Reading Strategies for Struggling Readers Video
I thought that this video was an excellent resource that
teachers can keep and refer to or even pass on to parents. I like that I it also gives a summary of the
activities that parents can follow along with on the video. It gave a run through of reading topics like
phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. I particularly liked the phonological
awareness activities that were demonstrated in the video. I have used stretching the word and also blending
the word back together in my classroom.
I have found that students have a hard time with this activity. They
struggle at being able to manipulate those sounds that they hear. I thought that the teacher working with the
girl on her vocabulary words did a great job of first encouraging her to read
the sentence again and try to use the context clues. When she still couldn’t figure it out she had
the student complete a vocabulary sketch where they talked about the word. They looked the word up in the dictionary,
wrote a sentence about it, and also an illustration. The
video talks about using a graphic organizer in for reading comprehension which
really went along with other activities in this module.
Expository Texts
The powerpoint on expository texts went along with the video
on graphic organizers stating that students will be able to remember the
context and comprehend a better text when they are able to organize the
material. Expository texts have a structure
of either: cause and effect, descriptive, comparison, problem and solution, and
sequence. I thought that the powerpoint
was very informative in that it gave examples signal words that are used in
expository text and looking for those key words will help students better understand
what author is trying to communicate.
Children are learning that writers may organize their text in different approaches
and patterns in order to get their ideas across. The text went further to give examples of
what to do if signal words are not found in the text and one strategy was to use
a graphic organizer. I feel that the
more exposure students receive to expository texts and understand the structure
of them, the better writers they will become.
They will understand better how to organize a paragraph, use signal
words, and be able to transition from one sentence to another.
Vacca Chapter 14
This
chapter added to my understanding of expository texts. While they are important for students to read
and learn from, they can be challenging and need the right instructional
support. As every time a student reads
they are reading to learn, not necessarily learning to read. Expository texts are important for students
to learn how to read and comprehend because once a person is in adulthood, the
majority of his/her reading is from expository/non-fictional texts. Teachers should research the text before
using it their classroom. Looking at the
structure and reviewing the complexity of the sentences and vocabulary will
help the students’ success at understanding it.
Trip To Hawaii Module 1
I was really engaged in this video from just reading the
tile of the video because I enjoy traveling so much. The very beginning of the video was engaging
to me as I felt like I was on the trip with you. Once arriving in Hawaii and learning about
the reading conference, I became intrigued to learn that we were going to hear
more on graphic organizers. I think
graphic organizers are an excellent way students can focus their reading
assignments.
They are great for readers struggling with
comprehension. Before reading a text,
the student can glance over the graphic organizers and learn what he/she needs
to watch out for during their reading, whether it is main idea, supporting
details, or characters. It also gives
them the opportunity to visualize and make mental pictures from their
readings. What I found very interesting
was all the different types of graphic organizers. I have heard of and used ones like
Venn-diagrams, story maps, beginning-middle-end chart, concept maps, and flow
charts. One type of graphic organizer I
have found I use over and over again is the KWL chart. I really like that one because it helps activate
pre-knowledge and schema before reading.
Some other organizers mentioned in video 2 I have never heard of before
like the problem solving grid, Frayer Model, and the vocabulary prediction
chart. Something that I took away from
this that I would like to implement in my classroom would be the Frayer Model
of a graphic organizer which shows the word, a definition, a picture, an
example, and a non-example. I also like
the idea as using a graphic organizer for assessment as it gives the students
another to demonstrate their understanding of material.
