Nicole Medina
Merging of the Minds 2012
Information
+
Thinking
=
Knowledge
~Stephanie Harvey, IRA 2012
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“Read aloud is your pay-it-forward.”
Creates schema
 Produces mentor texts for writing
 Models fluency
 Creates opportunities for speaking and listening
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~Dr. Jan Burkins, IRA 2012
“Children first learn to listen and speak, then
use these and other skills to explore reading
and writing. Like child development in general,
language development is interrelated. Children
who have many opportunities to listen and
speak tend to become skilled readers and
writers. Children who can put their ideas in
writing become better readers. Children who
are read to often, learn to love reading and
become better listeners, speakers, and
writers.”! ~http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/RoadtoRead/part2.html
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Babies are born with 100 billion brain cells,
called neurons – almost all they will ever have.
Neurons are not yet connected into networks
as they will be when the brain is mature.
Connections are made as brain cells send
signals to and receive input from each other. A
single cell can connect with as many as 15,000
other cells.
The resulting network of connections is called
the brain’s wiring or circuitry.
~http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/RoadtoRead/part2.html
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Shortly after birth a baby’s brain produces trillions more
connections between neurons than it can possibly use.
By age 3, the child’s brain has formed 1,000 trillion
connections – twice as many as in an adult brain.
Beginning at about age 10, the child’s brain begins
getting rid of the extra connections and gradually creates
a more powerful and efficient circuitry.
The brain permanently retains the connections that are
used repeatedly in the early years and eliminates
connections that are seldom or never used.
The window for acquiring syntax may close as early as 5
or 6 years old – still possible to learn, but more difficult.
~http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/RoadtoRead/part2.html
We’re putting our money on YOU! No
workbook, worksheet, intervention, or PD
can impact kids the special way that you
can. Your understanding, and delivery of it,
directly affects the success of the students in
your classroom.
Notice what strategies you use.
 Think about complexity (how hard it is, what
kind of thinking do you have to do)
 Read the book.
 What did you notice?
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Print
Story
•Print
•Alphabet
•First
letter
•Content
•Frustration
•Peers-models
•Letter similarities
•Lower and upper case
•Repetition
•Patterning
•Pictures
•Structure
•Predictions
~ Dr. Jan Burkins, IRA 2012
Print Dependent
Print
Story
Meaning Dependent
Print
No Connection
Issues & No Connection
Print
Print
Story
Story
Story
~ Dr. Jan Burkins, IRA 2012
Print
Story
Meaning
Does it make sense?
Print
Story
Visual
Structure
Does it look right?
Does it sound right?
Print
Story
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Print/Story Dependent?
Pay-it-forward with Read Aloud
Build on the known
Teacher
I do
Modeled Instruction
Shared Instruction
We do
Guided Practice
Independent Practice
Student
You do
together
You do
alone
“Read like a writer.”
“Write like a reader.”
“In reading, meaning is build
from texts and in composing,
meaning is built for text”
(Nelson, 1998, p. 279).
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Please choose an article about one of the
following topics to read:
Vocabulary
 Fluency
 Comprehension
 Text Complexity
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Be prepared to tell the group one ah-ha you
had.
Six Dimensions Fluency Rubric
1. Pausing
The way the reader’s voice is guided by
punctuation
2. Phrasing
The way the readers put words together in
groups to represent the meaningful units of
sounds
3. Stress
The emphasis readers place on particular
words to reflect the meaning as speakers
would do in oral language
4. Intonation
The way the reader varies the voice in tone,
pitch, and volume to reflect the meaning of
the text – (aka expression)
5. Rate
The pace at which a reader moves through
the text – not too fast or too slow
6. Integration
The way a reader consistently and evenly
orchestrates rate, phrasing, pausing,
intonation, and stress
~Fountas & Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System I
“It is the skill that focuses the group, not the level.”
~ Gail Boushey and Joan Moser www.choiceliteracy.com
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“For everyone who has will be given more, and
he will have an abundance. Whoever does not
have, even what he has will be taken from him.”
~Matthew 29:25
The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.
Research indicates that past the 4th grade,
literacy intervention and remediation
programs are only successful with about 13%
of struggling readers.
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Intelligence: Anderson and Freebody note that “the strong relationship
between vocabulary and general intelligence is one of the most robust findings
in the history of intelligence testing” (quoted in Marzano, 2004, p.32).
Vocabulary scores correlate more highly with intelligence levels than any other
individual measure. That’s why standardized tests such as the SAT, ACT, and
GRE have a vocabulary component.
Reading: Farley and Elmore studied college students enrolled in remedial
reading. They found that vocabulary was the only statistically significant
predictor of various reading skills. According to Fisher and Frey (2008),
research confirms that “…students with smaller vocabularies and lower
comprehension levels read with more trepidation, question the text less, and
fail to notice when they don’t understand something” (p.4).
Predictor of Academic Success: Reading comprehension has been repeatedly
shown to be a good predictor of academic success at the high school and
college levels. So the chain is complete: vocabulary is an excellent predictor of
academic success. Vocabulary truly is at the center – not only of the ELA
classroom, but in all of the content areas.
~Benjamin and Crow 2010
“Vocabulary, then, is to academic learning
what cardiovascular strength is to fitness. And
just as most people have to go out of their way
to achieve cardiovascular fitness by working
out (rather than relying on their ordinary
activities to build sufficient strength),
educators have to be deliberate and conscious
about improving students’ vocabulary.”
~Benjamin and Crow 2010
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A word is “…the label associated with a
packet of knowledge stored in permanent
memory.”
These packets are what he refers to as
background knowledge (aka schema).
Research has consistently shown that
definitional learning alone does not make a
significant contribution to reading
comprehension. ~Benjamin and Crow 2010
~Robert Marzano in Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement
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Stand and walk over to someone else in the
room. Face him or her. Tell him what you
learned. Your partner will do the same.
Then come back and write (for two
minutes) what you learned from your
partner.
Rich and
Varied
Language
Experiences
Teach
Individual
Words
Vocabulary
Instruction
Teach WordLearning
Strategies
Foster Word
Consciousness
Time of Day
Instructional Activities
Morning Meeting
•Word-of-the day activities
•Word-play activities
Reading
•Independent reading and writing
•Read-alouds
•Literature circles and literature response activities
•Instruction in self-selected and teacher-selected
words from books read or compositions being
written
•Mini-lessons on word-learning strategies
•Teacher-student reading conference
Content Areas
•Instruction in specific subject-matter vocab
•Word-learning strategy instruction integrated into
socials studies/science lesson
•Content-related read-alouds and trade book
reading
Writing
•Mini-lessons on word-learning strategies
•Teacher-student writing conference
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Tier 1: Basic words such as milk, smile, and jump. Rarely
require instructional attention.
Tier 2: Appear frequently in a wide variety of texts and provide
mature language users with precise ways to refer to familiar
ideas. Words such as darting, exceptional, and rummage are
examples. Tier Two words represent the bulk of vocabulary
instruction. These words need to be posted and kept in
circulation so that students practice applying them in varied
contexts over an extended period of time.
Tier 3: Words such inlet, quadrilateral, and isotope. Typically
emphasized as part of a thematic or content area instruction.
Posting these words on a topic wall encourages their use when
discussing or writing on specific topics.
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Qualitative: levels of meaning or purpose; structure;
language conventionality and clarity; and knowledge
demands
Quantitative: word length or frequency, sentence
length, and text cohesion, that are difficult if not
impossible for a human reader to evaluate efficiently,
especially in long texts, and are thus today typically
measured by computer software (Lexile)
Reader and Task: variables of particular readers
(motivation, knowledge, and experiences) and to
particular tasks (such as purpose and the complexity of
the task assigned and the questions posed)
“Read, read, read and write, write, write.” ~Ernest Gaines
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Benjamin, A. & Crow, J. (2010) Vocabulary at the Center .
http://www.eyeoneducation.com/bookstore/client/client_pages/samplechapt
ers/7124-9.pdf &
http://www.eyeoneducation.com/bookstore/productdetails.cfm?sku=71249&title=vocabulary-at-the-center
Boushey, G. & Moser, J (2009) The Daily CAFÉ
Burkins, J.M. & Croft, M.M. (2010) Preventing Misguided Reading: New
Strategies for Guided Reading Teachers
http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/RoadtoRead/part2.html
Fountas, I. & Pinnell, G.S. Benchmark Assessment System
Graves, M. (2009) Essential Readings on Vocabulary Instruction
Marzano, R. (2004) Building Background Knowledge for Academic
Achievement
Nelson, N.(1998). Reading and Writing Contextualized. In Nelson, N. & R. Calfee
(Eds.). The Reading and Writing Connection (pp.266-285). The Ninety-Seventh
Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education (Part II). Chicago,
IL: The National Society for the Study of Education.