Thank-you for the kind responses. There is not a measure that can be put on fostering a life long love of reading.
Renee's excellent comments on reading are very important. One of the things that also must become explicit in teaching, particularly if students are doing a lot of reading through listening is the awareness of punctuation, sentence sense and spelling of words, for those students for whom this is manageable at their learning level. While some might not be able to accomplish all parts independently in their own reading responses or writing, these are factors that you really realize could become taken for granted. As one who has not seen physical print in a number of years, I do have to stop and think a lot more about word spelling and the correct punctuation because if it is not in your face as a component of your reading awareness, it could be missed.It is not just about sounds. Fortunately my computer's punctuation can be set to some all or none. I usually keep it at none but when I need to proofread, it is great to be able to have all that feedback. I encourage my students at this point in the school year to re-read not only for comprehension and expression of their ideas but to do a read with red pen in hand to be aware of sentences and to focus on things like capitalization at the beginning of sentences, comma placement, quotation marks for speaking parts and end punctuation. We also use a red pen to underline words we think might be spelled incorrectly. For revising of word spelling I encourage three before me even if it is three personal attempts on their whiteboard. Revisions of word choice, corrected spelling and expansion of ideas, missed words insertion and one of our favourite catches reducing pronouns and using the proper nouns to make our writing clearer. At grade three we are still in that transition from learning to read to reading to learn and so much of this requires explicit mini lessons. Paragraphing is very much a struggle for the children to begin to get their heads around. Again, taking the time using mini lessons is fun. The elmo is a great tool for demonstrating peer samples with permission and students have fun finding things to fix. Small group instruction sometimes involves practice of finding things to improve in which the sample has several of the same sorts of difficulties to be fixed. I often use as illustrative image that a doctor will have a person to type some letters and the doctor wants the letter typed exactly as dictated. having consulted with a few doctors, they are precise in dictating commas, periods etc. As there are benefits n every situation, without the benefit of physical sight, my students also have a blast becoming more literal in their reading back as they learn to tell me if they really did put a capital at the beginning of sentences and if there is end punctuation. Conferences we do in green pen and I give students custody of green pen to write in our points on their writing and reading reading responses. We still use two stars and a wish for personal and peer feedback. If doing more detailed descriptive feedback, I will type a response and have the student glue it in their book following their story. I have the beautiful benefit of the students knowing the added purpose of paying attention so as to provide feedback to me. Wanting to succeed is still at the core of every child. Of course I also have the need of developing interdependence with the children so it really does daily demonstrate mutual learning. Students are very involved in every part of the process. For example, my students usually have a strong reputation to paying attention to lessons on the board. Once I have started to write on the board I rely on them to tell me where there is space and they have fun telling me things like go to the right or left, up or down, that sort of thing. "K's" are my nemesis and I simply hand a piece of chalk to a student to fix up my letters if they are off. The kids know I try my best even if it is not perfect form modelling. I actually think many try harder in their own letter form because they get such explicit teaching on how to make letters. If you are wondering my personal check for something like that... I lay my hand on their desk and ask them to use their index finger as their writing tool and they draw the form on my hand. When I taught first grade and had wee ones not yet able to name letters, I had them draw the letter on my hand in the same way. obviously computer and projection work great for modelling and we've had great fun using the iPad this year. I've not found a way to make a smart board accessible yet. I absolutely support reading through listening and even though I use and model that throughout the day, to use this does require making elements of reading very clear so students get a fuller picture. My students quite regularly get the reminder that my eyeballs are what does not work but in the case of this year, I have twenty sets of eyes that work great. Without functional physical sight, also makes great cases for development of adjectives and rich development of descriptive language which can be applied to their sense of visualizing in their minds, description of art and word choices in writing. Shades of colours are great ways to help develop sensory awareness and i get beautiful questions of "Mrs. B, do you remember what "x" looks like?" as they constantly keep connecting visual life and description. Colours do remain quite brilliant in my mind as maintained through the precious gift of dreams, even those scary ones, in which I can see. Visual memory is an incredible, but much under utilized treasure for activating schema. With the huge amount of visual information processed each day, there are great lessons in tuning children into their awareness and the rich way authors make things come alive in our minds. Great lessons abound in helping children provide feedback if they think the illustrator has done a great job of capturing the author's words. Picture walks are so exciting but it is also great fun to read a book and withhold pictures until the end to give the children time to form their own images. Literacy, gotta love it! Sharon On 2012-01-16, at 10:22 AM, Renee wrote: > Sharon, > > I love your story; thank you so much for telling it. The question, "What is > reading?" is really the crossroad question of literacy. If one believes that > reading is making meaning of text, then it doesn't matter how that text > enters the thought process. If one believes that reading is decoding, then we > are led into benchmark assessments, leveled books, Accelerated Reader, twenty > minutes per day of round robin reading, and other such classroom methods and > strategies that *say* they are about comprehension while ignoring the > necessity for think time, mulling over sentences, discussing personal > impressions of stories, and other such less-quantifiable activities. > > Good luck on your dissertation! > Renee > > On Jan 15, 2012, at 5:47 PM, Sharon Ballantyne wrote: > >> >> Hello all, >> >> I have been very pleased to have the listening component so positively >> reinforced, largely thanks to the influence of daily five practices. as >> pointed out by another teacher, the children do respond positively. I >> provide lots of opportunities for listening as part of daily five, >> read-a-louds and the growing expanses of audio formats as well as formats >> that support highlighting of words as they are read as found in meegenius >> app for iDevices. >> >> I use audio personally all the time with most of my curriculum being in >> audio which I listen to while reading it to students. I am unable to read >> print due to being totally blind. While I use Braille daily as an >> organizational tool to help sort my files, student books, classroom library >> and such, it is far too cumbersome and time consuming for me personally to >> read lengthy texts. . If one has grown up using Braille it may be a >> different response entirely. Accessibility in Braille is also very costly >> and in this age of technology very limiting for the things I personally need. >> >> My grade three class would never consider that I am not reading as I share >> what I read through listening. When students can pair print text to follow >> along it also really enriches their learning for fluency as mentioned, but >> also to hear all the nuances of speech and tone through different speakers. >> Some of the narrators on the audible library are quite talented. I listen to >> audio formats of children's picture books, novels, textbooks while >> simulreading these to my students. I listen to text and teach with it in >> much the same way you do with a piece of print in front of you. >> >> I do my duty supervision in a kindergarten class four times a week while the >> teacher takes her break and as my guide dog and I enter it is not unusual >> for a child to announce "Mrs. B is here to read to us." . >> >> I believe the audio format can supplement, extend and where needed replace >> print decoding as the only form of reading. Listening as reading promotes a >> love of reading, enjoyment and widens horizons to appreciate literature. >> >> Historically there has been an argument that people reading by audio are not >> reading. Our students with LD who might use scanning technology such as >> kerzweil have been challenged as this not being literacy in my own school >> board. >> >> It is not as easy to research using audio but it can be done. My kindle >> allows me instant access to a world of books I would not otherwise had >> access too. Scanning of print texts to be in a digitally accessible format I >> can now do as quickly as quickly as I can physically turn a print page. >> Using digital camera technology which has replaced the flatbed scanner >> technology, I have my camera configured to detect hand motion of turning the >> page and an audible camera click alerts me the page has been scanned. With >> my software program set to read while scanning I can "read" (by listening to >> the speech synthesizer of my computer), while I scan print pages. The >> quality is still questionable at times but if anyone had told me even a few >> years ago that I as a totally blind person would successfully be working >> with a digital camera to scan documents and make them accessible I would >> have thought it quite beyond my imagination. >> >> E-readers are a wonderful technology. Some people do not even realize >> e-readers often have full speech possibilities to read the text if the book >> has text to speech enabled. Many users I know have opted to combine reading >> the text visually and switching to audio to support reading when tired or >> commuting. >> >> It kind of begs the question... what is reading? >> >> Does reading beyond the "cult of normalcy" expectations mean it is not >> reading just because it is different from the way people usually interact >> with text? >> >> As I defend my phD dissertation(unrelated to this topic) in a few months, >> the reality is that five years of research have been accomplished using >> listening to reading. It is a process of drawing the circle wider and >> accepting that print impairments in the twenty-first century do not mean an >> inaccessibility to the world of reading and literacy. >> >> If I can provide any support to any teachers who might be struggling to get >> their head around the making space of accepting this as reading, please do >> feel free to contact me off-list. >> >> Sharon >> [email protected] > > > "Painting is just another way of keeping a diary." > ~ Pablo Picasso > > > > _______________________________________________ > Mosaic mailing list > [email protected] > To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to > http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org > > Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive > _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive
