Persona Poetry & I Am Poems!

Persona poetry is a truly excellent way to have kids get involved in readings because they are forced to truly understand who and what a particular character is so that they can successfully create persona poetry! Students are to write as if they are in the shoes of the given character in the story. A students can’t just skim over the words of a text and then write a persona poem. They must truly indulge in the words before them. Their poems should draw upon details from the text. Also, this method of poetry is a wonderful way to keep kids interested and motivated to pay attention to the text they are reading instead of allowing their mind to wander. Kids get a kick out of playing dress up and acting as if they are someone else, it comes along with the imagination they possess by being a child. They will love having to fill the shoes of a character within their story and see things through the character’s eyes. It will make reading much more enjoyable to them. They are able to apply their imagination and be a kid while gaining great comprehension of the text at the same time! Persona Poetry will definitely be happening within my classroom when I am a teacher one day!

I like I am poems because they encourage in-depth thinking about a character in a story being read or even in the child, him or herself! It would be neat to start off the year by teaching a little lesson about I am poems and having the students write an I am poem about themselves to introduce themselves to one another. What a great way to break the ice and showcase the students work too! One of the many things this class has taught me is that students put great effort into work when they are aware that their eyes aren’t the only ones who will be looking at the work… the many little pairs of eyes within their classroom will be as well… and kids are all about impressing their peers. Having students introduce themselves by writing an I am poem would also show kids what is required of I am poems, so when it comes to writing additional I am poems for different characters while reading different books over the course of the year, they will be familiar and comfortable with writing an I am poem. I like that I am poems are fairly constructive, as a subject is given for each line (such as “I wonder”, “I touch”, “I see”, etc.) and the first line of the poem must be repeated at the end of each stanza, but it also allows for freedom because the writer is allowed to write whatever they desire, as long as it pertains to the person the I am poem addresses and the topic of that particular line! I am poems instigate thorough comprehension of the text because students are held accountable for paying attention and staying focused, just as persona poetry instigates!

Reciprocal Teaching and Discussion Director

Reciprocal Teaching

Reciprocal teaching is when teachers and students discuss with a each other a given passage within a book. This strategy is centered around four  key elements: summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting. It is important that students are taught these four concepts and are given time to practice each one so that they have a solid understanding of what they are expected to undergo if assigned to carry out one of them. This will lead into the students being grouped in sets of four and each receiving a note card designating who will be the summarizer, questioner, clarifier and predicter. Students will read a portion of the assigned text and be encouraged to implement different note-taking strategies (such as selective underlining and the use of sticky-notes). The summarizer should highlight important segments of the text, the questioner proposes questions regarding unclear/confusion parts and connections to previously-acquired knowledge, the clarifier will address puzzling information  and try to provide answers to the questions posed, and the predictor is responsible for making predictions about how what will happen next by applying context clues. The roles will switch with new selections.

Discussion Director

The Discussion Director’s job is to facilitate deep comprehension of the text read by posing “fat, juicy, thinking questions” and not simple, straight-from-the-text questions. Some questions a discussion director should ask include: “Who?, What?, “Where”, When?, Why?, How?, If_________ then__________?”.  The Discussion Director’s role is different than that of the questioner in the Reciprocal Teaching strategy because they are supposed to write down their answers and the page numbers in which the students can be referenced to. Also, Discussion Directors should make sure details about the text are addressed, such as problems/solutions, Effect/Cause or Cause/Effect, Fact/Opinion, Characterization, Point of View, Figurative Language, Theme/Moral, compare/Contrast, Main Idea, etc. These leaders make sure that students within a group are contributing to the conversation. Discussion Directors pretty much take the place of teachers because they not only facilitate conversation, but they help the students keep their focus, listen to others and remain engaged within the discussion. They are the “head honchos” within a group because the other members merely participate, they are not required to prepare for the discussion, except to have had the assigned text read and to have the text on hand during the discussion. The Discussion Directors play a variety of roles, including being an: 1) acceptor- one who agrees with a response, 2) catalyst- one who sparks a new idea and transitions the discussion from one topic to another, 3) challenger- one who asks the responder why or how come they gave a particular answer, 4) defender- they back up interpretations, 5) clarifier- one who asks the students to give a little more info to clarify what they are trying to say, 6) connector- one who shows the students how to connect the book to things/circumstances outside of the book, and 6) inquisitor: one who ponders about something. The Discussion Director takes over all the roles  presented in Reciprocal Teaching and dives into more detail than this previous strategy. I can’t help but wonder if the Discussion Director strategy is really that more effective, though, because all members in a group are held responsible for participating, the majority of the weight is held on one individual’s shoulders. The weight is evenly/fairly divided between all members within a group in Reciprocal Teaching.

Reflection Upon “Breaking Down Words”, Vocabulary Activities and Handout

Prior to reading the article, “Breaking down words to build Meaning”, I had little knowledge about what morphology even was. This article gave great insight into the power of morphology. Morphology is the study of the structure of words, specifically talking about morphemes, which are the smallest units of a word. There are two types of morphemes, bound (those that cannot stand alone) and unbound (those that can stand alone). Unfamiliar words can be very tantalizing to students who come across them while reading, and morphology provides a way to save students from their distress and shows them how to break down and decode complex words. Morphology emphasizes the importance of recognizing root words within a given word to help lead students in the right direction when it comes to figuring out a definition for an unknown word. I faintly recall a teacher thoroughly going through root words, prefixes and suffixes. I am horrible at breaking down words, as morphology suggests because I was never really exposed to it growing up. Usually, I learned vocabulary terms by memorizing it for a spelling test every Friday or looking it up in a dictionary. I didn’t know how to take the time and depict the unbound and bound morphemes within a word (I didn’t even know what in the world morphemes were!). The beauty of morphology is that, if implemented well by the teacher, the students will have multiple exposures to words, words will be presented within meaningful contexts, and children will finally be able to involve themselves in the actual process of breaking down and solving the meaning of a word. Morphology fosters deep comprehension within a child’s mind, thus giving children the opportunity to hypothesize logically about the meaning behind a word. Students will be shown how to apply context clues to their hypothesis and, thus, prove what they believe the definition behind a word to be. Morphology is an excellent way to build upon a child’s vocabulary and thus strengthen their vocabulary and reading comprehension.

The vocabulary activities, vocabulary overview handout and this article have helped me to see and understand why the emphasis upon truly understanding vocabulary and the comprehension of it is so vital to a child’s reading capability and comprehension. If students don’t understand the words within the text they are reading, how can we expect them to even get what the reading is about? How can we expect them to analyze and critically reflect upon the material? Children must have a thorough grasp upon how to decode words by implementing lessons on bound words/unbound words/root words/prefixes/suffixes and showing them how to support their hypotheses on words’ meangings through the use of context clues. Breaking down words is an investigation that will help children to store vocabulary in their minds and better comprehend text, thus, increasing a child’s reading fluency. A child is not a fluent reader unless they know how to build a solid foundation upon vocabulary.

Integrating Instructional-Level Books for Struggling Readers

I found this article to be particularly interesting because it is hard to believe that a teacher would allow their struggling readers to flounder in trade books that are simply too difficult for them to read. How could one just assume that everyone in the class could follow along with the text given to them? No one person is the same as the other or else this world would be one big, boring place. We are all gifted in different areas and for some, reading is just not one of them. For the struggling readers, we must implement some sort of plan in the classroom to keep these little guys up to speed with the rest of the class. Finding high-quality trade books that are on the instructional-levels (preferably one slightly above to challenge the students without causing frustration) of the struggling readers will help the students to not completely miss out on what the rest of the class is reading. Of course it is not an easy task locating and obtaining these trade books that suit the levels of the struggling readers, but thank heavens for the “starter lists” featured in this articles to help teachers out! I also like the idea of having the struggling readers reflect upon their reading through writing and gather into small-groups to reinforce what they had read. It will encourage them to pay attention and remain on task while reading. However, the trade book selected for their reading should maintain their attention anyways because a truly good book will captivate and intrigue the little readers.

A quote by E. Bett’s towards the end of the article really struck a chord in me, “Teaching is the practical recognition of differences. Until differences among the pupils of a given class are recognized, instruction cannot be on a sound, effective, systematic basis. A significant part of the dilemma in modern education has been brought about by a failure to admit differences—by the treating of all children alike… Differentiated instruction is a way of evaluating and living with a group of individuals in a classroom that results in a maximum of development of each individual in terms of his interests, needs, and capacities.” This spoke to me so much, that I wrote these words of wisdom down and I plan on adding them to my writing notebook tonight! How underemphasized is it that not every child learns in the same manner. Some are visual, others are auditory and others are kinesthetic learners. Some learn quickly and/or have high attention spans, while others move more slowly and/or have low attention spans. As I stated earlier in this post, no one child is the same as another. As teachers it is vital that we keep this in mind throughout instruction. We need to assess every child’s learning style/behavior and reading level prior to any assignments given within class. Although this is more time consuming, we will be doing both ourselves and our students a favor by taking the time to see each child through clear lenses. Children are only going to fall more behind if we instruct them based upon how the majority of the rest of the class is learning/reading. No child wants to broadcast that they just don’t get it, so they will remain quiet and sink further and further. Initially, as teachers, we need to dig down to the core of every child and assess the way they work and what level they are on.

This article has put into perspective for me the importance of not just throwing a book at the children and expecting them all to read and comprehend the text equivantly, but choosing books carefully so that children on all reading levels will be able to stay on track and not drown in the overwhelming feeling of “I CAN’T DO IT!!”. For our multi-text study, we need to make sure we find a book that is challenging, yet readable for those little ones who are having a tough time with grade-level text. We need to pair the students up/place them into small groups so that they can discuss amongst eachother the connection between the fictional and informational text and, thus,  foster greater comprehension of the content provided in each book.

Shared Readings

These article made distinct the four primary points of shared readings: reading comprehension, text structures and text features. Shared readings are a wonderful way to make sure that students fully understand what exactly the text is conveying. The students are able to critically analyze  the given text by reading through the words and feeding off of ideas with one other. Reading aloud and having students follow along allows students to actively read, which, incidentally, activates background knowledge, fosters inferencing, predicting, questioning, visualizing, monitoring, synthesizing, summarizing, evaluating and connecting, according to the article. Reading aloud prevents students from merely skimming their eyes over a text and from their minds wandering to far off, unrelated places. In a way, it forces them to stay tuned in, which naturally increasing their comprehension of the text as well.

Vocabulary was the second Shared Reading component mentioned in the article. Fisher, Frey and Lapp emphasized the importance of children figuring out the meaning behind unfamiliar vocabulary words on their own, without the teacher merely providing the definition of moving on. Encourage students to apply the context surrounding the word in their evaluation of the unknown word. Also, it is vital to urge the students to use inside-the-word strategies, such as recalling the word’s prefix, suffix, root, base, cognates and word families, outside-the word strategies, such as context clues and surrounding resources, such as classmates, dictionaries and the Internet. Once students figure out the definition of the word, they will store this new vocabulary word into their memory in a more secure fashion than if they had applied no cognitive effort to solve the meaning of the word themselves.

Text structures allow for the reader to follow along with and predict the flow of information within a text. Examples of different types of text structures include: compare/contrast, problem/solution, cause/effect, chronological/sequence/temporal/descriptive and story grammar (plot, setting, character, conflict, etc.).

The fourth and final shared reading component stated in the article are text features, which are parts of the text that increase one’s comprehension of and/or interest in what the text is conveying. Examples of text features include: headings, captions, illustrations, bold or italic words, charts, tables, diagrams, glossary, index and graphs. These features help a reading passage to come alive by grabbing the readers attention and maintaining it by keeping it properly organized.

Shared reading is a wonderful way to keep students involved in readings because it allows explanations and questions to arise throughout the course of reading the text. I like the idea of giving the students a writing topic or starting a discussion based upon the text read during the shared reading and then the class moves into small-group or collaborative learning because it holds them accountable for paying full attention to the story while it is being read. Students need to be encouraged to dive deeper through writing or a discussion to make sure the students are fully aware of everything the text implies and walk away with a little more vocabulary insight and a greater cognitive modeling and critical analysis ability.

Minilesson!

Sabrina’s Minilesson

Reflection on Poetry

Poetry is so beautiful to me. In a way it is similar to music… it is conveying a message or observations without stating it outright in a mundane manner. “Love that Dog” and the poems in “All the Small Poems and 14 More” are examples of simple poems, yet how precise and how moving they are! Unnecessary words are omitted and when words are important or emphasized by the author they can be written in numerous different manners: in bold, in all caps, italicized and repeated several times subsequently. In poetry, pretty much anything goes. Sentences don’t need to exist, mere fragments or incomplete thoughts will do! Poetry can be mysterious and it may take the reader the process of reading the entire poem before drawing conclusions as to what exactly the poet is implying. Also, poetry can be written in a variety of different forms, including: Acrostic, Cinquain, Free Verse, Haiku, Narrative, Rhyme and Shape. Poems are a wonderful way to express oneself and it allows for one to be creative and write in whatever style they feel like! I hope to incorporate a lot of poetry into my classroom when I am teacher because I believe it will increase the desire of writing in children once I show them that poetry really isn’t that scary of a concept and, thus, build the writing confidence of the children.

History of My Name

My parents named me after my mom’s mom (who passed away before I was born), Sabrina. Sabrina was from Iraq, which “Sabrina” is not a traditional Iraqi name, but the male version of the name, “Sabre” is fairly common, so it is believed that Sabrina’s name was derived from that. I looked up the history of my name on the internet and supposedly the name Sabrina came from a legendary princess who drowned in the Severn river. The meaning behind “Sabrina” is “hope” and “waiting”, which is quite ironic because I feel that I am in this very state regarding the unknown plans for my future! It was really interesting diving deeper into the meaning of my name and I think this would be an excellent topic for children to expand upon in their notebooks, just as Buckner suggests. Also, I thought her ideas about the children making a list based upon their best/worst memories and so on and so forth is a wonderful way to get the wheels inside a child’s mind (or anyone’s mind for that matter) turning. Lists and stories should be shared among classmates to provide further writing topic ideas to one another. In addition, I liked the highlighting idea Buckner proposed. What a smart way to encourage children to reread and expound upon things they have already written! After all, no writing piece is perfect. There is always something that can be revised and added upon. That is the beauty of writing! The doors are never closed- light will always stream through!

All the small poems and fourteen more

I just read the first handful of poems- all the way to “Aquarium”. The poems are short and sweet and surprisingly none of them rhyme! I’ve noticed that the poems focus on vivid description of the object identified in the title. Often times when I think of poems, I assume that it must rhyme, but there are many other forms of poetry. Poetry doesn’t have to be long and complex. Valerie Worth makes it evident that simplistic poetry can be equally beautiful.

HOT Blogging

It amazes me that blogging has become such a big part of the education world. Ten years ago I would have never dreamed that my teachers would try to set up a site online for my classmates and I to share ideas, questions, critical analysis’, etc. with each other in order to broaden our communication spectrum and deepen the level of thought we applied to different prompts, books and so forth. HOT blogging is appealing to me as a future teacher because I can see that it would get students excited about responding to topics because it involves, lets face it, their addiction: the internet.  Students are such internet gurus that it would almost be insensible to not incorporate a tool that has so much potential of fostering higher order thinking. It’s natural for students to be curious about their classmates opinions, so blogging allows for students to receive insight on the different perspectives their peers have developed and it gives them the opportunity to research and gather information from different sources and use it to back up the stances they choose to take. Students will dive deeper into questions/prompts posed than they realize because they will acquire a thirst to see what their classmates have to say and compare it with their own manner of thinking.

Two of the blogging suggestions from the article that I thought were really great ideas and will strive to apply in my future blogging extravaganzas as a teacher is setting up a “Classroom News Blog” and a “Showcase Blog”. The Classroom News Blog would be an excellent way to keep parents informed on what is going on without having to print out tons of newsletters and worry about whether or not the newsletters actually made it home. The Showcase Blog would be a great self-esteem booster for children and a solid way to show them that they are each capable of composing prime work. It would also encourage them to continue to aim to turn in work that shows their best work because, hopefully, they would desire to show it off!