more. Start the cycle of reading success in your class. _________________ (1)Goodman, Y., Watson, D., and Burke, C. (1987). Reading miscue inventory: Alternative procedures. New York, NY: Richard Owen Publishers, Inc. (2)Calkins, L. (1994). The art of teaching writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Comments: disted@indiana.edu Copyright 2004, The Trustees of Indiana University
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