Beliefs

What do you believe about the teaching of reading?

I have spent my entire career trying to figure this out.  Through all the years of being the mother of a sweet little boy that struggled to read, as an elementary teacher, a special educator, and now as a literacy specialist.

Beliefs matter!

My struggling reader needed help decoding words. It took a long time for him to understand that letters had sounds. A multi-sensory approach helped him to learn to decode. 

But, that didn't make him a reader. He finally fell in love with reading when he was 15. We found a series that caught his interest.

So, here are a few things that I believe:

Reading is about meaning, not just decoding words.

Some kids need extra phonics instruction in order to decode words.

We have to find books that kids will read and enjoy.

Others can fight reading wars, but I will do whatever it takes to grow readers. Phonics or the ways of Marie Clay-I believe that we must meet the needs of students.

Once my son became a reader, he became more successful at school. He went on to graduate college. It was a very long journey, but well worth every step!

Connecting Children with Nature

Today’s children and families often have limited opportunities to connect with the natural environment.  What can we do as educators to help children experience and enjoy nature? First, we need to understand why it is so important!

The benefits of connecting to nature have been well documented in numerous scientific research studies and publications.  Collectively, this body of research shows that children’s social, psychological, academic and physical health is positively impacted when they have daily contact with nature. (The Natural Learning Initiative)
Positive impacts include the following:

• Supports multiple development domains. Nature is
important to children’s development in every major way
—intellectually, emotionally, socially, spiritually
and physically (Kellert, 2005).
• Supports creativity and problem solving. Studies
of children in schoolyards found that children engage
in more creative forms of play in the green areas. They
also played more cooperatively (Bell and Dyment,
2006). Play in nature is especially important for
developing capacities for creativity, problem-solving,
and intellectual development (Kellert, 2005).
• Enhances cognitive abilities. Proximity to, views
of, and daily exposure to natural settings increases
children’s ability to focus and enhances cognitive
abilities (Wells, 2000).
• Improves academic performance. Studies in the US
show that schools that use outdoor classrooms and
other forms of nature-based experiential education
support significant student gains in social studies,
science, language arts, and math. Students in outdoor
science programs improved their science testing scores
by 27% (American Institutes for Research, 2005).
• Reduces Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) symptoms.
Contact with the natural world can significantly reduce
symptoms of attention deficit disorder in children as
young as five years old (Kuo and Taylor, 2004).
• Increases physical activity. Children who experience
school grounds with diverse natural settings are more
physically active, more aware of nutrition, more civil to
one another and more creative (Bell and Dyment, 2006).
• Improves nutrition. Children who grow their own
food are more likely to eat fruits and vegetables (Bell &
Dyment, 2008) and to show higher levels of knowledge
about nutrition (Waliczek, & Zajicek, 2006). They are
also more likely to continue healthy eating habits
throughout their lives (Morris & Zidenberg-Cherr, 2002).
• Improves eyesight. More time spent outdoors is
related to reduced rates of nearsightedness, also known
as myopia, in children and adolescents (American
Academy of Ophthalmology, 2011).
• Improves social relations. Children will be smarter,
better able to get along with others, healthier and
happier when they have regular opportunities for free
and unstructured play in the out-of-doors (Burdette and
Whitaker, 2005).
• Improves self-discipline. Access to green spaces, and
even a view of green settings, enhances peace, selfcontrol
and self-discipline within inner city youth, and
particularly in girls (Taylor, Kuo and Sullivan, 2001).
• Reduces stress. Green plants and vistas reduce stress
among highly stressed children. Locations with greater
number of plants, greener views, and access to natural
play areas show more significant results (Wells and
Evans, 2003).

I don't know about you, but I am impressed with the benefits of exposing our kids to the natural environment!  I want to provide you with a few resources to add this element to your classroom.

Connecting Young Children with Nature by Condie Ward

This article tells you how to incorporate a nature wall in the classroom!

Bringing Nature into the Classroom post by Sheryl Cooper

You will love this post and the ideas presented!

Little ones love nature! 

Infants and Toddlers Meet the Natural World

How about a Pinterest Search?

Create a nature library for your kids!  Children love to read books about nature!

I hope you are inspired to bring nature to your classroom!

Word Walls

 What is a word wall?  What words will be on the wall?  Why?  The most common are high frequency word walls.  High frequency words are words that occur more times than other words in the spoken or written language (Cooper & Kiger, 2003).  Knowing your purpose for using the word wall to teach children is important.

“A word wall is a place on which important words are posted as references for reading and writing.

Regie Routman, “Conversations:  Strategies for Teaching Learning, and Evaluating”, 2000

“A word wall is a systematically organized collection of words displayed in large letters on a wall or other large display place in the classroom. It is a tool to use, not just display. Word walls are designed to promote group learning and be shared by a classroom of children.”

McCarrier, Pinnell & Fontas (2000): Interactive Writing: How Language & Literacy Come Together, K-2. (p. 46).

It is not enough to simply have a word wall in a classroom. 

Cunningham (2000) reminds us that "doing the word wall is not the same as having a word wall" (p. 58). Teachers need to directly teach activities with the word wall that actively engage students making it more likely that they will internalize the spelling of the words. 

Word Walls:

• Provide a visual that helps students remember connections between words.
• Serve as an important tool for helping students learn to read and spell new words.
• Foster students’ independence.
• Promote reading and writing.
• Hold students accountable for spelling specific words correctly at all times.
• Trisha Callella, “Making Word Walls More Interactive”, 2001

Trisha Callella's Book

What does the word wall look like in Kindergarten?

The Name Word Wall

Using children's names is a very effective way to help emergent readers make letter and sound associations (Pinnell & Fountas, 1998). The first names of children in a classroom (along with their pictures) can be grouped on a word wall according to the first letter and used to help students acquire information about how names beginning with the same letter usually make the same sound. The names can also be used for activities that strengthen phonemic awareness and beginning writing skills.

Environmental print word walls are great in kindergarten!

Check out this blog post for great ideas!

Word walls should be at eye-level in grades K-2.  In the pictures at the top of this post, the teacher used velcro strips to mount the words.  Magnets work well on metal surfaces like white boards.  Kids should be able to remove the words and take them to their desks when writing,  Notice that the words are linear.  This helps with directionality.

White boards are great places for interactive word walls when students are tall enough to reach the words.

What about word walls in grade 3-5?

This is a great word wall for older students.  It isn't as interactive, but very visible.  

Here are some tips for using word walls in the lower grades:

Doing a Word Wall 

(Follow link to read entire article!)

by Shari Frost

The purpose of the word wall is to provide maximum exposure to those heavy duty basic sight vocabulary words. These are the words that children need to know automatically, without any decoding or problem solving. The more experiences children have with these words, the more likely the words will be internalized.
Add three to five high frequency words to the word wall each week. Introduce the words with fanfare and pageantry; make a really big fuss. Engage the children in reading, chanting, singing, spelling and writing these words. Have a whole-group word wall activity each day. You might need to follow up with small-group work for some children. Keep word wall activities brief and highly engaging.
With word wall words containing a high frequency phonogram (word family) such as -an, -all, -it, or -ot, capitalize on the opportunity to point out other words with the same phonogram. For example, if “can” appears on the word wall, it is instructionally effective to bring words such as man, pan, ran, tan, and fan into the discussion and emphasize the pattern.  Once children have learned words with phonograms, it opens the door to many other words. Some teachers distinguish these words on the wall by marking them with a star or a key. Children learn that these words can help them read and write other words.

Retiring Words 
Once most of the children in the class have learned a word, take it down. There is no reason to have “the” on a first grade word wall in January. Make retiring a word from the word wall a celebration.

Special Education

Special education classrooms should have word walls too!  They may even have several in the room or individual word walls to meet specific needs.  I love the drip pans found at Wal Mart for about $12.00.  It allows you to have several word walls without taking up too much space.  You will need magnets and a place to mount the drip pan.  We have glued them to the backs of bookcases for stability.  Plain sheet metal works if you make the edges safe for kids.

Suggestions for Professional Development

Print Shari Frost's article from Choice Literacy and discuss word walls with your colleagues.  Develop common beliefs about word walls and the words used.  Analyze how effective your word walls are by looking at student writing.  Share tips and ideas for teaching using the word wall.

The word wall in your room is about your kids and what they need.  Do you have a plan to meet the needs of your students?  Do they need high frequency words from a previous grade or the grade ahead?  Are there too many words on your wall?  

I would love to hear about your discussions!

Check back soon for more on word walls in content areas and for other ideas!

Louise Rosenblatt

“A novel or a poem or a

play remains merely

inkspots on paper until a

reader transforms them

into a set of meaningful

symbols” Louise Rosenblatt (1995)

Louise Rosenblatt was a pioneer in reading theory.   You can read about her life and work here! Rosenblatt stressed that every act of reading involved a “transaction” of reader and text in which both were essential. 

Here is a grand excerpt from Chapter 5 of Making Meaning with Texts

“The Acid Test forLiterature Teaching” by Louise Rosenblatt from English Journal, 45.2(1956). Copyright © 1956 by the National Council of Teachers of English. 

"Our business seems usually to be considered the bringing of books to people. But books do not simply happen to people. People also happen to books. A story or poem or play is merely inkspots on paper until a reader transforms them into a set of meaningful symbols. When these symbols lead us to live through some moment of feeling, to enter into some human personality, or to participate imaginatively in some situation or event, we have evoked a work of literary art. Literature provides a living through, not simply knowledge about: not information that lovers have died young and fair, but a living-through of Romeo and Juliet; not just facts about Rome, but a living-through of the tensions of Julius Caesar or the paradoxes of Caesar and Cleopatra.

For the reader, the literary work is a particular and personal event: the electric current of his mind and personality lighting up the pattern of symbols on the printed page. Or perhaps we should say that the symbols take meaning from the intellectual and emotional context the reader provides. The current of his thoughts and feelings has for the time of his reading been channeled by the printed symbols. The result has been a more or less organized imaginative experience, and the word, “story,’’ or the word, “poem,’’ points towards this segment of the reader’s experience.

When we teach literature, we are therefore concerned with the particular and personal way in which students learn to infuse meaning into the pattern of the printed symbols. We are not dealing with books as separate and fixed and neatly outlined and summed-up entities. We are dealing with each student’s awareness, no matter how dim or confused, of a certain part of the ongoing sequence of his life, as he seeks to marshall his resources and organize them under the stimulus of the printed page."

After reading this beautiful explanation of the transaction that takes place between the reader and the text, I dared to think about what children are reading in classrooms today.  

Are they truly engaged in the text?

Are they making meaning through the transaction?

It is personal?

Does the text speak to them in some way?

If not, then what are they reading? Why are they reading it?  

Hmmm...