Power in Pictures. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a whole library of pictures worth?

Ebooks are definitely worth more than a million words as the creation of E books can have a multitude of benefits to young readers and writers.

• Ebooks allow students to focus on story language and apply their funds of knowledge to constructing and comprehending texts in an academic setting. Schema theory tells us that prior knowledge is essential for comprehension and that learning difficulties can often be traced back to insufficient background knowledge. Ebooks that use the familiar aspects of the school as themes allows all students access to background knowledge that would help them understand and contribute to the text.


• Using computers to write stories and access digital images gives students experiences with technology and moves them to becoming fully literate in today’s world as they gain proficiency in ICT. As educators we have a responsibility to effectively integrate these technologies into the literacy curriculum to prepare students for the literacy future they deserve.

• EBooks are ideal for developing a lesson based on the language experience model using pictures from field trips or class parties. The digital photos may serve as a memory link for students’ experiences as well as concrete prompts for descriptive language and tools for organizing a sequence of events.


• Publishing - Since e-books are already electronic, they can be shared easily via email.


• E-book writing assignments give students an authentic opportunity to craft identities as real authors who have a message to share and to experience the motivation and engagement that comes from writing about things they care about at a level that is challenging without being frustrating.

So teachers don’t leave class pictures in an album, use it to engage your students in literacy as they create fun keepsakes for reflection in later life.

From instant coffee to instant books

What are eBooks?
EBooks are books that are available in digital format.
EBooks provide an alternative to paper books and for those comfortable with technology it’s an exciting facet, allowing books to be distributed and enjoyed so much more easily. EBooks have many exciting features not present in traditional books: You can

• Get instantaneous delivery (from instant coffee to instant books) E-books can be purchased or downloaded anywhere your e-reader device can get a connection to the Internet. You don't need to go to a book store or order a new book online and wait for it to arrive. You can surf your options online and have the new book in a matter of seconds and they are cheaper than the printed books.

• Help the environment by not using paper or requiring packaging (community service?) the world can be a greener place

• Save space and time as your library (clutter) won't need its own room, and a quick search of your e-reader can locate the title you're looking for in seconds (organized eh!).

• Search through the text for a specific word or phrase, and there is a built in dictionary – no longer do you have to skip the word and never get back to it later!

• Add digital bookmarks, change the text size, highlight and annotate the book , or research footnote references with a single click

• Effortlessly carry hundreds of eBooks- your whole library a click/touch away so you do not have to choose which book to carry. The standard Kindle can hold up to 1,500 books--certainly enough to keep you busy while commuting to work (on the bus not driving, duh), or even on an extended trip

• Use them for involving children reading- there's animation to encourage, motivate and engage the chidren

The role of rubics

A rubric is a descriptive set of guidelines used to assess the comparative quality of a piece of work According to Gunning (2006) rubrics are more than just scoring guides, they serve as ‘instructional illuminators’ and they have the power to improve instruction. Well designed rubrics specify the essential tasks that students must complete or the key element that must be included in order to produce an excellent piece of work. This helps both the teacher and the student focus on key skills.

An effective rubric should therefore:
• Be concise – it should contain only three to five evaluative criteria otherwise both teacher and student can get lost in the details
• Contain only one teachable skill for each criterion for each evaluative criteria, which may be clarified with the use of examples

The rubric should form the basis for providing feedback to students, and if possible students should be involved in the process of constructing rubrics as it leads to a better understanding of what is expected of them. I have found that the practice of involving my student in the process of preparing question papers together with the marking key for course work assignments often leads to improved performance in the end of term assessments; in fact occasionally when I designate reading assignment, rather than provide guiding questions I ask students to write questions based on the reading text assigned. I have also used student constructed questions for tests and quiz. This is an excellent strategy for developing critical skills and problem solving strategies as students must read and comprehend before they can compose questions. With practice and guidance students learn to and compose higher order questions with ease over time.

So teachers let’s get them actively involved to improve their literacy skill – remember they will be the future teachers and PARENTS!

The importance of Fluency to Reading Comprehension

Fluency




Today I want to discuss another important element of Reading – Fluency.

Fluency is the ability to read efficiently, it provides a bridge to comprehension and consists of three components: accuracy, speed and prosody.

Accuracy is the ability to recognize familiar words automatically without any conscious thought and to identify unfamiliar words almost as quickly. When students have to stop to decode words they are not reading fluently and this may because the selection is too difficult.

Speed is the rate at which students read. Excessively fast or slow reading is dysfluent and can hinder reading comprehension.

Prosody is the ability to read expressively with appropriate phrasing and intonation.



Importance of Fluency

Fluent readers are better able to comprehend what they read because they automatically recognise most words and can use a range of word identification strategies to decode unfamiliar words. In contrast students who are not fluent often read slowly, grouping words inappropriately and without proper intonation. Because they often lack the metacognitive skills of the skilled peers they spend most of their mental energies identifying words leaving little cognitive resources for comprehension.



Factors which promote dysfluent reading




According to Allington (2009), there are three key reasons for some readers struggle with fluency

• The books they are expected to read, usually the class text, are too difficult. They must be given books at their instructional and independent levels.

• They actually do very little reading, even though reading volume is the key to developing fluency

• Teachers often interrupt them as soon as they misread a word rather than giving them the opportunity to notice the error and correct it.



How can teachers promote Fluency




Rasinski (2003) identified four principles of fluent instruction

1. Model fluent reading for students

2. Provide oral support while students are reading

3. Do repeated readings of brief text

4. Focus students attention on chunking words into meaningful phrases

The following website can provide additional information to readers who need additional information on improving fluency.

http://newteachersupport.suite101.com/article.cfm/strategies_for_improving_fluency

Making the Most of Assessments to Inform Instruction

Assessment may be defined as an evaluation or appraisal; it is about making a judgment, identifying the strengths and weaknesses; it is not simply giving marks though that is usually part of it.

Why assess comprehension?
As a reading specialist it is important that we assess comprehension since this is the ‘bottom line’ of reading. Measuring comprehension provides an indication of how all the sub processes of reading are working together as a team. Inability to comprehend may be caused by a multitude of factors including Poor decoding, limited prior knowledge, poorly developed reading strategies, fluency and vocabulary. Assessment of comprehension may therefore be carried out as a first step to initially determine if there is a reading problem of any kind; this can then be followed by detailed tests of the sub-components if a problem is determined. Two key reasons for assessment are:

• To gauge the degree to which a student has comprehended a particular selection
• To estimate the instructional level of proficiency

How to assess comprehension
1. Questions - questions at various levels (literal, inferential and critical) of thinking can provide a glimpse of how a student has processed a reading selection
2. Cloze assessment – involves deleting words from a prose selection and asking students to replace them on the basis of the remaining context. The ability to provide logical replacement words is thought to indicate the extent to which the student is able to comprehend.
3. Maze – a multiple choice variation of the cloze assessment
4. Oral retellings – the student is asked to orally retell the content of a reading selection

For further information on assessing comprehension http://www.learner.org/workshops/teachreading35/session8/sec3p2.html
http://www.faqs.org/copyright/illustrations-for-teaching-and-assessing-comprehension/
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ752767&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ752767



Assessment is a necessary component to instruction. Assessment tools are used to determine what is working and what should be taught. This is necessary to ensure that we plan effective lessons to move our students from known to unknown.

solutions to the vocabulary problem

Vocabulary instruction plays an important role in a balance literacy classroom. Graves (2006) identified key components of vocabulary instruction as follows:

• Immerse students in words through listening, talking, reading and writing

• Teach specific words through active involvement and multiple encounters with words

• Teach word-learning strategies so students can figure out the meanings of unfamiliar words – this is essential if student are to become independent learners.

• Develop students’ word consciousness, their awareness of and interest in words.


Very often we have willing minds and able bodies but momentarily we may simply forget or run out of ideas. For those times I provide some guidelines for teaching vocabulary as suggested by Thompkins (2010)

 Choose key words for vocabulary instruction from books students are reading, from thematic units and high light them on word walls

 Engage students in word study activities such as word maps and word sorts so they can deepen their understanding of specific words

 Scaffold students as they develop full word knowledge by learning multiple meanings, how root words and affixes affect meaning, synonyms, antonyms, word history and figurative meaning

 During interactive read-aloud, focus on specific high utility words

 Teach students to use word learning strategies to unlock new words such as use of context clues, analysing word parts and of course the use of the dictionary.

 Develop students word consciousness by demonstrating curiosity about words, teach them about words, and involve them in wordplay activities

Finally in the same tone I provide a word for you my reader to explore:
Etymology
syllabicate it, pronounce it and guess the meaning, then use the word in a sentence

Etymology is the origin and history of words; Etymological information is enclosed in brackets in dictionary entries

Importance of teaching vocabulary

There is documented proof of a strong positive relationship between vocabulary and comprehension. This implies that children with larger vocabularies who know the meaning of most of the words they hear and read comprehend more than those who do not. Children with limited vocabularies may experience difficulty understanding both oral and print language in school and additional may not be aware of strategies to for word learning and so they will be less able to learn new words.




Most of the word knowledge of the emergent reader comes from exposure to language in the home and their other social environment. There are significant variations in the vocabulary knowledge of children as they enter school that influences their ability to comprehend what they hear and read. According to SPENCER & GUILLAUME (2006) Children from low socioeconomic groups and those who are learning a second language appear to be especially at risk and may not be able to catch up unless direct intervention in learning words is provided.



Extensive reading is one of the key ways to learn new words, however since children with insufficient word knowledge often do not understand print, they often refuse to indulge in reading activities leading to further deficiency in vocabulary over time. In contrast children with large vocabulary are encouraged to read merely because they get pleasure from reading since they comprehend the print, leading to further expansion of their vocabulary and the development of word learning strategies as they practice reading. This increasing gap in word knowledge named the ‘matthew effect’ by Stanovich (1986) can only be stopped by direct intervention by the classroom teacher using a systematic approach (Gunning, 2006) and develop learning strategies and habits that will foster independent word learning

For more information check out http://vocabulary.co./learning_vocabulary/vocabulary-instruction-in-early-learning/

The Blog as an educational Tool

The Web log began as an online journal with the author posting items of personal interest and commentaries for the world to read. The web log was later renamed blog and has over the last ten years its use as a media for personal expression has grown exponentially. A blog may be defined as an easily editable webpage with posts or entries organised in reverse chronological order ( Mortensen, 2008)

Why bring Blogging to the classroom? According to Zawilinski (2009)

• schools need to prepare students for the new literacies emerging from the new technologies associated with the internet, by integrating them into the curriculum, and blogs are and easy way to begin. Though many of our students can develop basic tool use without instruction, simply using these tools does not predicate effective and efficient use.
• The new literacies of online reading comprehension emphasize higher order thinking skills like analysis, synthesis and evaluation and can be practiced through blogging
• classroom blogs bridge the gap between out-of-school literacies and in school literacies - by broading the audience for student writing and thinking, providing a space for collaborating outside the classroom, problem solving on the internet ans learning to communicate safely - can all be developed within the context of blogs

How are Blogs used in the classroom? According to Jan Ray (2006), blogs used for education called edublogs, may be used in a number of ways such as:

• to communicate - blogs may be used as an electronic bulletin board to post class announcements for parents and reminders to students
• as instructional resource - teachers can post tips, explanations, examples, websites and other resourses for students
• as collaborative tools - students may work together on projects or teachers may collaborate with each other on curriculum or other professional development issues
• as a publishing venue for students projects

So teachers there is good reason to use the blog in your classroom, whether used as a means of communication, an instructional resource, a collaborative or simply to showcase students work - there sure to be benefits.

Blogging and relationships

From my reading online I see that Blogging has been widely embraced by the academics and educators, and rightly so for a number of reasons which I would like to 'blag' about a little.

As a technology tool blogging has advantages which the notebook cannot compete with, one of the main being the possibility of linking to various materials including text, videos and photos rather than just citing them. This can lead the student to a completely new world via vicarious experiences.

As a publishing media it provides students with the opportunity to read and comment on the writing of their classmates. This not only provides a facility for students to learn from each other but also allows them to benefit from immediate peer review and feedback as they comment on each others' writing. As an Med student reading the through the blogs of my peers has been a learning experience and the requirement to comment on the blogs has forced me to think critically as I read.

As an active component of Web 2.0 the blog has played its part in transforming the internet from a place to locate information to a network which facilitates exchange, participation, interaction and creative expression. The blog provides the student (and me) with a new-found freedom to write without fear of criticism. The commentaries on their work seems to give birth to a new compulsion to write.

I saw the excitement and motivation when I introduced my ten year old son to the world of blogging (after I learn't it in EDRL 6004). He could not wait to read the comments on his writing and each day he continues to write and respond to the comments. A new unseen force seems seems to motivate him to continue writing and responding.

The increased interest and motivation of students enables blogging to be used as a 'space' where student generated comments can be discussed freely, thereby providing the teacher with previously unimaginable insights into the 'thinking' of her students.

There seems to be no end to the positive attributes which academics continue to bla bla about. However there are many gray areas which we need to clarify in our minds. I recently followed a discussion on relationships and the concern about relationships and the social media arose in my mind. I would like to find out how my peers (teachers) feel about relationships and the social media? Is it easier to communicate with people we don't know via the social media? (many of us still have have issues with voice mail ... we'd rather hang up and call back) Is the communication via social networks with people you never met a relationship? Are these so-called 'media relationships' killing the human emotions (caring, concern for humanity) in our youths? What can it lead to?

Why I chose to become a reading specialist

I have been a teacher at all kindergarten, primary, secondary and tertiary levels for a total of 29 years. At the kindergarten and primary levels I expected that my students may not know how to read and a major part of my job would be to teach them to do so; this I attempted, sometimes with success and at other times with many frustations and failures, however I continued to plod along inspite of the difficulties.

It was at the Secondary and even tertiarty levels that I was totally shock to find students with reading problems. With limited training in the teaching of reading which was geared toward the kindergarten and primary levels, I was unsure of how to solve the reading problems at the higher levels; Many of my students read orally but the comprehension simple evaded them. This often resulted in disengagement from school leading to high levels of indiscipline, absenteeism and sometimes eventual academic failure and or school dropout.

I realised that my knowledge and training was inadequate to effectively guide my higher level students to overcoming their reading difficulties.

It was during my search for a possible solution that I came across the advertisement for the Med Reading Programme and immediately thought that this could be the way to a solution for my students, so here I am today engaged in a program which I hope will continue to provide me with skills to empower my students.

cloud computing

Last week I learnt about Cloud Computing for the first time. Cloud computing relies on applications and storage which is maintained on a net work. The computer must therefore always be connected to a network to implement cloud computing.

Cloud computing has many advantages such as cost and time saving. Since files and programmes are held on virtual storage, there is no need for flash drives and expensive computers with large hard drives. Lower cost computers can run faster with smaller hard drives and users can work on projects from any where without having to transport flash drives. Files can be shared without email.

This technology makes group work so convenient and easy as files can be shared and collaboratively edited with others in a cloud based application. Most important there are many web based applications which are free and they are compatible with standard programs such as Microsoft Office .

This technology sounds oh so exciting and I cannot wait to learn more and try it out with my new form ones when they come in with the laptops promised by the government. It would be ideal to apply to literacy learning as youngsters are so excited and motivated by technology

my blog account

This morning I set up my first blog account. I will be using this to learn about the new technologies which are available for motivating my students to learn and practice literacy. When I feel proficient enough I will use this media communicate information relating to reading instruction to my fellow teachers. I am also hoping that they will participate and contribute their knowledge and expertise so that we may learn from each other.