Christina Chester

Learning Progression In spending this year long experience in a first grade classroom, I have begun to see the concept of reading in a completely different lens. At first, I used to think that learning to read was natural and that it comes to you over time. I felt that everyone gets better at it over time and that one did not have to follow strategic steps to improve a students outcome in reading. It has been in this placement that I have seen reading, the process and the comprehension of it as one of the most important content areas that I could ever share with my students. In reference to the phrase of share with my students during the shared time in the classroom along with the courses at NLU, it is in that space that the true learning of the students begins. The students need to be able to take control of their learning themselves. The most important thing that they need to learn from me as a teacher is the ways that they can control their learning through their level of thinking. In beginning to structure my learning progression for the students, I had to research the different stages that have been published as the correct mannerisms of improving reading. I chose to reference back to the Words Their Way text written by Donald Bear. There is a chart in the text on page 281 that describes the five stages of reading for primary students. This is the chart: Stages Emergen t Stage (Emerge nt Reading) Letter Name Alphabe tic Stage (Beginni ng Reading ) -Period of time during which students are formally taught to Within Word Pattern Stage (Transition al Reading) -read and spell many words correctly because they have an automatic Syllables and Affixes Stage (Interme diate Reading) Occurs between the ages of 9-14 (although some adults can still be Derivatio nal Relations (Advance d Reading) -The stages of word knowledge that characteriz e advanced

Descript ions

-typically range from 2-5 years in age (mostly toddlers & preschool

ers) -range from random marks to legitimate letters that bear a relationshi p to sound -most of this stage is prephonetic, which means there is little if any direct relationshi p between a character on the page and an individual sound

read, typically during the kindergar ten and first grade years and extending into the middle of second grade. -Typically between ages 5-8 -Our spelling system is alphabeti c because it represent s the relationsh ip between letters and sounds. -This alphabeti c layer in English spelling is the first layer of informati on at work.

knowledge of letter sounds and short vowel patterns -usually reach this stage when they are independent readers at the end of 1st grade -low skilled readers remain in this stage even into adulthood -this stage lasts longer than the alphabetic stage because the vowel pattern is extensive -can spell most single syllable short vowel words correctly begin to use patterns and chunks -they first study the long vowel patterns and then less common patterns

found in this stage) -Learning inflectional endings can cause some confusion (hike hiking camp camping) -Syllable juncture the doubling of syllables to preserve a short vowel -Open syllables are open because the word ends in a long vowel -Closed syllable refers to words that are closed by a consonant. -toward the end of syllables and affixes stage students begin to explore

readers are called syllables and affixes and derivation al relations -Generally accompani ed by increased abilities to solve abstract problems and to reflect metacogni tive on experience s -Advanced readers have a broader experience base that allows them to choose from a variety of reading styles to suit the text and their purposes for reading. -They read according to their own interests and needs

-We

match letters to sounds from left to right and create words.

such as VCC words like cold and most -ambiguous vowels are the most difficult

spelling patterns that involve affixes that affect the meaning of words by studying base words and affixes.

and seek to integrate their knowledge with the knowledge of others. -The students develop and master a variety of writing styles. This is a point that I think that nonfiction text would be great to further their world context.

Ideas and Strate gies

Print motivatio n is key and important. Must enforce that the world consists of words and written language.

The only way to get better is to constantly read and to work on the fluency and comprehens ion.

In preparing my learning progression, I had to pull out the key piece to the progression and it was the way that the vocabulary was received and perceived by the student. Vocabulary can stand in the way of great reading comprehension and can impede a students ability to being reflective about their learning. There is great need for vocabulary instruction for the students that I work with every day. This helped me to see the need to create an individualized and strategic plan for increasing their vocabularies. I noticed very early that the learning words that are not typically part of everyday oral language or heard in the home is difficult. I needed to be conscience of the thinking that goes on in order for the students to truly understand a word. In order to fully understand a word, I believe that you must have to have a connection to the words and have experienced it in a context that is relatable. As teacher, I thought that just because I say the words that the students immediately add the words into their banks. But I must make a plan to teach an

extensive vocabulary to the students with a full variety of words. With vocabulary instruction, I need to be sure that I am explaining the meaning, allowing them time to process the word and meaning as well connecting it to the text and life in a fun way. I also realize that I need to allow them think time to process the words and to create their own examples of the words. It is more important that students understand the meaning of a word in the way that requires them to do the thinking than just listening to the definition or inadequate context clues. The definition alone does not help the student to fully understand the word because it doesnt fully explain the word. Only exposure within text, time to let the concept ponder in the mind and in conversation will help the students to connect to the meaning of the words. In approaching the idea of working with my students on vocabulary and reviewing the key concepts in Janet Allens book, Inside Words, I knew it would be helpful to identify the important elements of language as a whole. The five key elements of language are syntax, morphology, phonology, semantics and pragmatics. I knew that by identifying the elements of language that I could focus in on one part to work with my students with in the overall plan of improving reading comprehension. By my students only being in the first grade, I knew that I may have to scale it down a little bit but I knew that didnt mean that I couldnt challenge them either. In creating the learning progression, I started from the top down. The reason that I planned in that way is because it was easier to see what to plan for when I knew what I wanted to see in the end goal for the students. It made sense to see the larger picture and then break it up into all the pieces that gets the student there. Below is my Learning Progression for the year: Learning Progression in My Topic Area Is about.. Developing the skill of using vocabulary with students to have them to dig deeper into their reading fluency.

Novice: Students will be able to utilize Reading skills along with vocabulary to fluently read a text.

Practitioner: Students will be able to expand their reading with using vocabulary and context clues to read fluently.

Independent/Expert: Students will be able to use a combination of reading strategies to bridge connections to their reading through fluent reading and transfer the knowledge into another media. Essential DETAILS Students will be able to : Utilize no picture cues to understand the story and rely on more aspects of imagery. Identify and infer about sentence structure and meaning in relation to the text. Apply the authors purpose as a result of expanding beyond the thought of words just being print on the paper.

Essential DETAILS Students will be able to: Rely heavily on picture cues to understand the story. Sound out individual letter sounds. Chunk sounds together for words. Use word connections to discover the meaning of the text.

Essential DETAILS Students will be able to: Utilize picture cues less often to understand the story. Check for a relationship of word to construct meaning. Relate a contrasting clue in place of the mystery word to improve comprehension.

Seeing that this is an area that I have been working on all year with the students on because I wanted to get an idea of how this could work in my own classroom next year, I was able to collect data for this process. In assessing the students, I have decided to work with them on Semantics more often than the others. Semantics, from my understanding, is the study of the meanings of words, phrases, and sentences. Basically saying that meaning can be expressed by our choices of words, their endings or prefixes, and the order in which they are

arranged. The ability to understand the concepts and relationships displayed by language is semantic knowledge. This concept is closely related to the richest of a persons vocabulary. Semantics continues to develop and continues to grow throughout a persons life. So this was a great place to work and assess with my student with. I worked in small groups with my student on prefixes and suffixes to root words. In beginning the work, I pointed out words with different prefixes and suffixes in the Junie B Jones book that we were reading at the moment. I asked students to explain to me what the words meant in isolation. Most of them informed me that they werent completely sure but a few could tell from their context clues how to stretch the meaning of the word. I was very shocked and impressed that the few noticed that and asked them further questions of how they knew that in which I got the reply of because it is a long word. So from that point, I began to plan to work on identifying the meanings of some prefixes and suffixes in commonly used words. We played matching games of what prefix goes with which meaning and we did the same for suffixes. After we played those games and more students got an understanding of it. I made it a little bit more challenging and began to give them stacks of index cards with root words, prefixes and suffixes. Students were to create words using the index cards and to write a definition for each word created. The first time that we did the activity it was hard and challenging. Once we did it together as guided practice, the students began to get the hang of it. Then, we moved on to looking for words with prefixes and suffixes in the next book in the series of Junie B. Jones and creating definitions for them and researching them. The reason that book was chosen because it would help her with them with the comprehension of the text if they understood the relationship of the words before getting involved in the plot of the story. In doing these activities with them, I have seen a change in their understanding of words and an increase in words with prefixes and suffixes in their writing. This focused work with them and reading their definitions gave me some insight into their understanding and relationship to certain words as well as the context that they use them in. I noticed that over the span of a few days that my students became very interested in the topic of penguins. Every time it was independent reading time, they were pulling more books on the topic of penguins. This was a great time to

assess their progression towards a deeper reading comprehension. So to help guide their reading, I created a graphic organizer that allowed them to collect data about the penguins as they read. The first graphic organizer was called the question master. With the question master organizer, the job was to write down questions that pop into your head as you were reading the text. The second graphic organizer was called the connection maker. The job with this organizer was to record which parts of the book or text that the student connected to and the students had to record the type of connection it was. I know that the use of both of those organizers helped my students to focus their ideas about the topic of penguins and gave them a way to organize their thoughts. It also helped me to get insight into their thinking about the penguins. I was able to see the concepts that were of an interest to them as well as what connections they were using to connect with the text. I was able to see the type of vocabulary they used with her writing and the expression that they used. Once the students collected their data, I instructed them to make an all about book on Penguins. I didnt give that much direction for the book design because I wanted them to choose their direction and focus. The result of the book was a book about caring for penguins and how penguins care for each other. The book was organized like a nonfiction text with a table of contents, captions, labels and pictures. The book was divided by subtitles on the topic and was very informative. I was able to see that the use of the graphic organizers helped her create a full picture about penguins from their interest point and that they were able to effectively communicate their learning and interests. This assessment form allowed the students to explore, interpret and explain the information they learned in a format that was comfortable and relatable to them. Now my students feel like they are experts on Penguins and are able to transfer their comprehension of a text in a more meaningful way. In the grand scheme of things, a person could say, so what, what is important to understand about this progression and the assessment? It is important for the students to understand the concept that print has a purpose beyond just being text on paper. It has a purpose to inform, entertain or persuade the reader. The idea of reading fluently is influenced by their level of vocabulary understanding being that it has a direct effect on the students ability to grasp concepts and their level of comprehension can be a transfer of knowledge by

writing about the learning. Once they are able to transfer the knowledge into another media such as writing, you know that they students have completed the metacognitive work for themselves and the product is a reflection of their understanding and not just a memorization of facts.