Module 2: Activities 1 & 2

Activity 1:

Complete Exercise #3c on page 58 in the text: first write a definition of each word listed. Did you notice yourself using any fairly consistent principle for determining what the words might mean? Discuss. Then read the first chapter of A Clockwork Orange to find the meanings of at least six of the words: http://www.hubertlerch.com/pdf/Burgess_A_Clockwork_Orange.pdf. In each case, how do you finally determine what the word means? 

Word	Original Definition	Definition after reading text
creech	A sound word, noise	Scream, exclaim
droogs	To walk slowly	Friends
glazzies	Something that is glazed
goloss	Something that is glossy	Voice
malenky	In a bad or boring way	Little
messel	A container	Feeling
millicents	Something small or a small amount
poogly	To describe something in a bad way	Afraid
razrez	fast	Shred
skorry	Something scary or maybe to move quickly	Quick
spatted	A past tense verb meaning to fight or argue
zoobies	Small creatures

            Prior to reading the text, I used inflectional endings, root words, prefixes, and suffixes to help me determine the meanings of the words.  I found A Clockwork Orange very hard to read due to the nonsense words.  I guess this is how children feel when they come across unfamiliar or challenging words while reading.  I found it very hard to focus on the text, and I didn’t comprehend much while reading.  It was obvious to me that I was using context clues before and after each word to determine a sensible meaning.  Before reading the Weaver text I probably wouldn’t have really thought about “how” I was figuring out a meaning in a text such as this one.  Weaver made a good point on page 49 when she said, “Fluent readers use context so automatically that they are rarely conscious of doing so.”  That is so true, but because I read that prior to reading A Clockwork Orange, I was aware of how I was using context to determine meaning.  Without the context I relied on syntactic cues to determine the meaning of the words, but with the context I relied more heavily on semantic cues to understand the meaning.  I find activities such as these enlightening, and it really makes me look at text from a beginning reader’s point of view.            

Activity 2:

Read Exercise 7 on p. 85 and rather than showing it to an audience, complete the exercise yourself. Answer the questions, including the two at the top of p. 86.

·         I did not try to read the words letter by letter.  I looked for blends and digraphs in each word.  I also looked at the pronunciation key for help.

·         I did use syllables to section the words into parts.  Since the words were unfamiliar to me, I found the pronunciation key useful.  

·         I have an idea, but I’m not exactly sure what “sampling the letters” means, so I think I mostly relied on "chunking" into syllables.

·         Quite honestly, I’m not sure I know the meaning of any of these words.  At least not out of context. 

·         I do not think pronouncing the words gave me insights into their meanings.  I didn’t notice any root words that triggered a definition in my head.

·         I know now I mostly use semantic cues, before and after an unknown word, to determine meaning while I read.  Sometimes I also rely on a dictionary.  

This experiment proves, once again, that reading words in context provides a better understanding of their meaning than reading them in isolated lists.  The information I’ve recently learned makes me not want to ever use sight word lists in my class again or at least use them less.  I have learned that students need a variety of strategies to help them correctly say a new/difficult word and determine that word’s meaning.  Syntactic and semantic cues are both important in teaching a child to read.  I’m going to try to keep all of this in mind when I’m teaching reading in the future.  I like how both of these activities have brought good points about learning to read to my attention by putting me in the “learner’s shoes” rather than my normal teacher role.  

Module 2: Reading Reflection

Reading Reflection Prompt:  After reading Chapters 3 and 4, return to the quote from Harper and Kilarr on p. 41. Respond to this quote on your blog, saying whether you agree or disagree and explain why or why not using ample evidence from the text to support your assertions.

I agree with Harper and Kilarr’s quote about reading instruction and how it isn’t an exact process.  I do not believe a reader must read every word in a passage or story correctly in order to gain meaning from the text.  I found the explanation of cloze test of pages 42 and 43 helpful.  Weaver stated that a reader would only need about four-fifths of the words present in a passage to develop an understanding of the text.  This proves how a reader uses syntactic and semantic context in passages containing unfamiliar words to still gain appropriate meaning.  I also found the information Weaver provided in chapter three about how a reader’s schema contributes to identifying and misidentifying words very interesting.  The example, on page 48, using the word “encyclopedia” illustrated this well.  It was interesting to see how a fourth-grade student correctly read the word within a sentence with the typical meaning of encyclopedia, but wasn’t sure how to pronounce the word when it was used as a name.  However, the student was recognizing the word was used in a different context even though he was unsure of the pronunciation.  Therefore, the meaning of the text wasn’t lost.

I was especially intrigued when Weaver’s text made me think about the sight word lists I’ve used in the past.  I guess I’ve never thought about how much beginning readers relied on context, and how reading isolated words might be somewhat awkward.  All the more experienced teachers I work with use sight word lists to assess the students, so I do too, but now I’m questioning that method.  In the past it made sense to me to learn a list of words and then you would be able to recognize those words in sentences, which would lead to reading passages more fluently.  However, it actually does make more sense to use the sight words in phrases or sentences, especially in the primary grades.  Before we left for summer break my team did discuss using Fry Phrases next year, so I am looking forward to implementing those after reading this chapter.    

Through various reading strategies readers learn new words, their meanings, and begin to understand challenging texts.  It’s not whether they read with 100% accuracy or a certain number of words per minute that’s most important, but whether they understand what they are reading and comprehend the text to the point of being able to discuss it with others.  This is something I have brought to my classroom parents’ attention when they would be upset that their straight “A” child had a low fluency score.  I’ve had children in my classroom who read at a slower rate than average and/or would miss a few words, but could accurately answer questions and discuss the text.  I believe this goes along with the point Harper and Kilarr were making in their quote.          

Module 1: Instructional Challenge

Module 1: Instructional Challenge

Read the following passage:

Hocked gems financing him, our hero defied the scornful laughter. “Think of it as an egg, not a table,” he said. Then three sturdy sisters sought proof, forging over vast calmness, and sometimes over turbulent peaks and valleys, until at last welcome winged creatures appeared, signifying monumental success.

Answer these questions about the passage:

1. What are the hocked gems?  I really didn’t understand the majority of this passage after reading it several times, so I decided to do some research.  I found out this story is related to Christopher Columbus.  I think hocked gems are something he traded to get money or other necessary items to go on a journey.   

2. What should we think of as an egg and not a table?  Since I now know this passage is referring to Christopher Columbus and my schema of Christopher Columbus is he proved the earth was round by sailing around the world, I now think “egg” and “table” are referring to the earth.  The table is referring to people believing the earth was flat, but Christopher Columbus is telling them to think of the earth being a rounded shape like an egg.

3. Who are the three sturdy sisters?  Before doing any research I immediately thought of the three sturdy sisters as ships.  More specifically, I thought the ships were the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.  I used my background knowledge to arrive at this answer, because I know ships are usually referred to or named as female.  After researching, I realized “Then three sturdy sisters sought proof,” means that by sailing on these three ships Christopher Columbus will prove the earth is indeed round.     

4. What kind of winged creatures appeared?  I automatically thought of winged creatures as being birds.  The explorers would have been glad to finally see the birds because this would mean land is close. 

If you were to use this passage with students, what schema would you need to activate with them first? How can you help teach children whose schema and the text’s content don’t match? How much time should children spend in texts that don’t match their interests or schema? 

In order to successfully use this passage in the classroom, I would need to teach students who Christopher Columbus is, and why he is an important historical figure.  I would do this by leading them through the research process and exposing them to books, pictures, and videos about Christopher Columbus.  This exposure would help the children who do not have a schema that matches the context of this text.  Once they are taught who Christopher Columbus is, and have been introduced to various resources about him their schema will start to build.  I think children should be exposed to texts that don’t match their interest or schema, that way they have an opportunity to gain an interest in something new and develop new schema.  However, if the student doesn’t take interest in the text or doesn’t seem to understand text after a sufficient amount of time, I think the text should be substituted for something more appropriate for the reader.  This is where teachers can implement needs based instruction.  Students can use a variety of books on various levels, but still be able to learn the same skills.         

Module 1: Activity 1

Module 1: Activity 2

Module 1: Activity 2

Exercise #5 on p. 39

a.  What is a corandic?  Corandic is an emurient grof with many fribs.

b.  What does a corandic grank from?  From corite

c.  How do garkers excarp the tarances from the corite?  Garkers excarp by glarcking the corite and starping it in tranker-clarped storbs.

d.  What does the slorp finally frast?  A pragety, blickant crankle: coranda

e.  What is coranda?  A cargurt, grinkling corandic and borigen

f.  How is the corandic nacerated from the borigen?  By means of loracity

g.  What do the garkers finally thrap?  A glick, bracht, glupous grapant, corandic, which granks in many starps. 

How is it that you are able to answer such questions?

I was able to answer these questions because it didn’t require much thought, and I didn’t have to prove how I knew any of the answers.  It was simple because all I had to do was pick out key words in the questions and then find the same key words in the passage and copy down the other words that directly followed.  Another thing that made answering these questions easy is the fact that the questions were listed in the same order as the story.  Even though I think I answered these questions correctly, I’ve gathered no true meaning from the passage.  I couldn’t tell or teach someone else about what I just read.  I do know that the main idea is information about corandic, and I believe this would be a non-fiction passage, but I haven’t learned anything significant from the passage. 

What does this experience suggest about the kinds of “comprehension” questions found in workbooks and on standardized tests?

This activity clearly shows how a struggling reader could perform well on a test, especially if he/she had been taught test taking skills.  The questions didn’t require you to actually understand what you read.  I know I’ve seen and given reading assignments such as these.  However, it’s more obvious to me now, after completing the assignment myself with non-sense words, that this isn’t a true or ideal assessment.  This is why performance-based activities and assessments are considered to be a more accurate view of what children truly know.