Indepth Research Project Assignment

“The more you read, the more things you know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” This is how Dr. Seuss thought of reading, and I think of it in much the same way. Literacy is everywhere and influences us every day, therefore, it plays a major part in each of our lives. I believe that reading is an interactive activity in which learning happens, or as Clay (2001) defines it, “…a message-getting, problem-solving activity” (p. 1). Reading is the process through which one reads information and from doing so, constructs meaning about the material. The more exposure and practice one has with reading, the more knowledge one gains. In this paper, I will begin by discussing my own personal educational philosophy, then continue by stating and explaining four of my beliefs about the reading process and the research that is found to support each of them before sharing the remaining questions I have about literacy. I am an existentialist, and a strong supporter of a balanced literacy approach. My beliefs about literacy come from these foundations and perspectives that I embrace. For students to be successful in their literacy development, I believe that identity acceptance in the classroom is crucial, instruction for all students must be differentiated, direct and explicit instruction is at times necessary, and vocabulary is a significant component in the ‘Big Five’ of children’s literacy development.

For this assignment, I chose the article Motivating Students to Read in the Content Classroom: Six Evidence-Based Principles by William Brozo and Sutton Flynt. This article first talks about how a survey of motivation to read showed a large majority of fourth graders say reading was not their favorite activity and they did not like to read frequently. The authors proposed six ways to get children more involved in reading, starting with elevating their self-efficiency. Students who possess high, school-related self-efficiency outperform their less-engaged peers. Teachers can create conditions for students that are associated with increased perceptions of competence and the student will consequently sustain an effort to be successful. The next point made in this article is to engage interest in new learning. Basically this means to generate interest in new content, making students more likely to put forth necessary efforts to read and learn the new material. “This realization should lead teachers to incorporate a variety of instructional practices that embrace multiple forms of literacy, multiple sources of information, and student choice

Each of the concepts in the article, “Books for Young Readers” addresses the goal of student interest and engagement in reading. The section, “Ways of Reading” talks about balancing the personal and pedagogical responses to reading, which is not easy to achieve. Laura Jimenez and Kristin Mcilhagga are refreshingly open and honest in discussing their lesson on children’s historical fiction where they used the graphic novel, Storm in the Barn, by Matt Phelan. The book served their pedagogical objectives, but neither Lisa nor Kristin liked the book themselves and their students noticed. When asked if they liked the book, they had to admit that they did not. Educators must put themselves in their students’ position when seeking interesting and

Objective IV: Ensuring success for all students through high quality engagement strategies that support literacy development

Two studies were conducted on the effects that nonfiction text have on struggling and non struggling students. According to Liebfreund & Conradi (2016) and Kuhn, Rausch, McCarty, Montgomery, & Rule (2015), the studies concluded that utilizing nonfiction text in primary grades has a positive impact on student engagement, reading comprehension, and vocabulary achievement, and decoding efficiency, vocabulary knowledge, prior knowledge, and intrinsic motivation all influence nonfiction text comprehension. Readability of nonfiction text also has an impact on how well students understand nonfiction text. Teachers must be aware of reading levels of nonfiction text being used in the classroom (Gallagher, Fazio, & Gunning,

Educators are charged with not only teaching the content of their subject, but also responsible for creating a learning environments that fosters communication, engagement, and reflection so that the students will be prepared for their future careers and learning. Creating a classroom that fosters reading and writing is one way to engage students while promoting that they reflect on the material and communicate their understanding or misconceptions of the content. In order to form a literacy-rich classroom educators need to increase the amount of time students interact with all forms of print and literacy and the classroom environment is an essential key to setting the precedent and model behaviors that will make students more successful and capable of high level learning. (Tyson, 2013)

The Portland Public Schools uses a reading program called Reader's Workshop to guide K-6 students through the process of learning to read and reading to learn. Reader’s Workshop is a research-based program developed by Teacher’s College. As part of Reader's Workshop, all students are assessed at the beginning of each school year using a reading screen called Fountas and Pinnell. The Fountas and Pinnel reading screen allows teachers to identify each student’s reading level. Once reading levels are identified, teachers work collaboratively to design an individualized program of literacy instruction that builds student fluency, accuracy and comprehension. Through Reader’s Workshop, as opposed to each student reading the same text in a one-size-fits-all instructional model, each student reads a personalized text that engages students at their current ability level and scaffolds text complexity as students develop the ability to engage fiction and informational text.

We face a dramatic decline of children's reading for enjoyment. According to a survey of US families “which carried out for children’s publisher Scholastic and managed by YouGov, found that only 51% of children said they love or like reading books for fun, compared to 58% in 2012, and 60% in 2010. In 2014, 37% of children said they like reading a little, and 12% said they did not like it at all” (Flood “Sharp Decline In Children Reading For Pleasure, Survey Finds”). So the majority of students just read what they have to read as a school assignment. As a result, children will lose the key to open the doors of knowledge, which they can find in interesting books for them and on every page they can discover a new experience. When they are forced to read a book to do homework, not because they want to read it and they are curious about it , they might forget the information immediately and not acquire the purpose of the book. Therefore, we have to figure out the main reasons

Creating a literacy-rich environment is one of the key elements of supporting children’s literacy development. Literacy-rich classrooms tend to look quite different than the traditional classroom, covered in pre-made posters and arranged with individual desks in rows, and instead, allow for teachers to design their classrooms with their students’ needs in mind. According to an article on the Sadlier School’s blog, all elements in a classroom must be meaningful, intentional, purposeful, and engaging when creating a literacy-rich classroom. This means that classroom design is created in a way that it provides frequent opportunities to be exposed to text via environmental print, instruction, and hands-on learning as well as encouraging communication and collaboration (Sadlier School, 2017).

Beyond understanding motivation, I wanted to find how motivation fit into my content area goals. On this topic I found three articles that explored how to create motivation when teaching reading. These studies were useful in their alignment to my subject area. The author of one of those studies Lang, explored his experience teaching literature to a juvenile detention population in Virginia. The students that he worked with may have had more obstacles to overcome than a majority of my students, but they do have one thing in common; they do not have a choice about the content they are studying. Lang’s research pointed to the importance of allowing students to relate text to their own personal experiences. He did this by asking students broad open-ended questions so that students had the freedom to explore the text and themselves to find an answer (Lang, 2013).

In order for a classroom to flourish, most or all of the practices discussed must be present. Number one, I find to be of greatest importance. “Create a classroom culture that nurtures literacy motivation by integrating choice, collaboration, and relevance into literacy tasks” (Gambrell, Part 1, 2014). It is empowering to be given a choice. It is important to give students the opportunity to review material that encourages them to engage in

My philosophy of literacy is centered on providing a learning environment rich in authentic literature, instruction that is engaging, fun, and balanced, collaborative, and also involving families in the child’s education. My ultimate goal of literacy instruction is to help children become lifelong readers and writers by providing the skills necessary to comprehend, construct, and make meaning of text, speak, and write. (Torgesen, 2002). According to the National Reading Panel, there are five essential components that must be taught in effective reading programs: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. (Reading Horizons). According to Konza (2014), reading instruction should be changed to six foundational reading elements, adding oral language and early literacy. I also believe that early literacy should be

Cluster one, reading engagement, focuses largely on promoting reading and creating lifelong readers who read for enjoyment as well as out of need. It also includes using strategies to be able to comprehend both recreational reading as well as informational texts. This cluster does a good job of filling some of holes that appear in the AASL standards. The information and research strand hones in on defining an information problem and identifying the information need. Some of the indicators in this standard show that a learner can narrow or broaden an information search as well as seek clarification from teachers and other resources. The third cluster, research and information includes being able to identify, evaluate, and select sources. The indicators in this

Student engagement is a popular topic during the professional development meetings I attend every Wednesday. As students go home early, the Claremont staff begins sharing and analyzing best practices to use in the classroom. This year specifically, our instructional leadership team has stressed the importance of having consistency as students travel from class to class. At Claremont Middle School, consistency means that every teacher has a Do Now, a measurable learning target, and uses an engagement method during their lesson that supports students to reach the learning target. Last school year I focused on used engagement strategies such as a think, pair, share or one of the Kagan cooperative learning strategies because the Oakland Unified

Across the nation today, teachers deal with students every day who refuse to do their schoolwork or do not want to participate in class. Although there are numerous factors contributing to this lack of engagement with school, two prevalent factors are students’ lack of comprehension and motivation. Many students read at grade level or below grade level in urban schools. They are not motivated internally or by external factors to be more involved with school or to read. Adolescent students are at an age where peer influence has a significant affect on them. If students do not see or hear about one another reading, the chances of them reading are lower. However, when students do hear that their peers are reading a book and recommend it to one another this validates reading to the students (Hopper, 2005, p. 118). Therefore, two possible advantages of the incorporation of choice reading into an urban school English classroom curriculum are an increase in student motivation and subsequently reading comprehension.