Week 4-1 Building Vocabulary

Assignment#1:  Fluency and Word Study Chart before watching video

•What texts and materials do teachers have in their classrooms that support students' development of fluent reading?  -> Teachers usually have phonic and vocabulary wall to help students build vocabulary words. 

•How do they select vocabulary to teach in all areas of your curriculum? -> teacher usually select words that may be difficult for students from the book that they will read

•How much time do they allocate to word study? -> about 45 min. per day

•What word study routines do they teach and encourage their students to use? ->Teacher will teach some reading strategy such as break a difficult words into part that they may already familiar with.

•How do they differentiate instruction and tasks based on their students' needs? -> Teacher will spend more one on one with students who have learning issues.  For students with more advanced level, teach will give more challenging book for them to read. 

Below is my chart on Fluency and Word Study before watching the video:

Assignment#2:

1. How can you ensure that your struggling readers have access to texts they can easily read?

    I can assess students' reading level through running record and how much students can retell. Then I will tell students if the book they are reading are just right, too easy or too difficult for them, and advise them a suggested level of books to read.   

2. How can you foster a learning environment in which students have many opportunities to practice reading?

      I will set up classroom environment with a big variety of books in Fiction and non-fiction that labelled with reading level.  So during break, students can feel free to select the book that they are interested, at their reading level so to ensure they can enjoy reading the book and understand what they are reading independently.  During lessons, I will provide reading opportunities through read aloud, guide reading, pair reading and one-on-one reading, etc.    

3. Describe ways in which you can model fluent reading in your classroom throughout the day.

           I will read aloud for students so students can learn how a fluent reader should read with expression, fluency and smoothly.  Also, when students are doing the reading, I will not disturb them until they finish the sentences.  This way, it can help train the students to read fluently as well as to self-monitor their own reading instead of building a habit of waiting for teacher to signal whether they read accurately or not.  I will also have classroom discussion about the books we read to assess student's reading comprehension and have them write down daily reading log with drawing to keep track on their reading.   

Assignment#3:

1. Explain the three levels of words and how you can use word levels to decide which words to teach.

     1st level: Familiar words such as bad, look, run that students use in their daily conversation and understand the meaning already.  

     2nd level:  words that appear on news or books often, but words that students may not know their meaning as they don't use the word much in daily conversation yet, such as :  Hurricane, democracy, etc.

      3rd level: highly technical words that only use in specific subjects, such as legislature, or some specific chemistry or biology terms.

-2nd level of words should be the focus on vocabulary teaching and suggest to teach based on the reading books that students will read for lesson. 

2. How do you teach your students to "chunk" words as a strategy for decoding unfamiliar words? When do you provide this instruction?

      I will ask students strategy to try figure out the meaning of a difficult word.  For example, see if there are any part of the words student already know, or ask students to read the whole paragraph to see if the context will give the hint of the meaning of the word. 

3. Based on Professor Allington's comments and the classroom examples, what are some ways you might foster word study in your classroom?

            I will have students have a lot of opportunities to read.  As the more they read, the more fluency and adaptation of meaning of new words.  I will teach student one to two key words they they will learn from book each day.  And I will try to connect the word with student's life.