Guided Reading: Simply Explained

This article was very concise and specifically explains what a guided reading session includes. The purpose of guided reading is to have the children in small groups working on a reading strategy together. Some of the strategies are letter-sound relationships, context clues, word structure, etc. This process can be modified and can be utilized in the upper grades. The students are able to pick a book and are grouped together by their reading abilities. The goal of guided reading is effective and improved independent reading. Students get into small groups, typcially 4-6 kids and their duration of the session is usually 15 to 20 minutes. The teacher explicitly explains what strategy they are working on and what she expects from the students. This is a wonderful idea and I truly believe that I will implement it in my classroom in the future. I want to make sure that I know all of my student's reading levels and abilities in order to place them in the right reading group. Here is a link of my article:

http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/de/pd/instr/strats/guided/guided.html

Technology Savvy

Technology is a great tool to use in the classroom and has grown and advanced tremendously in education. Many teachers are afraid to utilize technology because they have very different philosophies about teaching. I, on the other hand, completely think that it should be utilized in the classroom at any time possible. Children these days are so advanced and understand how to use technology at an early age. There are many ways that a teacher can incorporate technology into their lessons. The article written by Dalton and Grisham, talks about an online source called Wordle. Wordle can be used for many things in the classroom such as memorizing vocabulary or brainstorming about a certain subject.

Another example of technology the article talks about is using power point. Power point is a very important tool in deaf education. The students use power point in order to learn to write stories together. The students usually play a game or make something and then use power point to write about it. This enables them to add words in different colors, such as making the words red that are their high frequency words. Power point also enables the students to input pictures and animation. This can help the students pay attention to the lesson or connect what they wrote with to a picture like a story book. Also in power point, paragraphs written or pictures drawn by the student can be scanned in and added to the power point. This is a great way to incorporate the children's work into the lesson. Here is an example of a slide template that could be used to talk about Easter:

What are some other examples of how to incorporate technology in classroom?

Comprehension is a Process

In the article by Gill, it lays out a visual representation of how reading comprehension is a process. There are ways in which you can follow the process and different activities you can do. The matrix was very helpful to me because it shows it as three steps and what each component of each step is. Pre-reading is important because you must be able to get the student interested. What are some ways you can get the reader interested in the book? Also a K-W-L chart is a great way to discuss as a group what they already know and then fill out what they want to know and save the learning part for the post reading. This was an easy to follow matrix and of course you can tweak it however you want depending on your students reading levels.

In the article by Pardo, she talks about building and activating prior knowledge. In deaf education this is crucial because many students come in lacking prior knowledge that we may expect them to know. Some students do not have access to the language or may have a different connection to certain words that will enhance their knowledge. It takes a lot of questions and different ways in order to build and activate their knowledge in a positive and meaningful way. Students need to know that whatever knowledge they have already is important and by building on it, it can effect the way they comprehend new knowledge.
What are some ways to activate their prior knowledge of the example: The beach? What could you ask them, how can you get them motivated to learn about it?