Tompkins Chapter 5

Chapter 5 of Tompkins discusses fluency in reading and writing. I especially was intrigued by the explanation of how different levels of readers decode words. "Capable readers notice all or almost all letters in a word, whereas less capable readers do not completely analyze letter sequences of words. Struggling readers with limited phonics skills often try to decode words by sounding out the beginning sound and then making a wild guess at the word without using the cueing systems to verify their guesses" (Tomkins, 165). I have noticed this difference in reading fluency in my 2nd grade class. There are several readers who are very fluent and are conscious of every letter of the words and therefore able to read accurately. On the other hand, there are several students who read a word and get stuck at the start of the word and guess what word it is. For example, I was reading with a student (“Susie”) and she saw the word “power”. The students had just been reading Native American legends and so when she saw the start of the word “power”, she assumed it said “powwow” and read the word as “powwow”. I was intrigued to see her make that assumption because it signaled to me that she was not reading fluently. Additionally, she did not read with expression (prosody) which was another signal to me that she was not reading fluently. I have noticed over all that most of the students in the 2nd grade class are not fluent readers and writers which tells me that it is accurate that most students are not fluent until they are a bit older.

Chapter 5

“Researchers report that the big difference between students who identify words effectively and those who do not is whether they survey the letters in the word and analyze the interior components. Capable readers notice all or almost all letters in a word, whereas less capable readers do not completely analyze the letter sequences of words. Struggling readers with limited phonics skills often try to decode words by sounding out the beginning sound and then making a wild guess at the word without using the cueing systems to verify their guesses” (165). Just as this quote states, this situation really happened in my field when I was going around testing students on high-frequency words. My CT gave me a list of high-frequency words, and I was to call on students one by one and ask them to read the word. If they read it incorrectly, then I was to mark the word. A lot of the students were doing great with reading the words. But it was couple students who were having a hard time reading. One student was Farzeel, a student who has missed half of the school days, and comes to school late most of the time. When I started to test the high-frequency words, I was extremely frustrated. He was going well with the first column, but once he started to read the second list, he seemed like he was getting stuck, because there was pauses before sounding out the word. Then, what he was doing was interesting but at the same time disappointing. He started to sound the letters one by one, and then he read the word. It was interesting to see him do this, because none of the students in this class was seen doing this. On the other hand, it was frustrating because he was saying the words incorrectly, making wild guesses like the quote states. In addition, when he sounded the word incorrectly, I corrected him by saying the word correctly. Then he would say, “That’s what I just said…”

Based on this observation, I observed Farzeel read books in class, since it was March Reading Month. The class was required to read at least five books to one of the helpers. The first thing I noticed is that he was unable to concentrate when he was reading. When he finished reading one page, then he would talk about irrelevant things with the helper. Obviously, it was hard to make him concentrate back to the readings, because he would talk about endless stories. Another thing that I observed is that he would stutter frequently and were many pauses. It seemed like it was because he was unable to read a lot of the words. So he was sounding out the letters first and reading the word. So this took a long time for him to finish one book. Being able to read fluently affects so many areas of learning. Just by knowing the high-frequency words, it helps a reader become fluent in reading. If not, it affects how the student reads, and it also becomes an obstacle to the student.

Tompkins Ch. 5

The part of this chapter on developing fluent readers and writers that I enjoyed the most was the part on word recognition. I really enjoyed what the author had to say on this, because I feel that word recognition is something I see a lot in the field. Tompkins wrote about how children are more likely to recognize the word whale than the word what,"because whale conjures up the image of an aquatic mammal, whereas what is abstract. However, what is used much more frequently, and children need to learn to recognize it" (p. 158). Words like what, could, to, etc. are called sight words because they aren't pronounced phonetically, so children can't easily decode them, therefore they are words that children learn by sight and by forming a relationship of how that word is said.

My CT has a word wall in the classroom, but after reading the list of high-frequency words in the book, I think my CT could add a lot more than what she already has. Her word wall is divided alphabetically and each letter has a few words under it, but since I'm in a first/second split class, I think more sight words would be beneficial to them. I've noticed that my students are getting really good at sounding out words and focus on on sound-letter relationships, but when they try to do that with a sight word they get stuck. I haven't seen my CT add any new words to the word wall since I first saw it at the beginning of the year, and Tompkins mentions in the chapter that word walls should be added to as new vocab is introduced and new elements of literacy are introduced. I think the students in my class would really benefit by seeing new sight words get added to the word wall, because they are so observant that they would always be looking for new words and this would really help with their fluency.

Tompkins Chapter 3

While reading through chapter 3, the chapter reminded me of a student in my field placement. Her name is Haja, who has come from Africa with very little education. There has been a war going on in her country, so she and father has come to stay with her mother’s sister who lives in Michigan. On page 85 of chapter 3, it says that young children are active learners “who construct their own knowledge about reading and writing with the assistance of parents, teachers, and other literate people. These adults demonstrate literacy as they read and write, supply reading and writing materials, scaffold opportunities for children to be involved in reading and writing, and provide instruction about how written language works.” Helping students with reading and writing and working with these students in these two areas is not just the teacher’s work, but also needs the involvement of “others” around the student, including parents. School is not the only place where learning takes place; it also takes place outside of school with the interaction with others.

Unfortunately, one of the problems my CT and I have encountered in class with Haja is that there is no one at home to sit and read with her even for five minutes. We have noticed this when she started to bring her book bag without a signature and has been continued for months. The students in my CT’s first grade class have a book bag that they bring home to read with an adult. When the book is read, the adult signs the sheet and returns it the next day. When the chart is full, the student receives a book prize. While other students have been continuing this process successfully, Haja was bringing back the same book back without a signature. My CT has told me that there is nobody reading to her at home. Her father and other guardian are also ignorant about things that happen in school. They have not shown up on Parent-Teacher Conferences. When Haja was the student of the week, nobody came to class to participate in her interview. What worries my CT the most is that she does not have other learning opportunities and opportunities of improvements aside from school, especially in a situation where she is far behind than other classmates in the class. Sadly, my CT decided to complete the book bag in class, daily, with the help of helpers in the class. Now, Haja is read to in class by other helpers in the class, and she does not take the book bag home. This shows the importance of parent-involvement and providing students with opportunities as much as they can be provided. Haja could have been a better reader and speaker by now.

Tompkins Chapter 7

After reading Chapter 7 from Tompkins about 8 comprehension strategies, I believe that teaching students to use all 8 strategies when reading a text is a key element when instructing students to be critical thinkers in relation to literacy. Tompkins makes a valid point when she said, “comprehension is an invisible mental process (that) makes it difficult to teach; however through explicit instruction, teachers make comprehension more visible.” (p. 241) Comprehension is an abstract concept that students, especially those in the younger grades, may have difficulty grasping. However, by incorporating comprehension strategies into everyday classroom activities in conjuncture with explicit instruction on what the strategy does (declarative knowledge), how to use the strategy (procedural knowledge), and when to use the strategy (conditional knowledge), students can become more fluent in using these comprehension strategies.

Prior to reading this chapter, I had never thought about visualizing as a comprehension strategy. However, I now see that visualizing can be a very useful comprehension strategy by helping “readers use the mental images to make the text more memorable.” (p. 229) I think this particular strategy could be a useful strategy to focus on while reading my book club book Scorpions by Walter Dean Myers. Visualizing while reading this particular book could be especially effective because the main character, Jamal, faces many challenges and is placed in particularly dangerous and difficult situations. Through visualizing either Jamal in these situations or by visualizing you, the reader, in these situations, I think that the text could become even more powerful.

Another comprehension strategy that I believe could work very well for Scorpions is connecting. Connecting helps “readers personalize their reading by relating what they are reading to their background knowledge.” (p. 229) In a typical suburban classroom, many of the ideas and situations in Scorpions could be very atypical, causing difficulty relating the situations Jamal faces to situations the children in the class might face. If the students in this hypothetical suburban classroom were to take time and specifically think of connections, I think the book could become more relatable and more memorable. While all 8 of the comprehension strategies in chapter 7 of Tompkins could be incredibly powerful in helping students comprehend Scorpions, I think that visualizing and connecting are two influential ways to help students comprehend this book in particular.

Tompkins Chapter 7

Tompkins chapter 7, about students’ comprehension, was a chapter that grabbed my attention. This may be because of my unhappy experience as a student related to reading comprehensions. In this chapter, it talks about comprehension in depth, showing many parts of comprehension and how they can be done. Comprehension is “a thinking process” where students can “activate their background knowledge and preview the text, and it continues to develop as students read, response, explore, and apply their teaching” (223). But throughout sixth, seventh and eighth grade, literature and any reading related subjects were something that I hated, but on the other hand, I really liked my reading classes when I was in elementary. I can remember some of the things that I did in my elementary reading classes, but I do not remember what kind of things we did in reading classes in middle school aside from taking comprehension quizzes. All I can remember is the comprehension quizzes that were taken all the time after reading certain texts. I was a fluent reader but was reading without a purpose. I was not even able to make connections to myself or even to the real world, because I could not find the purpose for reading. Reading was merely reading fluently through the text, then taking the quiz, and then forgetting the information. As Tompkins talks about the purpose, it is for students to “activates a mental blueprint to use while reading” (227). But I never had a chance to form this mental blueprint, because I was busy trying to memorize the basic information in order to do well on the quiz. After graduating middle school, I had a hard time adjusting to high school reading materials and in my literature classes, because I was never able think and read with a purpose aside from the quizzes. So I had to struggle through adapting to finding the purpose of reading and also comprehension. It is important that “when teachers set the purpose, they should be teaching students how to set purposes so that they can learn to direct their reading themselves” (227).

Tompkins Chapter 7

I really enjoyed chapter 7 of the Tompkins book because I think comprehension is such an important part of literacy. I think if comprehension is going to be taught effectively, then all eight strategies should be used because together, I think they do a great job of satisfying students’ different learning styles. One of the examples from the book was about prediction and how prediction is a tool that is frequently used in reading. Prediction is introduced when kids are very young, and they might not even see how it can be used as a comprehension tool, but it can help the students focus their reading and give them a purpose as they read to find out if their predictions were correct. This is a great strategy to start out with when teaching comprehension because it is something students are already familiar with. The other strategies are also strategies students have used before, but will be bale to apply to comprehension. I think this is great because the students will be able to learn comprehension through skills they already possesses and it will help them to refine their skills. Tompkins develops the idea that comprehension is a process. It's not just a skill or a task that a student learns once and masters, but a process. As students use more and more strategies and techniques to help guide their comprehension, they will continue to build on the base they have and comprehension will be something that comes naturally to them.

This chapter really made me think about my own personal school experiences because comprehension was something I really struggled with. I was a very fast reader in elementary school, but I remember I would get to the end of a page, or a chapter and have very vague ideas of what it was about. I think I focused too much on reading the words correctly and moving through them, that I lost focus of how the words all worked together to create meaning. I can’t remember specific comprehension strategies my teachers used, but I’m sure there were strategies used. I wonder what it was about the strategies my teachers used to help teach comprehension that didn’t help me.