Module Four Reflection

     One very important fact I learned from the readings was that fluency and comprehension was so closely related.  For the most part I read to my nonreaders and use several comprehension strategies to assist with comprehension.  But thinking about it, for sighted children, I can definately see where fluency would absolutely affect their ability to comprehend the text.  By the time the student makes it throught the text, they have forgotten the story line.  Research supports that a student's ability to call words immediately and automatically will support their ability to comprehend and retain important story elements.
     Another important fact I discovered was that having a student reread text improves not only their reading rate and word recognition, but comprehension, which also builds self-confidence as a young developing reader.  It also increases the size of the "word chunks" they will be able to recognize quickly.  Once they begin to recognize these chunks, they will associate meaning to the chunk and can then identify them in larger compound words as they present in text.  I think another important guideline that research supports, is that the student while engaged in silent reading activities, need to read books on their recreational level and books that are enjoyable to them.  Books in their zone of proximal development should be used in shared reading and guided reading activities.
     I also highly agree with the importance of making connection with words and carrying them across subjects.  Presenting sight words in isolation, according to research, it not nearly as effective as presenting the words and then using then in other areas of the students reading activities.  This is the main reason I use thematice units in my classroom.  Our vocabulary words are words that we will hear during our Science and Social Studies lessons and will also be included in our writing activities.  By the end of our week, the students have used and been exposed to these words and can successfully commit them to memory.
     One important way I plan to use the research that supports rereading text in my classroom is to have my one visual reader read a prepared reading passage to my other students every morning.  He then will reread it in the afternoon.  By the end of the week he has four passages that he has read at least twice a day and then on Thursday afternoons he rereads silently and shares his thoughts with me after reading.  Another thing I have done with him is to create a rebus about a particular picture book I share with the class.  This builds his self-confidence while providing him with a visual representation of the vocabulary word which he describes to the class.
     One of the during reading strategies I have implemented in my classroom is questioning the author.  I use this to discuss what the author's intended message is, whether, informative or teaching a lesson and so on.  We also discuss the intended audience or reader the author was wanting to read his or her book.  We then use a modified version of this strategy during journaling.  I ask them who their intended audience will be and to write to that audience.  We have discussed using subject matter and words that are appropriate for the audience they have chosen to address.
     Another strategy I have modified and implemented is the vocabulary map.  Most of our vocabulary have a tactile representation that I have made with a hot glue gun to allow the students an idea of its shape and texture.  These will be words that they never will be able to relate to such as clouds, a lightning bolt, etc.  For these specific words, we talked about their definitions, sensory words that described them, such as lightning could be assosciated as "hot" and clouds "soft" etc.  For the tactile experience, I used cotton balls to represent clouds and uncooked spaghetti noodles to represent the lightning bolt and we hot glued them to construction paper.  I know this seems far fetched, but for blind students many words we use have absolutely no meaning to them and I want to make assosciations to things they can actually be acquainted with.