Morgan Wyatt

Key Vocabulary:

Emergent Literacy: The idea that a child’s knowledge of literacy emerges from their experiences at home.

Environmental Print: Words and phrases written around us. For example, the exit sign in a building.

Invented Spelling: The way children spell words that they do not know how to spell.

How Writing Develops: Children learn that written symbols have meaning, the begin to scribble on paper, they begin to scribble in a controlled way by drawing repeated shapes, and finally they learn of the connection between letters and sounds.

How Reading Develops: Children realize that the symbols around them represent words, they discover that the words go from left to right and top to bottom, they begin to read very basic sentences and stories, and they continue to read more and more complex stories, becoming more and more fluent along the way.

Phases of Literacy Development: Awareness and exploration, experimental reading and writing, early reading and writing, transitional reading and writing, independent and productive reading and writing.

Literate Environment: A physical and emotional environment designed to promote literacy in children.

Shared Reading: The teacher and students reading a passage together as a group.

How to Promote Oral Language Development: Use varied vocabulary, ask questions, repeat what a child says with correct grammar, give the child your full attention and include eye contact, explain why the child needs to do something, and read books/nursery rhymes aloud.

Design of Classroom Environment: The physical classroom environment should include a lot of print on the walls so that students can learn on their own and with others, in addition to what the teacher is teaching them.

Phonological Awareness: Recognizing the most basic sounds without meaning.

Alphabet Knowledge: The ability to name, write, and connect sounds to all 26 letters of the alphabet.

Developmental Writing: The process of a child gradually learning how to write.

Print Knowledge: Any knowledge that a child has about how letters, words, and sentences work.

Concept of Print: The basics of how print works, such as the direction of the print, letters, punctuation, etc.

Developing Early Literacy Skills:

Language-Experience Stories: Children tell stories using the language they have experience using.

Phonemic Segmentation: Separating sounds in words.

Key Vocabulary:

Basal: a.k.a Commercial reading programs or basal readers. Guides on what to teach students and when.

Components of a Basal: Selections in grade-level textbooks, instruction about decoding and comprehension strategies and skills, workbook assignments, and independent reading opportunities.

Materials in Basal Reading Programs: Textbook, big books, supplemental books, workbooks, kits, teacher’s guide, home-school connections, assessment system, multimedia resources, and a lesson planner.

Literature Focus Units: A unit that focuses on a single book, genre of books, or author of books in order to teach students how to become better readers.

Steps in Developing a Literature Focus Unit: Select the literature, set goals, develop a unit plan, coordinate grouping patterns with activities, create a time schedule, and assess students.

Literature Circles: Mini “book clubs” within the classroom.

Key Features of a Literature Circle: Choice of books read and group members, interesting and appropriate reading level books, and response to the books.

Types of Talk During Literature Circle Discussions: About the book, about connections, about the reading process, and about group process and social issues.

Roles Students Play in Literature Circles: Discussion director, passage master, word wizard, connector, summarizer, illustrator, and investigator.

Reading and Writing Workshop: Students choose books at their reading levels that interest them. They then read, respond to, and write about those books.

Word Walls: Important words that the teacher has written down and posted on a wall of the classroom.

Think-Alouds: The process of speaking one’s thoughts out loud as they go through a process. In reading, the teacher can think aloud while demonstrating a concept while students can think aloud to help themselves figure out a difficult concept.

Grand Conversations: The teacher provides a large, conceptual prompt regarding a given text which students then discuss as a class.

Shared Reading: The teacher and students reading a passage together as a group.

Series of Activities in Literature Circles: Select books, form literature circles, read the books, participate in a discussion, teach minilessons, share with the class, and assess learning.

Mini-Lessons: A sort of “subplot” of the lesson plan. The teaching of processes, strategies, concepts, etc. that are all included within the main lesson.

Goldilocks Strategy: Students should choose books that are neither too easy or too difficult for them to comprehend.

Responses in Reading Workshop: Students should record their initial reactions, or responses, to the assigned reading and teachers should help students expand on their initial reactions.

SSR: Sustained Silent Reading. Time set aside in the classroom where students read silently to themselves.

Management of the Workshops: Aside from general classroom management, teachers need to maintain a routine. A specific amount of time should be allotted for each step of each workshop.

Classroom Application:

According to a video titled Teaching Strategies for Introducing Literature Circles to a 4th Grade Class, the most difficult part of using literature circles in class is at the very beginning of the school year. At this time, it is critical that the teacher explicitly lays out the expectations and process that students will be going through. This concept applies to any of the workshops mentioned in this chapter. If the expectations are not made clear at the same time that a routine is created, the workshop will not work for the rest of the year and, more importantly, the students will not learn.

Key Vocabulary:

Genres: Types of literary pieces.

Text Structures: The way that the author formats their text.

Text Features: Features of a text that have a desired effect on the readers.

Narratives Genres:

Fables: Short stories with a specific moral, such as The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

Folktales: Stories where a hero overcome adversity using their specific virtues.

Myths: Fictional stories that were written to explain natural phenomena.

Legends: The story of a hero’s courageous actions.

Modern Literacy Tales: Modern folktales.

Fantastic Stories: Also known as the fantasy sub-genre.

Science Fiction: Stories that involve possible, but imaginary, scientific realities.

High Fantasy: Fantastic Stories that focus on good vs. evil.

Contemporary Stories: Stories with a modern setting.

Historical Stories: Realistic stories with a past setting.

Elements of Story Structure:

• Plot: The sequence of events in a story.
• Characters: People or animals that the story follows.
• Setting: Time and location of the story.
• Point of View: The perspective that the story is told from.
• Theme: The meaning of the story.

Narrative Devices:

• Dialogue: Conversation between characters.
• Flashback: A glimpse at the past in the world of the story.
• Foreshadowing: Hints of future plot points.
• Imagery: The way words and phrases are used to “draw” an image in the reader’s mind.
• Suspense: The state of not knowing what will happen next in the story.
• Symbolism: Something that represents something else.
• Tone: The feeling of the story.

Text Factors of Nonfiction Books: The way nonfiction literature is formatted in order to best present the information to the reader.

Expository Text Structures:

• Description: The author describes something by listing characteristics.
• Sequence: Events are listed in chronological order.
• Cause-Effect: The author shows a cause along with the resulting effects.
• Problem-Solution: The author shows a problem along with its potential solutions.

Text Factors of Poetry: The layout of a poem.

Formats of Poetry: Picture book versions of a single poem, specialized collections of poems, or comprehensive anthologies of a poet’s work.

Poetic Forms:

• Rhymed Verse: A poem that rhymes.
• Narrative Poems: Poems that tell a story.
• Haiku: Japanese poem containing three lines with five, seven, and five syllables respectively.
• Free Verse: A poem that does not rhyme or have meter.
• Odes: A poem that praises something.
• Concrete Poems: A poem where the lines are arranged to form a picture.

Minilessons: A sort of “subplot” of the lesson plan. The teaching of processes, strategies, concepts, etc. that are all included within the main lesson.

Comprehension Strategies: Methods of comprehending the meaning of a literary work.

Assessing Knowledge of Text Factors:

• Planning: Teachers decide what they will teach and how they will assess what they teach.
• Monitoring: Teachers track their students’ progress.
• Evaluating: Teachers encourage their students to apply what they have learned.
• Reflecting: Teachers facilitate the process of students reflecting on what they have learned.

Classroom Application:

In the classroom, it is most important that students comprehend the literary content, rather than simply learner how to spit out information onto a piece of paper. One way of ensuring that students understand what they are learning is to ask them to write their own literary pieces in a specific style or with specific features.

Key Vocabulary:

Word Wall: Important words that the teacher has written down and posted on a wall of the classroom.

Academic Vocabulary: Words that are commonly used in academic contexts, but not necessarily in everyday conversation.

Three Tiers of Words:

• Basic Words: Words used in everyday contexts.
• Academic Words: Words used in academic contexts.
• Specialized Terms: Words only used in one specific context.

Levels of Word Knowledge: The stage of understanding that a student is at when it comes to the meaning of the word.

Word Consciousness: A student’s desire, or lack thereof, to learn new words.

Multiple Word Meanings: Depending on context, different words can carry different meanings.

Synonyms: Words that have the same meaning.

Antonyms: Words that have opposite meanings.

Homonyms: Words with different meanings that either sound the same or are spelled the same.

Root Words and Affixes: A root word can be any word from any language that other words are derived from. In English, the most common foreign root words are Latin and Greek. Affixes are additions to either the beginning or the end of a word that give it a different meaning.

Etymologies: The history of how a word was derived.

Vocabulary Instruction: The process of teaching students new words.

Explicit Instruction: Directly teaching the meaning of a word. Typically done for tier two words, or academic words.

Mini Lessons: A sort of “subplot” of the lesson plan. The teaching of processes, strategies, concepts, etc. that are all included within the main lesson.

Word-Study Activities: Activities meant to help students both learn and remember new words.

Semantic Feature Analysis: Students learn words by comparing them to words with similar meanings.

Word-Learning Strategies: The methods students use to decipher unfamiliar words.

How to Figure Out Unfamiliar Words: You can use context clues or analyze the parts of the word, or you can just look it up in a dictionary.

How to Assess Vocabulary Knowledge: Plan ahead to teach at the students’ levels, monitor the students’ progress, evaluate the students’ progress, and reflect on the effectiveness of the instruction.

Classroom Application:

When teaching English language learners, it is important to keep in mind the three tiers of words. Tier 1 words, or basic words, are the easiest to teach to EL learners because they are typically words that the student knows in their first language. Tier 2 words, or academic words, are more difficult because they often require knowledge of the less common tier 1 words. Tier 3 words, or specialized terms, are the most difficult because they are very uncommon and the student may not even know the word in their first language. Regardless of the tier, it can be useful to directly translate the words, if possible.

Key Vocabulary:

Reading Fluency: A student’s ability to read quickly and accurately while also comprehending the reading.

Automaticity: A student’s ability to read a familiar word without sounding it out.

Speed: Literally the speed at which a student reads. A.K.A Words per Minute

Prosody: Expression and intonation while reading.

High Frequency Words: Common words that readers do not need to sound out because they can recognize them.

Word Walls: Important words that the teacher has written down and posted on a wall of the classroom.

Word Identification Strategies: Strategies that readers use to figure out unfamiliar words.

Phonic Analysis: A word identification strategy where the student sounds out a word.

Decoding by Analogy: A word identification strategy where students compare an unknown word to a similar known word in order to learn the unknown word. E.g. hat compared to cat.

Syllabic Analysis: A word identification strategy where students break unknown words into their individual syllables in order to more easily determine how to pronounce it.

Morphemic Analysis: A word identification strategy where students remove the prefixes and suffixes of the unknown word.

Interactive Writing: The students working with the teacher to write a single message.

Guided Reading: Personalized instruction for small groups of students who are at similar reading levels.

Language Experience Approach: Teaching students how to read and write based on the vocabulary that they already have experience with.

Choral Reading: A small group of students who are at a similar reading level reading in unison.

Assessing Reading Fluency: The process of a teacher formally or informally tracking a student’s improvement in their reading fluency.

Activities to Increase Reading Practice: Any reading activity that helps a student improve their reading fluency.

Rubrics: Scoring guides for assignments.

Running Records: Formal records documenting whether a specific book is in a student’s Independent Reading Level, Instructional Reading Level, or Frustrational Reading Level.

Writer’s Voice: The words, phrases, and syntax choices that a writer uses.

Dysfluent Readers and Writers: Students who are not fluent in either reading or writing.

Obstacles to Fluency: Anything that gets in the way of a student’s fluency.

Classroom Application:

As a teacher, it is important to keep track of your students’ reading fluency. Students who are not able to read fluently are not able to comprehend the meaning of the reading and are therefore not able to enjoy the reading. If students do not enjoy reading, they will be less interested and will not improve in their fluency. Obviously, this is not a good outcome, so it is important for teachers to track their students’ fluency and intervene if necessary.

Key Vocabulary:

Shared Reading: The teacher and students reading a passage together as a group.

Interactive Reading: A passage is read to students with periodic breaks for discussion.

Choral Reading: A small group of students who are at a similar reading level reading in unison.

Guided Reading: Reading in small groups of students at similar reading levels.

Word Wall: Important words that the teacher has written down and posted on a wall of the classroom.

Mini Lessons: A sort of “subplot” of the lesson plan. The teaching of processes, strategies, concepts, etc. that are all included within the main lesson.

Interactive Read Aloud: The teacher reads the book to the students while the students engage in activities related to the content of the reading.

Concepts of Print: The basics of how print works, such as the direction of the print, letters, punctuation, etc.

Concepts About Words: The process students go through from not knowing what words are, to knowing that words stand for things, to knowing that words carry meaning and build stories, to knowing that words have meaning in and of themselves and can be written, spoken, listened to, and read.

Concepts About the Alphabet: The way that letters translate to phonemes.

Routines to Teach the Alphabet: Any method that can be used for students to practice and learn the alphabet.

Environmental Print: The words around students such as those on logos.

Assessing Concepts of Written Language: Measuring students’ understandings of print, words, and the alphabet.

Emergent Reading and Writing Stage: Understanding the purpose of print and being able to pretend to read predictable books.

Beginning Reading and Writing Stage: Student is able to use phonics to sound out and spell complicated words while being able to write and fluently read high-frequency words.

Fluent Reading and Writing Stage: Student is able to automatically and fluidly read and write while focusing on the meaning behind what they are reading and writing.

Revising Groups: Groups of students working together to improve their writing.

Morning Message: A message that teachers write to their students about what will happen during their day that the students then use to practice reading.

Predictable Books: Books with repetitive sentences that students can pick up on quickly.

Language-Experience Approach: (LEA) The students say words and sentences which the teacher then writes down.

Manuscript Handwriting: Practicing handwriting and proper pencil holding.

Classroom Application:

I especially liked the concept of the morning message. I remember teachers when I was growing up writing down the schedule for the day, but not having us actively read it and comprehend. Once I have my own classroom, I plan on using this strategy, regardless of the age of my students. Even if they are reading fluently, it can be helpful for students to know what to expect throughout their day.

Key Vocabulary:

Running Records: Formal records documenting whether a specific book is in a student’s Independent Reading Level, Instructional Reading Level, or Frustrational Reading Level.

Minilessons: A sort of “subplot” of the lesson plan. The teaching of processes, strategies, concepts, etc. that are all included within the main lesson.

Book Talk: The process of a student describing a book that they have read to their class. This includes stating what the book is and who wrote it, along with engaging the classmates and piquing interest.

4 Steps of Assessment: Planning for assessment, monitoring students’ progress, evaluating students’ learning, and reflecting on students’ learning.

Anecdotal Notes: Notes that teachers take recording observations they have made of their students.

Rubrics: Scoring guides for assignments.

Portfolios: A student’s collection of their work used to evaluate their progress.

Independent Reading Level: The student is able to read a book easily on their own with an accuracy of 95-100%.

Instructional Reading Level: The student is able to read a book with minimal support with an accuracy of 90-94%.

Frustrational Reading Level: The student is unable to read a book. They have less than 90% accuracy.

Guided Reading: Reading in small groups of students at similar reading levels.

Leveled Books: Books labeled according to their reading levels. They can be labeled based on grade level, the Fountas and Pinnell alphabetic levels, or with the Lexile Framework.

Lexile Framework: The use of word familiarity and sentence complexity to rank a student’s reading level and the reading level of any given book on a scale of 100-1300.

Informal Reading Inventories: A test that measures a student’s reading level.

Miscue Analysis: The process of analyzing a student’s reading mistakes in order to determine their reading strategies and strengths.

SOLOM: Student Oral Language Observation Matrix. A rating scale of an English learner’s understanding of the English language.

Five Components of Oral Language: Listening, fluency, vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar.

KWL Charts: A chart created by students showing what they know, what they want to know, and what they learned about a subject during any given lesson.

Test-Taking Strategies: Read and understand the entire question first, look for key words in the question, read all choices before answering a multiple choice question, answer easier questions first, make smart guesses, don’t change your answer unless sure that your original answer is wrong, pace yourself, and carefully check your work.

High-Stakes Testing: Test meant to measure a student’s knowledge of a subject objectively. Used to judge students’, teachers’, administrators’, and schools’ performances.

Portfolio Assessment: The use of a student’s Portfolio to assess their progress.

Classroom Application:

Monitoring students’ progress is one of the most important parts of being a teacher. Regardless of how high or low their reading levels are, students should constantly be improving. If they are not, the teacher needs to intervene, if they have not already. Several of the vocabulary terms above, such as Portfolio Assessments, SOLOM, and Running Records describe very useful assessment tools that language arts teachers can use with their students.

Key Vocabulary:

The Reading Process: The process that readers go through in order to understand what they are reading.

Stages of Reading/What Happens in Each Stage: Prereading, Reading, Responding, Exploring, and Applying.

• Prereading: Becoming aware of the reading’s genre, purpose, and reading level while also preparing for new vocabulary.
• Reading: The stage of reading, or being read to, either as a group or individually while also examining any images, graphs, or charts.
• Responding: Either taking part in a discussion regarding the reading or writing down one’s individual thoughts in a reading log or reading journal.
• Exploring: Rereading as needed in order to aide in comprehension, along with reinforcing new vocabulary words.
• Applying: Either finding more information by reading similar books or using the information gained from the book to create a project of some sort.

Phonemic Awareness: The recognition of the smallest unit of sound in a word, without the use of physical written words. For example, the “c” sound in “cat.”

Phonics: The application of placing certain sounds to certain letters or combination of letters.

Word Identification: Recognizing common words without needing to sound them out and the ability to sound out uncommon and difficult words, all depending on the appropriate reading level.

Fluency: The speed at which a student is able to read a passage while also comprehending the meaning.

Vocabulary: Knowing the definition or meaning of a word.

Comprehension: An understanding of vocabulary combined with an understanding of the context.

Background Knowledge: What students know before reading or writing any given literary piece.

Mini Lessons: A sort of “subplot” of the lesson plan. The teaching of processes, strategies, concepts, etc. that are all included within the main lesson.

Guided Reading: Reading in small groups of students at similar reading levels.

Shared Reading: The teacher and students reading a passage together as a group.

Interactive Read-Aloud: The teacher reads the book to the students while the students engage in activities related to the content of the reading.

Word Wall: Important words that the teacher has written down and posted on a wall of the classroom.

Word Sorts: Students sorting words into predetermined categories.

Readers Theater: A sort of play that does not involve any props. The students read their lines in front of the class while in character. Sort of like a table reading for actors.

The Writing Process: The strategies involved in writing.

Stages of Writing Process/What Happens in Each Stage: Prewriting, Drafting, Revising, Editing, and Publishing.

• Prewriting: Determining the topic, purpose, and genre of the writing while also gathering all of the information necessary to the writing.
• Drafting: Creating a rough draft with enough white space on the page for written editing and revision.
• Revising: Fixing errors in either the grammar of the rough draft or the ideas included in the rough draft both individually and with the help of others.
• Editing: Repeating the revising stage as many times as necessary in order to perfect the writing.
• Publishing: Creation of the final draft which will then be shared with the intended audience.

Reading Strategies/Writing Strategies: Examples include sounding words out, drawing inferences, taking notes, organizing ideas, proofreading, and layout designs of the final draft.

Classroom Application:

Reading benefits writing and writing benefits reading. The more students are able to read, the more they will be able to write, and vice versa. As teachers, we need to place equal emphasis on both of these processes in order to give our students the greatest possible chance of succeeding. Any activity that involves reading should also involve writing.

Key Vocabulary:

Scaffolding: Teaching students by building upon the foundation set by previous lessons.

Shared Reading: As the term implies, this is the process of the teacher and the students sharing in the process of reading a book or passage.

Language Experience Approach: Teaching students how to read an write based on the vocabulary that they already have experience with.

Choral Reading: A small group of students who are at a similar reading level reading in unison.

Readers Theater: A sort of play that does not involve any props. The students read their lines in front of the class while in character. Sort of like a table reading for actors.

Interactive Writing: The students working with the teacher to write a single message.

Mini-Lessons: Practice activities for the students that the teacher supervises and helps wherever needed.

Reading Programs: An example would be Basal Reading Programs.

Guided Reading: Personalized instruction for small groups of students who are at similar reading levels.

Literature Circles: A sort of in class “book club” for small groups of students at similar reading levels.

Differentiation: The act of adjusting instruction for each student’s needs.

Nurturing English Learners: Including English Learners in the same classroom setting as native level English speaking students while also providing the EL’s with the necessary additional supports.

Assessment: The process of constantly monitoring the students’ level of understanding of the subjects.

Running Records: A specific type of informal assessment.

Linking Instruction and Assessment in Four Steps: Planning reading lessons based on previous knowledge of the students’ levels, monitoring the students’ progress, evaluating students’ learning, and reflecting on how effective the teaching strategies have been.

Rubrics: A detailed list or chart describing what students should be able to achieve in any given lesson.

Classroom Application:

The main thing that this half of the chapter seems to be highlighting is the importance of interactive lessons. Rather than just “downloading” information onto our students, we need to create activities that include the students’ as much as, if not more than, the teacher. This has the added benefit of reducing the chances that students will get bored and begin to misbehave.

Key Vocabulary:

Behaviorism: A teaching theory that believes that a student’s behavior can be learned through the use of consequences. It is also the belief that teachers serve the role of giving information to their students, rather than guiding their students to finding the information themselves.

Constructivism: A teaching theory that believes that students construct their knowledge by building on what they have previously learned. Also known as “scaffolding.”

Schema Theory: The theory that people store information into different “folders” in their brains, called schemas.

Inquiry Learning: A theory by John Dewey that claims that students are naturally curious and learn best by working with their peers, rather than in competition with them, in environments that encourage asking questions and finding answers.

Engagement Theory: The theory that students who are engaged in the content of a class are more likely to be self-motivated to do the work.

Sociolinguistics: Learning through verbal communication with others.

Information Processing: Similar to the Schema Theory. The idea that people store information in their minds like computers.

Phonological System: The approximate number of sounds in any given language. In English, there are about 44.

Styntactic System: Also known as “grammar” or the order that words appear in a sentence. For example, in Spanish, “la manzana rojo” (literally “the apple red”) compared to “the red apple” in English.

Semantic System: The meaning of words depending on context.

Pragmatic System: The differences in a language between different social settings.

Common Core Standards: The standards of knowledge that students should know in a given subject by the time they reach a certain grade level.

Balanced Literacy Components: The practice of using aspects of several learning theories in order to teach. In my opinion, this is the only effective way of teaching.

Classroom Application:

In class, we learned about Phonological Awareness (the recognition of any given sound), Phonemic Awareness (the recognition of the different sounds within a word), and Phonics (the matching of a sound in a word to a letter or combination of letters). These concepts could all be taught in one lesson. First, have the students identify the sounds in each of the words sat, hat, dog, log, big, and dig (phonemic awareness). Next, have the students identify which of the words rhyme with one another (phonological awareness). Finally, have the students match the written words to a corresponding picture (phonics).