Emergent Lit

As some of my classmates have mentioned, I was initially hesitant about becoming a “blogger” for class.  I have had too many graduate classes where we “post” on blackboard for seemingly no reason at all.  As it turns out, I think blogging for Emergent Literacy has really helped to facilitate my learning!  Success!  I like the fact that we are blogging- and that Julie suggested that we could write however we wanted to, about whatever we wanted to.  I also like the fact that my classmates have interpreted the assignment in all different ways, so I’ve had fun and learned things from reading their posts.  I think writing about one article or topic is limiting and probably stifled my thinking and creativity in the past.

After reading through my posts again, I realized a few things.  First, most of my posts addressed the articles that we read in class.  I really enjoyed reading teacher posts about how they experienced literacy in their classrooms, and I tried to do that when I had relevant stories to share.  Reading those connections to the “real world” has been really helpful to me, but since I’m not a teacher, I don’t feel like I have as many relevant stories to share.  Instead, I found it more helpful to break down what I liked, disliked, and didn’t understand in our articles.  I loved re-reading my blogs and having a great summary of what I found most interesting about the articles I read. 

As a learner of emergent literacy concepts, I have learned an insane amount.  More than I ever guessed possible.  I came into this class knowing I didn’t have much of a literacy background, but hoping that I’d leave being better able to serve the students I work with.  I have learned SO MUCH!  Instead of mumbling technical terms like phonemic awareness, dialogic reading, etc.- I feel like I can intelligently discuss them with teachers!  Success!  I was reading through a child’s WJ-III results the other day and felt like I was specifically able to pick out what the child was “using” and “using-but-confusing” and then create recommendations for the teachers based off those observations. 

My kidwatching project has been a huge help in applying my classroom learning to practice.  I certainly wouldn’t call myself a teacher, but I felt empowered working with a student and seeing her progress over the semester.  I will definitely be taking continuing education classes in the teaching department when I’m working next year! 

As a blogger, I think my style has basically stayed the same throughout, except as the weeks went on, I felt more confident sharing my opinions because I felt more knowledgeable about the topics.  I also made an effort to connect my experiences as a school psychologist to the experiences of the teachers in our class, readings, and videos.

In terms of my participation in a community of teachers, the truth is that I think I’ve gained much more from my classmates than I’ve taught them.  Hopefully that’s alright, considering that in the future I think I will be much more effective Student Services/IEP team member.  Participating with these teachers in the context of school has helped me to hear more about their honest opinions and struggles in their classrooms, and I think that’s given me great perspective on how a school functions.  I especially appreciated when people gave me suggestions in their comments, but I didn’t feel as comfortable giving suggestions since I’m not really a teacher.  In the future, though, I think participating in an online community of school psychologists would be a really great idea. 

Overall, this class has far exceeded my expectations and I think blogging has really helped me to solidify my thoughts and opinions about our readings and to learn from other’s experiences.

I really liked the way that Chapter 9 in Teaching Early Literacy was written. In my opinion, the authors were able to strike a great balance between presenting the facts and interjecting some opinion or criticism. By laying out the different approaches to identifying children for reading interventions (predictive, descriptive, unilateral, and ecological), I felt like I was able to better understand how “Anna’s Plan” would work in a school. I loved the focus on considering the entire child within a system! Last year, I conducted a Needs Assessment of the school I was working in for externship. In that assessment, we were asked to identify strengths and weaknesses of the school, and to make suggestions to the school based on our findings. I think Anna’s Plan is using the same framework- why bother to implement a costly program if it can’t be implemented with fidelity or can’t reach the number of students that need it? Well- I guess I can figure out why you’d bother, but it seems like an ecological approach has a much better chance of being successful.

I also liked the way that the authors presented NCLB law in relation to the NRP’s reading report. I have learned a lot about NCLB in my education, but never from a reading education perspective. I feel like I have a much better understanding of the topic now- and as I mentioned before, I thought the author’s did a nice job of balancing fact with criticism.

I was less crazy about this week’s journal article by Gaskins and Labbo. Although I have lots of interesting sentences highlighted throughout, I felt like 30 chapters was too much to summarize into one article without having read the book first. To me, this article felt somewhat like the article felt somewhat like a summary of our class, except that it didn’t address the research-practice gap like most of our learning has. Instead, it seemed to mostly just focus on the research and glazed over some more practical applications. I think this sentence, from page 443, is a good example of what I mean: “In chapter 11, Pianta provides a systems model of two intersecting factors within the child and within the adult-child relationship. In chapter 12, Hoff explores home factors. Senechal, Ouellette, and Rodney (chapter 13) reanalyze data from their longitudinal studies to determine the role of vocabulary knowledge in kindergarten on subsequent comprehension years later. On the other hand, I did like the way that the author’s tied multiple chapter findings together to form cohesive summaries. I also liked the connection between this article and Chapter 9 in Barone, Mallette, and Xu- they both seemed to endorse looking at the child from a systems-oriented/ecological perspective, rather than just a deficit approach. I noticed that Gaskins and Labbo used the term “at-risk” many times in the journal article, and I think I was cognizant of that because I had just read the Barone, Mallette, and Xu article on defining that term. Gaskins and Labbo later defined “at-risk” as children who “differ from mainstream culture in school with respect to language, dialects, home customs, and low SES”.

I really liked the learner.org video about collaboration between teacher and parent. I have been trying to write down my favorite part- but there were so many concepts I loved in there! I thought the parent-teacher conference where the child presented their work was a great idea. The students really seemed to be proud of their ownership and they were able to articulate their strengths. It probably gives them a vested interest in completing their work and growing academically, which is so important at the beginning of children’s development.

I also liked the academic facts that the teachers were passing on to the parents. I think it’s really important to respect parents and make them feel as included as they are willing to be. Instead of treating the meetings like a burden (which I’m guessing it sometimes is), the teachers pulled the parents in and helped increase the congruence between home and school.

That leads me to my next compliment for the video- I loved how they included the parent perspective during parent teacher conferences. As a school psychology student, we are asked to work with parents in eligibility and IEP meetings. The teachers in the video had a discussion about the balance between presenting data (the DRA) without becoming too technical- that is definitely a struggle I can relate to! I thought the facilitator did a nice job of bringing some summary to the discussion when she confirmed the value of presenting all the facts to the parents while also remaining aware of parent feedback. This video also encouraged me to ask the parents more questions about their child- the parent interviewed in this interview was right about knowing their child very well and by involving the parent, the match between home and school is more likely to be effective and helpful for the child.

Did anyone else have some issues with the readings on teaching ELL students (written by Gersten & Geva and Gillanders)? While I thought both articles had helpful pieces of information in them, I did not feel like they were quite as helpful as most of our readings.

Specifically, I felt like Christina Gillanders did not really convince me that “Sarah’s” affective and social nature necessarily brought about change in her classroom. While I would certainly say a caring environment is critical to all childrens development, I didn’t feel like Dr. Gillanders made her case well enough. First, this was a case study of only four Latino children in a class of sixteen students total- when does that ever happen today?! Second, she did not have any control group or statistics to compare her case study to. Even though the student’s PPVT scores may have been higher than the average Head Start ELL student’s PPVT scores, how does she know that isn’t due to smaller class size, or a variety of other confounding factors? To her credit, I think she did a nice job of highlighting some classroom techniques for teaching ELL students, but I wasn’t crazy about the way she framed her article around the affective and social nature of the classroom. Yes, I do think it was probably good for the Latino students that their classmates and teachers were interesting in their native language- but I’m just not convinced that was the paramount reason they made gains that year.

I liked the Gersten and Geva article better. I really liked how they laid out the six principles that they observed in effective classrooms and I liked that they gave research-based examples of the fact that English Language Learners can learn literacy skills at the same rate as their native English-speaking peers. The only part I found confusing about their article was- why did they include the section about identifying ELL students with learning disorders. That is obviously a huge issue for school psychologists and SST/IEP team members, but I just didn’t feel like that topic flowed with the rest of their article and I needed more practical examples of how to tell the difference between delayed development due to language versus a learning disability.

I found our Chapter 3 reading in Barone, Mallette and Xu to be really interesting and helpful. From a practical standpoint, my kidwatching student is in first grade and is an ELL- so it was helpful for getting some ideas and interventions to implement with her. Also, the book gave a lot of great, practical examples of how to work with students who are learning English as their second language and those recommendations are something I can pass on to the teachers I work with. The authors seemed to break down suggestions into very simple concepts that seem obvious, but it was helpful to see them listed and articulated in practitioner terms. For example- slow down your speech and gesture to help increase context clues. Great ideas that I never really thought about before! I also liked that the authors acted as if English language learners were capable of learning all the same things as English as a first language students. They focused on basic literacy lessons, such as read alouds, and then just added some small modifications that would be helpful to the entire class and ELL students specifically.

I also liked the learner.org video about ELL students. I had already heard many of the beginning comments about who ELL students are, family literacy habits, etc. because I have met with our school’s ELL teacher about many similar topics. I think a lot of people, including myself, feel intimidated by working with ELL students because most educators do not have a lot of training in how to work with that student group. The more exposure and training I get with working with different students, the more comfortable I feel when I meet these children in “real life”. As I’ve mentioned before- the kindergarten class I observe and work in has 11/22 ELL students. Similarly to the book, I think the video did a nice job of focusing on the idea that all students can learn from the same strategies that ELL students benefit from.

Gibson, H., & Patrick, H.  (2008).  Putting words in their mouths: The role of teaching assistants and the spectre of scripted pedagogy.  Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 8(1), 25-41.

I am interested in the policy /government aspect of education, so the article “Putting Words in their Mouths: The role of teaching assistants and the spectre of scripted pedagogy” caught my eye in the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy.  This article was written to analyze current curriculum guidelines in the United Kingdom regarding teachers versus teacher’s assistant (TA) roles.   Although I am not aware of any policy-oriented debates regarding TAs, I thought the article was similar to American issues because a) NCLB didn’t seem to accomplish the goals it was designed for, and B) I agreed with Julie Justice’s point that TAs are underutilized. 

The article started by quoting the UK national government, reminding readers of their consistent promise to legislate for a curriculum, but “it would not tell teachers how to teach”.  The authors believe the government has recently started dictating teacher style by mandates blurring the lines of teacher vs. TA, AND by not allowing TAs enough autonomy for the level of work they are expected to perform.  The authors mentioned whole-class teaching as an example of TA classroom roles, however the educational training required to become a TA has not changed.  The authors write, “while TAs are being given increased responsibility, they are not being given authority to engage in serious professional judgment about the nature of pedagogy.” 

I fully agree with this article- and think the government forces many professionals to assume roles that they are not necessarily qualified for.  I worked in a school where the head teacher in a self-contained class for kids with Autism had no real specialized training except her Special Education degree.  As a school psychology graduate student, I am often asked to provide recommendations for children with learning disabilities and yet this is really the only curriculum class I’ve ever taken.  I think the government needs to stop trying to cut costs by understaffing/redistributing responsibilities, and they need to fund excellence in the schools.  I’m pretty sure most people in the School of Ed. will agree with me…

I think the running records website is a really helpful tool for school professionals.  As school psychologists, curriculum based assessments are becoming a common tool for assessing kids frustrational-mastery skills and I think that is a great trend in the field.  I don’t think “standardized” are particularly helpful for developing targeted interventions for kids.  This website was really detailed and I liked the fact that they even included voice clips to exemplify their points. 

I did have a couple specific questions though.  Most importantly, my “kidwatching” student is not to the point of reading ANY book at 90% accuracy.  Every error she makes would probably be because of “meaning” because she basically looks at the pictures and tries to determine what the page is saying.  How can running records be used for children who are not independently reading yet?

Second, I thought their example of how to intervene if a child is making errors due to meaning was helpful- but what other interventions could be used for syntax or visual errors?  I thought the website should have covered intervention more- since they acknowledged on the first page that teachers often become frustrated with running records because they do not seem applicable to their class.  Better yet, what are some of the common errors found from running records for 5, 6, 7, 8 year-olds, etc.?  That would have been helpful to me because then teachers could know to look out for them, and maybe develop a class lesson to discuss.  This website made it seem a little like all of the interventions should probably be one-on-one (which is great- but not always that easy to implement).

Third- from a practical standpoint- we are usually taught to do the running record over the text.  They seemed to mention a blank piece of paper a lot.  Would you just leave your check marks on the blank page and tally them up later?  Is that as helpful for referencing back to later in the year?  Or, more likely- did I just misunderstand their directions?

Finally- I just want to mention one thing from the school psych standpoint.  Teachers may have learned this, as well.  I hope teachers are not too disillusioned with their “kit” running records either.  A lot of times, the books in a classroom may all be at level “E” but there is tons of variability within level E.  By using something more standardized for assessment, like DIBLES, you are more likely to truly track a student’s progress over time.  That may not be necessary for preschool assessments, but later that tracking can be really helpful when compared over time or to peers.  Overall- I thought it was really helpful, basic, and helped bridge the research-practice gap for me!

From all of our readings this week, I was most interested in the McGee and Schickendanz article about repeated interactive readings.  First, I thought this article was really well written for practitioners.  In my opinion, the authors did a great job of explaining their rationale for wanting to improve the process of repeated readings with “sophisticated” books!  As a non-teacher, I felt like this was something that I could do with my own children or in the kindergarten classroom where I volunteer.  Not only did the authors clearly operationalize their concepts and details, but they also did a good job of providing clear and practical examples.

Call me naïve, but I had never even considered that some books may not be challenging enough for preschool and kindergarten.  Just last week, I picked out a book to read with a kindergarten student was repetition and rhyming- I didn’t even check to see if I could find a book that would lend itself to analytical questions.  Even if I do ask some questions about predictions and explanations, the idea of re-reading the book with different goals each time was completely new to me.  I am definitely going to bring this idea up when speaking with teachers of young children.  It’s really not just repetition- it’s building and scaffolding information with new vocabulary and understanding.

I think the most challenging aspect of implementing this article would be to find appropriate books.  I think the book would need to a) be interesting to the students, b) have a good balance of novel and learned vocabulary, c) provide a plot that is not so straightforward, and d) have great illustrations to help facilitate children’s comprehension.

As a non-teacher, I found the Language Experience Approach articles to be very interesting.  I liked a lot of the concepts but some of authors’ comments made me question the actual implementation and effectiveness. 

What I liked:  I loved the practical approach of the “Using LEA with Process Writing” article.  I liked how the author broke down the writing process into four teachable parts: prewriting, drafting, revising, and publishing.  I think that basis for writing at the kindergarten level is likely to make these children stronger, more effective writers as they grow and develop into more technical academics.  I also loved the idea of letting students either chose their own topics for writing based on a class-wide vote, or the idea of the teacher finding a topic and having all of the students contribute their own experiences.

Some things I was confused or apprehensive about: As a child of the “whole language” era, I remember not having to correct all of my spelling mistakes when writing in elementary school.  Unfortunately, my middle school teachers were not on the “same page” and I remember having a HECK of a time learning all those spelling words when I got to the upper grades.  Geez- I just learned apparently within the last five years.  I thought the “Revisiting the Language Experience Approach” article did not emphasize the “revision” stage enough and could be doing a disservice to the students as they age.  Also, I was confused about two things.  First, when you write a group story using the Language Experience Approach, are teachers trying to follow the typical beginning-middle-end format of stories?  Is the teacher able to help guide that along?  Otherwise, I’m not sure the class is writing a story- but more, a collection of sentences.  If that’s the goal, that’s fine- but I just didn’t know.  Second, when asking students to correct themselves, I am sure some kids can easily pick up on errors when they hear the sentence read aloud to them.  I can also think of several students in the kindergarten class I volunteer in that would have a difficult time self-monitoring their mistakes.  If the teacher is never supposed to interfere with what the student wrote (so they feel comfortable brainstorming during the prewriting and draft phases), how long does it normally take students to learn from others and start to self-monitor?  I’m guessing that according to the LEA model, the teacher would just keep modeling each different correction technique until it catches on, but I could see that being a little discouraging for the students that are articulating their errors at a slower pace than their classmates.

I found the article, “A culpable CALP” by Maren Aukerman to be extremely interesting and directly related to my own school psychology practice.  I should probably start out by saying, I had never learned about Jim Cummin’s theory of conversational versus academic language.  For 1979, I think that was a pretty progressive way to look at ELL students, and I don’t think it was necessarily rooted in deficit thinking.  Instead, it stated some facts regarding the differences in abilities between conversational and academic English, and it reminded teachers that ELL students are not “stupid”, they are just still learning the language.

On the other hand, I loved how frank and honest Maren Aukerman was in her article, and her assessment of how Cummin’s theory can be interpreted and applied in the less helpful ways:

ELL children have the tough job of figuring out what they are being asked to do by their teachers, and they can best make sense of that through recontextualizing activities and ideas in school, that is, by making sense of what they are learning through the lens of what is already familiar, by themselves actively creating a unique context for what is new to them out of their multiple, infinitely varied experiences in other situations.

I liked the examples of how to “recontextualize” language (such as developing Spanish words to match with different letters), but I think this issue should be addressed much more for student teachers and school practitioners.  We have so many classes on “diversity”, yet very rarely do we get into HOW to address students of diversity.  Are teachers being taught these “real life” examples of recontextualizing, or are they just learning about the Latino culture?  I think actual examples of how to help ELL students would be so much more helpful- in the same way that Dr. Justice said she taught her class of hopeful teachers how to use their classroom assistants.  Instead of just learning the basics, I think we should be taking whole classes about how to assist ELL learners because ESL students such a huge part of American schools today.  I have written up several CALP scores in my psych reports, and was never taught how inaccurate they can be.  I think this article highlights the fact that educators need to learn about both the theory AND the practice in order to be able to help ALL students equally.