Guided Reading

For this week's article on guided reading, I found the article Implementation of the Guided Reading Approach with Elementary School Deaf Students written by Barbara R. Schirmer and Laura Schaffer. The article summarized a study that took place that looked at the effectiveness of guided reading with deaf students. Many deaf classrooms have adopted the guided reading approach because the prior approaches like phonemic awareness was not increasing deaf students' reading skills. Guided reading benefits the classroom in multiple ways. It encourages students to participate in literacy activities, teaches how to read for different purposes, focuses on all the main areas of reading instruction (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension), provides students with plenty of time to read quality literature while in class, and includes many other benefits. The study conducted in the article took about thirty deaf students differing in age and grade and studied each student's reading progress over the course of two years with the guided reading approach. The study was separated into four steps of the guided reading method: selection of leveled books, introduction of the book, silent reading, and discussion. There was overall an improvement in the students' reading progress. The average deaf student has previously only gained one third of a grade equivalent change each school year. The students in this study had a modest gain compared to the average deaf student; however, it was still did not meet the goal of one year progress per each school year. In order to enhance the outcome of guided reading, the article suggested to pair the guided reading approach with extra programs such as an added summer program that gets both the kids and parents involved.

Vocabulary and Technology

For every student, learning vocabulary is crucial. However, learning vocabulary is even more critical for deaf students. It is very difficult for deaf children to learn to read and write because it is not in their native language. This is why it is so important for deaf children to be immersed in a rich vocabulary environment. When you walk in a deaf classroom, there needs to be vocabulary everywhere. Many classrooms I have observed have had word labels on everything in the classroom. I really like the strategies discussed in the articles to increase vocabulary skills. I thought many of these would be great to use with deaf children. Word searches and interactive technology (e.g. the above picture of a word cloud) makes learning vocabulary fun and engaging. While reading the articles, I kept thinking of the word building activities our class discussed and how many of those activities would work great with introducing vocabulary. You can use Bananagrams and word walls to teach students how to build the words and also what the words mean. 

Early Comprehension

In Gill's article, The Comprehension Matrix, she highlights the importance of knowing how you individually comprehend. Comprehension is not being taught in schools, and in order for teachers to effectively teach lessons that support comprehension, they must know their own comprehension tendencies. By asking yourself when do you comprehend best or worst, you can come to recognize the three major factors that affect comprehension: the reader, the text, and the situation. The article also includes how to teach comprehension to your student. This is done by the Comprehension Matrix. There are three parts to the matrix: prereading, during, and postreading. The prereading process includes getting students interested and activating background knowledge. The during stage is designed to help students use text structures and understand vocabulary. The last stage, postreading, allows for student's to deepen their understanding of the reading through discussing, writing, or visual representations. 

The other article I read, Kindergartners Can do it, too!, showed how to implement this process for younger children. The teacher did a wonderful job guiding her kindergartners to understanding the texts. She presented comprehension methods in a very simple way that the children would be able to understand; she did not "dumb down" the material. I loved the way she used handshapes to get the students engaged. She included three different hanshapes: C for connection, V for visualization, and wiggling index for meaning construction. The students would raise one of the handshapes in the air and the teacher would ask them what connection or visualization they had. This was all intended to activate their schema. I also loved how she explained the importance of a schema with the "Velcro Theory." The "Velcro Theory" stated it is easier to remember pieces of information if we can stick it onto something that is already in our heads. I feel that is something that kindergartners can definitely understand and use in the classroom.