Teaching Reading to Every Child

Diane Lapp

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136756146
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This popular text, now in its Fourth Edition, introduces pre-service and in-service teachers to the most current theories and methods for teaching literacy to children in elementary schools. The methods presented are based on scientific findings that have been tested in many classrooms. A wealth of examples, hands-on activities, and classroom vignettes--including lesson plans, assessments, lists of children's literature books to fiction and nonfiction texts, and more--illustrate the methods and bring them to life.The text highlights the importance of teaching EVERY child to become competent in all of the nuances and complexities of reading, writing, and speaking.The value of reflection and peer discussion in learning to expand their students' literacies is emphasized. Readers are encouraged to reflect on their own experiences with reading and teaching throughout their lifetimes--experiences that will serve well in learning to teach reading. "Your Turn" boxes invite readers to think about their views of the material presented, and to talk with colleagues and teachers about their "best ways" of learning this new information. "Did You Notice?" boxes engage readers in observation and analysis of methods and classroom situations discussed in the text. Teachers' stories serve as models of successful teaching and to draw readers into professional dialogue about the ideas and questions raised. End-of-chapter questions and activities provide additional opportunities for reflection and discussion. All of these pedagogical features help readers expand and refine their knowledge in the most positive ways.Topics covered in Teaching Reading to Every Child, Fourth Edition:
*Getting to Know Your Students as Literacy Learners;
*Looking Inside Classrooms: Organizing Instruction;
*Assessing Reading Achievement;
*The Importance of Oral Language in Developing Literacy;
*Word Identification Strategies: Pathways to Comprehension;
*Vocabulary Development;
*Comprehension Instruction: Strategies At Work;
*Content Area Learning;
*What the Teacher Needs to Know to Enable Students' Text Comprehension;
*Writing: Teaching Students to Encode and Compose;
*Discovering the World Through Literature;
*Technology and Media in Reading;
*Teaching Reading to Students Who Are Learning English;
*All Students are Special: Some Need Supplemental Supports and Services to Be Successful; and
*Historical Perspectives on Reading and Reading Instruction. New in the Fourth Edition:
*A new chapter on technology with state-of-the-art applications;
*A new chapter with the most up-to-date information on how vocabulary is learned and on how it is best taught, responding to the national renewed interest in vocabulary instruction;
*A new section on Readers/Writer's workshop with a focus on supporting student inquiry and exploration of multiple genres;
*A more comprehensive chapter on literature instruction and the role of literature in the reading program with examples that support students' multigenre responses;
*A discussion of literary theories with examples for classroom implementation;
*Broader coverage of the phases of reading development from the pre-alphabetic stage to the full alphabetic stage;
*A more inclusive chapter on writing instruction; and
*A thoroughly revised chapter on teaching reading to students who are learning English, including extensive information on assessment and evaluation.

Part One The Wonderful World of Literacy: Getting to Know Your Students, Classrooms, and Your Instructional Style

Chapter 1 Getting to Know Your Students as Literacy Learners

DOI: 10.4324/9780203821275-1

Chapter Goals

To help the reader

• explore ways to get to know students as individuals.
• explore ways to get to know students as learners.
• explore ways to get to know students as literacy learners.

“… What could be clearer; what could be more simple? How could we have lost sight so easily of the solution to our school problems? What our educators need is a camaraderie. A commitment to public education, an independence from bureaucracy an involvement of parents and a belief in students. But … to think that's all that's needed would be a serious miscalculation. What else is needed is something the teachers themselves are reluctant to talk about openly. And it is our respect for them. It is what's missing in America, and it is what's been too long withheld from a profession as important to our national well-being as doctors or captains of industry or TV commentators. From sunup to sundown, the school teacher works harder than you do—no matter what you do. No calling in our society is more demanding than teaching; no calling in our society is more central to the vitality of a democracy than teaching.”

Roger Mudd on Learning in America, PBS

CONGRATULATIONS to you! As Roger Mudd notes, you have chosen to be a member of society's most important profession. As a teacher your knowledge base must be continually growing if you are going to make a positive difference in the lives of your students.

This text is one of the many tools that you can use in your ongoing journey as you gain insights that will help you teach students to explore and develop their multiple literacies. We're glad to be traveling on your learning journey with you. One of our personal goals is to make this text informative and engaging. Consequently, we'll be asking you to write, think, and talk with others about the ideas and issues that we present throughout this book.

Overview Of chapter 1 Objectives

As depicted in the graphic organizer, the focus of chapter 1 is students. This focus reflects our belief that students are the heart of our work as literacy educators. We use vignettes from several teachers' classrooms to explore three central questions in this chapter: How do we get to know our students as individuals? How do we get to know our students as learners? and How do we get to know our students as literacy learners? As you read this chapter, you will also notice that this chapter provides connections to—as well as an overview of—many of the topics you can expect to encounter throughout this entire text.

Now that we have given you an overview of what you can expect to encounter in this chapter, we're wondering what questions/concerns you may have about the chapter content. Please jot down your questions/concerns.

The graphic organizer for this chapter, as well as our chapter description, provides an overview of the questions and issues that we address throughout this chapter. As you read this chapter, please reflect on your questions and the ones that we have sprinkled throughout. At the end of the chapter, we'll review these questions and ask you to address them in writing to submit to your instructor.

Teachers' Stories: Gaining Insights About Students

When we ask classroom teachers about the most important advice they would give to a new teacher, they always say: Get to know your students so that you can meet their literacy learning needs. It so important that new teachers know 1) how their students learn, 2) how their students should be assessed, and 3) how their students will bring different backgrounds to their classrooms—such as English language proficiency, musical talents, and athletic accomplishments as well as some special needs.

There is a large repertoire of instructional strategies that teachers can draw upon as they strive to meet student's literacy learning needs. This wide variety of topics and issues will be addressed throughout this text. Our conversation in this chapter, however, focuses on ways to get to know students as individuals and learners. We begin our conversation with the stories of two of our teacher friends, Ashley and Larry. Both stories offer insights about getting to know students and about working with them as individuals.

Ashley: Wondering About Grouping for Literacy instruction

Ashley, a first grade teacher, described her biggest dilemma: “I never felt like I had my reading groups right. How could I when my students were so varied in performance? Shortly after the beginning of the year, some of my students were still learning the alphabet, and others were reading at the third grade level. I remember thinking that everyone's performance would become more similar as the year progressed, but I was wrong. Throughout the year, everyone gained knowledge so I had to keep changing my groups. I had so many questions about grouping my students effectively for literacy instruction.” Everyone with whom Ashley was speaking, regardless of grade level or years of teaching experience, agreed that the issue of determining which students comprise a reading group is a never-ending question that needs to be continually addressed as we strive to assess and teach all students.

Ashley's dilemma is common. Some might interpret her concern as simply the fact that she doesn't understand grouping, but grouping children is really a complex situation for all teachers. One of Ashley's colleagues, a fourth grade teacher, explained that he struggled with similar issues even though he was a veteran teacher. He explained that after completing initial assessments of his students, he placed five students, Marcus, Karina, Alan, DeAngelo, and Lajuana, in one group. Karena's family decided to enroll her in an after-school program. Additionally, they started spending considerable time reading with her in the evenings at home. After many months of this intensive work outside the classroom as well as her in-class work, Karena showed significant growth and progress. Karena's teacher felt that she would need to become a member of a new group. From this experience, Ashley learned that the structure of her reading groups must remain flexible. The specific children in particular groups should change to meet the evolving needs of the children in a classroom.

Another colleague noted that at the beginning of the year in her second grade classroom, she had become very successful at introducing stories and modeling the use of reading strategies through Shared Reading with the whole class. However, by November, she noticed that some students didn't seem challenged enough during Shared Reading time, and others seemed bored by the repetitious activities. She knew that she needed to group her students in new ways to make sure that they were motivated and receiving appropriate reading instruction each day.

DID YOU NOTICE …

Did you notice that all of the teachers with whom Ashley was speaking grouped their children for literacy instruction? Reading groups must be flexible, and children should be grouped for literacy instruction across all of the grade levels not just in the early elementary grades.

Each of these stories illustrates how difficult it is to establish effective reading groups that serve all students. These stories show us that learning to read and write occurs differently for different individuals. Students are unique; they grow and change in different ways at different rates. Consequently, grouping for literacy instruction is a complex undertaking that should vary across time and contexts. Decisions about grouping for instruction should always be based on the assessment of student's strengths and instructional needs.

Your own students will also have a great deal of variance in their literacy needs, even though they may be quite young. For example, in her research with young students, Patricia Cunningham (2000) found that prior to kindergarten students from middle-class homes may spend up to a thousand hours or more listening to their parents read bedtime stories to them. Clearly, students with this extensive exposure to print have background knowledge about early literacy skills such as concepts of print and the nature and function of written language and story structure that students without exposure to written texts do not.

Fortunately, as teachers, we are capable of complex decision making on an ongoing basis throughout the school year. Your role as an effective teacher will be to learn about your students as individuals as well as literacy learners, and you will need to find appropriate methods, materials, and grouping approaches to develop each student's literacy learning. Making time to learn about your students and then thinking about and planning how to meet their literacy learning needs is a must. Effective teachers allow many hours for instructional planning each week.

Just as students have individual traits so do their teachers. The search for one best method for teaching reading has a long and unsuccessful history (Duffy, 1999). There are many ways to teach reading. Consider for a moment what you would do if you felt seriously ill. You'd go to a doctor, right? Then you'd probably try to explain to the doctor what seemed wrong. Now, assume that your doctor said, regardless of what might be wrong with his patients, he always engages in the same set of procedures to try to restore their health. We're guessing that you'd probably go to a different doctor. You'd undoubtedly want a doctor who diagnosed your specific ailments and worked to correct the specific problem. Although we realize that teaching students to read and write is different from the work of doctors, good teachers, like good doctors, don't employ a one-size-fits-all approach in their work. Just as good doctors carefully assess the specific needs of their patients, good teachers get to know their students an...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Brief Table of Contents
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• PART I The Wonderful World of Literacy: Getting to Know Your Students, Classrooms, and Your Instructional Style
• PART II Developing Literacy Performance and Preferences
• Author Index
• Subject Index