Motivating Low Performing Adolescent Readers.

Motivating Low Performing Adolescent Readers.


In my continuing curiosity on students lacking motivation in reading. I discovered through reading several articles that use of a wide variety of teaching materials and teaching techniques help provide for differences in students' ability to learn. Supplementary materials like newspapers, magazines, games, films, and audio and video tapes offer additional ways for students to acquire information. Any medium which stimulates students' interests and involvement is worthy of consideration.

By asking students to complete projects at the end of their reading assignments may enable students to derive a purpose for reading. This is particularly successful when students are exploring subjects that are of interest to them. It is suggested that projects or oral presentations may also provide a chance for students to collaborate with others. Group work may reduce the apprehension poor readers frequently experience and motivate them to use language socially and purposefully(Collins and Decker 2010).

Some students have developed an indifferent attitude towards learning. By the time they get to the secondary school, that negativism or indifference is pretty well embedded (Kos, 1991). It is important for us educators to work on these behaviors that surround the act of reading. I am almost 99.9 percent certain(qualitatively speaking of course) that all teachers want students to achieve in the classroom. In order to achieve this shouldn't we create contexts which promote success. It takes patience and forbearance to establish an atmosphere of trust that will encourage risk-taking on the part of the low performing student.
In summing up my thoughts today I'll leave you readers with this one last strategy. The only way to improve reading skills is to read! Yes people it will work.....

Collins,. Decker, N. (2010) Motivating Low Performing Adolescent Readers. ERIC Digest.

Motivating Adolescent Readers

In the Article “Motivating Adolescent Readers by Dr. Michael W. Smith” one of the first recommendations stated is that teachers provide “direct, explicit comprehension instruction” (Biancarosa & Snow, 2006, p. 4). The article states that teachers tend to assign work and then assess students on the basis of how well they do it. The article talks about another study of the literate lives of adolescent boys both in and out of school (Smith & Wilhelm 2002). This study found that the assign-and-assess approach is indeed prevalent. The researchers stated that only one student talked about a teacher who provided the kind of explicit instruction Reading Next calls for. These were some of the comments of the student: “I haven’t started reading until this year pretty much. ... I have been starting novels this year because Mrs. X kinda like assigns the homework and this is the only time it’s really been due so I’ve been reading pretty good novels now and I like John Steinbeck and stuff. A lot of novels like that get to me and Mrs. X’s been kinda showing me the road and the path. I kinda thought reading was dumb, but now I’m kinda getting more into it.

As I read this I reflected on my role as a Father and instructor. As I read this I thought about the pleasure this student finally obtained from reading. I know I need to change my approach to motivate especially the boys in the classes I teach. I'm thinking to my self is it any wonder some of the children are so miserable. They can't sit still and listen. I wonder if it is because while they were younger some adult didn't take the time to read to them......

Writing

Writing facilitates learning by motivating students to explore, clarify and think deeply about ideas and concepts they encounter in reading according to Vacca and Vacca 2010. It is important that students understand that they need to concentrate on both content as well as the mechanics of their written work. This especially so if they are being prepared to be academically successful at a written exam.
These are some writing sites that students,teachers and parents can take a look at:

Difficulty planning/organizing Assignment Calculator http://www.lib.umn.edu/help/calculator/
The tasks associated with a (An innovative tool to break a large project into manageable daily tasks) research project
So You Have to... http://www.ri.net/schools/East_Greenwich/research.html (A teacher created web site with step by step guidance and resources)
Difficulty getting ideas on Inspiration, Kidspiration http://www.inspiration.com
Paper to get started (Graphic orgnizers provide a great way to brainstorm and organize)
Graphic organizers http://www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer/ (Ready to reproduce graphic organizers)
Difficulty in the process of PixWriter http://www.slatersoftware.com/pixwriter.htm l
Composing written work (A word processor designed for emerging readers and writers)
Scholastic Keys http://www.tomsnyder.com (Provides developmental and cognitive access to Microsoft Word)
Co:Writer http://www.donjohnston.com (A predictive word processor)
iDictate http://www.idictate.com (A dictation service; dictate over the phone, receive draft via email)
Now I hope you make use of some of these ...

Importance of previous knowledge

During the holidays so far I have had to baby sit nephews and nieces. In retrospect I think its my families' way of saving sitter fees(Only joking here).They have been a handful ALL the time. I have however found that there is power in setting a mood to engage their interest outside of carrying them to a park or pool an letting them run/play free. Take for instance I want to keep them quite I make up a game . I say we will play the silent game. Then I ask a question like if they know a mouse. I ask them to be as quite as a mouse and state that who ever does this the best will win the game. Boom! They all get quite. Beside the one time the youngest in the set asked D(this is what she calls me) What's a mouse? Thus my thoughts today on previous knowledge.

Readers think about the topic before reading and call up relevant information and related vocabulary use while reading. The more Background knowledge and prior experiences readers have about a topic the more likely they are to successfully comprehend what they are reading (Zimmermann and Hutchins 2003).

After reading this I asked myself the question How many times do I really activate children's previous knowledge before they actually start to read a passage? I thought and in truth answered not many. The usual excuse being the time alloted to get all the work for all the curriculum areas. Excuses! Excuses! Excuses! What are your thoughts on this??? By the way I did explain what a mouse was to my niece...

Vocabulary Knowledge

Mc Kenna 1995 has indicated that content literacy is achieved by a subset of General content literacy skills, content knowledge and content specific skills. In each of the areas listed understanding vocabulary or the specialized vocabulary of the content area is necessary in order to achieve content literacy.

One of the most enduring findings in reading research is the extent to which students’ vocabulary knowledge relates to their reading comprehension (e.g., Anderson & Freebody, 1981; Baumann, Kame‘enui, & Ash, 2003; Becker, 1977; Davis, 1942; Whipple, 1925). Most recently, the National Reading Panel (2000) concluded that comprehension development cannot be understood without a critical examination of the role played by vocabulary knowledge. Given that students’ success in school and beyond depends in great measure upon their ability to read with comprehension, there is an urgency to providing instruction that equips students with the skills and strategies necessary for lifelong vocabulary development.

It seems that from these two bits of information this word vocabulary seems to be important. Since I have started this programme I have found myself observing various things related to class room instruction. I have observed that we some-times teach vocabulary in isolation from actual reading text that our children are exposed too. I too was very guilty of this. I placed a lot of words in the children's copy books to learn on a weekly basis. I have since then tried tried to highlight new words that the children encounter from various sources related to their classroom instruction.

I believe that I took for granted that I was the only source of words or at least new words the kids were exposed too. I was really wrong about that. I have since started to allow the kids to compile their own word lists(in addition to those we come across in class). If you people reading out there have other strategies feel free to share.....

Effects on student discipline problems and academic performance.

As a result of the SEA results education has been the focus for the past several days. One particular interview involving the President of the National Parents Teachers Association roused my interest in this topic. In a research paper by Luisellia, Putnama, Handlera, Feinberga(2005) it describes many students attending public schools exhibiting discipline problems such as disruptive classroom behavior, vandalism, bullying, and violence. Establishing effective discipline practices is critical to ensure academic success and to provide a safe learning environment. The authors describe the effects of whole-school positive behavior support on discipline problems and academic outcomes of students enrolled in an urban elementary school. The whole-school model was designed through technical assistance consultation with teachers that emphasized: (1) improving instructional methods; (2) formulating behavioral expectations; (3) increasing classroom activity engagement; (4) reinforcing positive performance; and (5) monitoring efficacy through data-based evaluation.

The whole-school intervention was associated with decreased discipline problems (office referrals and school suspensions) over the course of several academic years. Student academic performance, as measured by standardized tests of reading and mathematics skills, improved contemporaneously with intervention.

It is really disheartening to hear the derogatory statements made by individuals of the public who have no idea of what they are saying as it relates to the field of education. Mind you it is this authors view that everybody is entitled to an opinion. However one thinks that an informed opinion would be much more effective rather than an uninformed one. I think we as a nation have to stop blaming everybody else an take responsibility for our children's' behavior. I may be wrong what do you think?




Feinberga, A. B., Handlera, M.W., Luisellia, J.K., Putnama, R.F., Whole-school positive behavior support: effects on student discipline problems and academic performance(2005). Journal Educational Psychology, Volume 25, Issue 2 & 3 April 2005 , pages 183 – 198. doi:10.1080/0144341042000301265

Thoughts on instructional routines

“Cognitive and affective predictors of academic achievement of school children ” a study by C Armitage found that although positive affect did not influence intention directly, it did influence intention stability, the mechanism by which intentions are translated into action. Future educational interventions should therefore influence both cognitive and affective factors to promote sustained motivation. (Armitage, 2008). This statement suggests that taking turns during instructional routines may not negatively affect student’s affective and expressive processes directly or immediately. It will however affect intention stability that would be translated into action at some time (in the present or in the future) which will either motivate or demotivate students. This motivation or drive (according to the online thesaurus) is what enables students to succeed or fail at academics. Even as we trod through this Masters in education programme I’m sure we feel as though we can’t make it at times(especially with respect to the numerous assignments, projects and so on). The drive that comes from within, or maybe the verbal affirmation from our friends/colleagues, is what encourages us to continue. Lets keep this in mind when we interact with our kids....
Bibliography
Armitage, C. J. (2008). Cognitive and affective predictors of academic achievement of schoolchildren. British Journal of Psychology , 99,57-74.

Thoughts on assessment

Last week the SEA results were released to the public. Since then their has been much public “talk show debate” on examinations. Examinations or assessment, a word that is quite popular in the Education community. It seems that the view expressed by more than one child psychologist is that traditional tests should not be the only determinant in which secondary school a child attends. In an effort for one to “keep up with the present trends” I decided to focus on the traditional test vs authentic assessment.
Assessment is authentic when we directly examine student performance on worthy intellectual tasks. Traditional assessment, by contract, relies on indirect or proxy 'items'--efficient, simplistic substitutes from which we think valid inferences can be made about the student's performance at those valued challenges. (Grant and Wiggins 1990).
A standardized test is one that is administered under standardized or controlled conditions that specify where, when, how, and for how long children may respond to the questions or "prompts." Standardized tests should meet acceptable standards for technical qualities in construction, administration, and use (Goodwin and Driscoll (1980, pp. 59-60)).
Grant and Wiggins argue that:
Authentic assessment require students to be effective performers with acquired knowledge while traditional tests tend to reveal only whether the student can recognize, recall or "plug in" what was learned out of context.
Authentic assessments present the student with the full array of tasks that mirror the priorities and challenges found in the best instructional activities: conducting research; writing, revising and discussing papers; providing an engaging oral analysis of a recent political event; collaborating with others on a debate, etc. while conventional tests are usually limited to paper-and-pencil, one- answer questions.

As a result one believes that authentic assessment would be a better. Better here as a means of assisting in planning instructional goals rather than standardized testing. It is not however the best type of test with respect to placement....

Adressing struggling adloscent readers

Serious reading problems exist among adolescent learners. Teachers can turn around this descending twist by using various strategies. One of these strategies is the scaffold reading experience (SRE). Teachers can integrate the SRE to aid the reading process in struggling students and there by assist them in the teaching of the content areas. The SRE targets 2 instructional elements: techniques and strategies. Techniques are actions the teacher takes to ensure appropriate rereading, reading, and post reading instruction .i.e. the reading process. Other strategies, such as list-group-label (H. Taba, 1967), story pyramid, and summarizing, are tools that students can use to comprehend information. Comprehending information in content areas is vital for academic success in these areas. (Evans, 2008). Academic success one believes all teachers, schools administrators, parents and the public at large wants. Vacca and Vacca (2008) notes that it is not the responsibility of the content area teacher to teach students how to read, but to use reading as a tool to “extend meaning” in a discipline (p. 11). In Trinidad and Tobago reading facilitators are not present in our schools. One still is of the view that each teacher can take a personal responsibility to ensure that the children who are faced with reading/literacy issues can cope with their mainstream education. “If there is a will there is a way”. Food for thought!!!!!!!!

Evans, C. J. (2008). Reading Success in the Secondary Classroom. Preventing School Failure Vol. 52, No. 2 , 59-66.

Assisting struggling readers

We as educators must present reading as a pleasurable activity to the struggling reader. We must be willing to use a variety of strategies( this may be a daunting task but we must strive to do it). We must adopt the position that all children can learn and also be willing to add to our knowledge about the changing trends to better equip our selves to assist the children.

Biancarosa and Snow (2004) suggest that principals and teachers address the diverse literacy needs of adolescents through a comprehensive approach encompassing the following strategies:

* Develop a school wide literacy focus, including targeted professional development and strong instructional leadership.

* Adopt a set of research-based instructional strategies, including such techniques as reciprocal teaching, graphic organizers, prompted outlines, and questioning the author, to foster reading growth across all content areas.

* Offer focused intervention classes taught by a trained reading specialist for students with severe reading deficits.

* Increase opportunities for students to choose books for pleasure reading during the school day.

* Use complementary trade books that present content textbooks' key facts and concepts in a more engaging style.

* Conduct assessments, both formal and informal, to help teachers understand the literacy needs of their students.

* Emphasize pre-reading activities, during-reading strategies, and graphic organizers to guide students in building background knowledge and creating meaning during the reading process.

So if we educators commit to doing whatever is necessary to get our children to become literate and see reading as a pleasurable activity, we would have been successful in our goal.

So in closing I'd like to leave you with some food for thought “If you can read this, thank a teacher.
~ Anonymous Teacher ~”

Biancarosa, G., & Snow, C. E. (2004). Reading next--a vision for action and research in middle and high school literacy: A report from Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.

The five essential components of reading

The five essential components of reading are: PHONEMIC AWARENESS, THE ALPHABET PRINCIPLE , READING FLUENCY, VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT, READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES.

Now to expand on these a bit

Phonemic Awareness (PA) is:

1. the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words and the understanding that spoken words and syllables are made up of sequences of speech sounds (Yopp, 1992; see References).

2. essential to learning to read in an alphabetic writing system, because letters represent sounds or phonemes. Without phonemic awareness, phonics makes little sense.

3. fundamental to mapping speech to print. If a child cannot hear that "man" and "moon" begin with the same sound or cannot blend the sounds /rrrrrruuuuuunnnnn/ into the word "run", he or she may have great difficulty connecting sounds with their written symbols or blending sounds to make a word.

4. essential to learning to read in an alphabetic writing system.

5. a strong predictor of children who experience early reading success.

The alphabetic principle is composed of two parts:

• Alphabetic Understanding: Words are composed of letters that represent sounds.

• Phonological Recoding: Using systematic relationships between letters and phonemes (letter-sound correspondence) to retrieve the pronunciation of an unknown printed string or to spell words. Phonological recoding consists of:

* Regular Word Reading

* Irregular Word Reading

* Advanced Word Analysis

Fluency (automaticity) is reading words with no noticeable cognitive or mental effort. It is having mastered word recognition skills to the point of over learning. Fundamental skills are so "automatic" that they do not require conscious attention.

Examples of automaticity:

• shifting gears on a car

• playing a musical instrument

• playing a sport (serving a tennis ball)

Vocabulary Knowledge is learning, as a language based activity, is fundamentally and profoundly dependent on vocabulary knowledge. Learners must have access to the meanings of words that teachers, or their surrogates (e.g., other adults, books, films, etc.), use to guide them into contemplating known concepts in novel ways (i.e. to learn something new).

(Baker, Simmons, & Kame'enui, 1998)

Comprehension is :

• the essence of reading

• active and intentional thinking in which the meaning is constructed through interactions between the test and the reader (Durkin, 1973)

(n.d.). Retrieved June Sunday, 2010, from http://reading.uoregon.edu/big_ideas/index.php

As an educator I'm sure that all teachers are aware of these areas and we all do teach them(even if we just give exercises from the Reading workbooks.). One wonders however how much emphasis is actually placed on these. I know that before this program one used to teach the 5 areas but usually gloss them over or even teach them during times of the day after having covered the “Big subjects” ie Maths and Language or just stick in a quick lesson to be able to writing up the record and evaluation for the week.

These days however one has placed an emphasis on these areas in fact it is best(in my humble opinion) to teach these areas at the beginning of the day(when the children's minds are fresh). One has noted a remarkable increase in the interest of all students in reading. In fact the students are a lot more eager to read aloud now than at the start of the academic year 2009.

It is very important to focus on the key concepts of reading, this sets the stage and the children will perform...

Introduction

Hello Everyone,

My name is Sheldon and I'm a Masters in Education student at the University of The West Indies. I have set up this blog in part requirements for my master's programme.

The blog posts here will be of a professional nature sharing information with respect to reading with a particular focus on young children and adolescents.

So I'm going to dive right in, the first thing I would like to address is the question of "What is reading?"

According to Wikipedia:

Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols for the intention of deriving meaning (reading comprehension) and/or constructing meaning. Written information is received by the retina, processed by the primary visual cortex, and interpreted in Wernicke's area.

Reading is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas.

Readers use a variety of reading strategies to assist with decoding (to translate symbols into sounds or visual representations of speech) and comprehension. Readers may use morpheme, semantics, syntax and context clues to identify the meaning of unknown words. Readers integrate the words they have read into their existing framework of knowledge or schema (schemata theory).

Other types of reading are not speech based writing systems, such as music notation or pictograms. The common link is the interpretation of symbols to extract the meaning from the visual notations.

Reading is an important tool for people of many societies, allowing them to access information which might have otherwise been unavailable.

Retrieved from Reading (process)(n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved June 3, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_(process).

According to the author, children should see reading as a way to explore human adventure before they even learn how to read. An example is reading a book to her classroom. The students listen intently and express how they feel about the story and the characters that they see in the book. A brief overview of what the preschoolers are learning from their exercise in reading is the ability to make human connections to the characters and the story unfolding within the book, is presented. Topics include an in-depth discussion of the goal of teachers regarding how children approach books, such as choosing thoughtful read-a-louds and encouraging reflection. Retrieved from Ruth,S.(2010, March). Making reading meaningful. Educational Leadership, Vol67 Issue6, pp63-67. This is the first in many more posts to follow.. So bye for now and stay tuned!!!!!!