A child’s visual perception plays a crucial role in learning
how to read. A young learner uses three stages of brain activity to read text.
They must focus their attention on the words in front of them (input), process
the combination of the letters and words (central processing), and determine a
meaning to the letters and word combinations (output). The learner becomes an
expert reader once the three stages of brain activity are automatic. How do you facilitate visual learning in
your lessons and activities in the classroom? What cues are you looking for to
gauge student understanding?
Children are also learning to focus their attention on words
and sentences as they read, but you will often have those that have wandering
eyes (p. 167). What are some strategies
that you have found to be, or believe will be, successful for students that
continue to look around the page and/or the room while reading?
This chapter explained how to look at print in the eyes of a
child. With engaging examples, it encouraged us to take a step back from being
an expert reader and to put ourselves into the shoes of a young learner. What parts of the chapter impacted your
idea on visual information and will influence your future literacy lessons and
interventions?
The article this week explains that there is more to reading
than just cognitive strategies and skills. Test scores cannot be the only
determinant of a successful reader. A strong reader is also metacognitive,
engaged and motivated, practices epistemic thinking, and shows self-efficacy. In what ways do you support these practices
in your classroom? After reading a few examples from the article, what might be some new ideas/strategies
you could incorporate into your lessons to support metacognition,
self-efficacy, engagement and motivation, and epistemic beliefs?
Clay discusses self-correcting as a development in
independence and problem solving skills. When teachers provide students with a
book that is challenging but appropriate, with about 10% of error in words,
this will allow for optimal self-correction opportunities. How do you support self-correcting in your classroom? How do you use,
or will use, your observations to guide your instruction with your students?
In response to your first question- about visual learning-Clay provides some ideas in which to improve a child's visual discrimination (page 173). She states, " once the child begins attending to some new item, vary the places in which it occurs. This helps to curb the chance the child is paying attention to only to the position of a particular text" and this reminded me of a student I have who in the past, memorized a book with repeated patterns of words, but was unable to identify the words outside of the book. I think it is important for the teacher to observe students when they read, as Clay states,
ReplyDelete"overt behavior" than a "decision made in the head" (page 173).
As to avoid the "wandering eye", Clay mentions that publishers and illustrators often disregard this and "pepper the beginners field of vision with competing images hard to read" ( page 167). I find my students do best with color pictures (instead of black and white images in the printed readers) in their readers that support the printed word they are reading.
I think I am aware of visual discrimination issues in my students, I have a few that qualify under visual impairment as a secondary disability category and so I have to pay attention to font size ( we order large print textbooks) and busy pages with lots of information--mostly in science and social studies textbooks. I have to be aware that some need the book elevated, not flat on the desk to read. I also try to only use dark whiteboard (black, brown) markers for one of my students as he has difficulty with lighter colors on the whiteboard.
Colored pictures are a great way to keep attention! As a child, anything colorful is much more attractive to the eyes than something black and white. On p. 165, Clay gives a few examples on "simple" activities that are claimed to be complex. One example that she mentions that seems to be a complex task is pointing while reading. This activity, I've noticed, actually keeps my students' attention on the words and not looking around on the pages or the environment around them. To keep things interesting, we use different pointers than just our fingers. Sometimes we'll use pencils, markers, and if they're super special, the students get to use plastic finger caps, finger lights, and other fun and exciting tools to keep motivation and interest.
DeleteWhile I was reading the section about wandering eyes, it also reminded me of a tool that I observed a student use when I was an intern in a classroom. The student was diagnosed with dyslexia and she used a yellow transparent card that helped her focus on the section being read. This tool was a great help for her to focus on the sentences one by one and kept her from getting overwhelmed by the amount of words on the page.
Your last comment about large print and dark colored markers reminded me of Clay's statement on p. 158 about presenting visual clarity to students. When new information is presented, it's important to provide that information as a clear and easy-to-read visual. This will help reduce confusion and allow students to focus their attention on the text.
In response to self-correcting--Clay states,"self-correction behaviors are evidence of one kind of executive control developed by readers to keep them on track" (page 186) and how oral language fits into the picture. Most children will learn "self-repair" through trials with oral language. This makes so much sense when I think of my classroom. I have many students who have struggled with oral language skills and how this affects all aspects of their learning, especially with reading and comprehension. Since I have a wide variety of ability levels, how we self-correct depends on their current reading ability. As Clay states on page 194," Observing self-corrections may provide teachers with important information for scaffolding instruction for individual needs".
DeleteKaren,
DeleteIn Chapter 5, Clay discusses beginning readers and how beginning to self correct correlates with them "graduating" to more complex books. This
made me think about how when a child begins to self correct when dealing with an articulation error (substituting an /f/ for a /th), that is a really significant milestone. Whenever I begin to notice self correction, I "level up" their work. Obviously my real life example is not about reading or writing, but I feel as if its a very similar concept. I think having this experience helped me better understand self correction in reading and writing. I thought it was very interesting to note that even though self correction and being assigned more difficult books had such a strong connection, the teachers Clay mentions did not usually notice the self corrections. They just noticed a "change" in the child's reading ability and decided it was time to level up. Even though you mentioned that Clay stated on 194 that, "observing self corrections may provide teachers with important information for scaffolding instruction for individual needs," it almost seems the teachers in question observed the self corrections subconsciously or are such veteran teachers that they do not even realize all the mental steps they are taking when it comes to instruction.
Melinda, Clay helped to understand why I have been doing all the "steps" during instruction. It seemed natural at the time. As teachers, we want to rescue the children and not let them struggle when they self correcting themselves.
DeleteKaren and Melinda,
DeleteI definitely agree that observations of self correction lead to great scaffolding opportunities. On p. 193, Clay also mentions that the role of the teacher is very important when it comes to self-correcting. It's important for teachers to allow enough time for the student to think through their mistake and fix it on their own, instead of just correcting the child. Verbal reinforcements also influences a child's confidence and motivation for self-correcting.
I've been using verbal reinforcements during guided reading groups and praising the students that are sounding out difficult words and self-correcting. I can really see a difference in motivation and confidence. I have also kept in mind to use readers that the students will be 90% successful.
How do you facilitate visual learning in your lessons and activities in the classroom?
DeleteOn pages 166 & 167, the author explained that by reading a difficult text two or three times, we can “tune in” our visual perception. She used the example of trying to read the text the child had written about Mary having a baby. In that activity, when you first glance at the text, you immediately want to not even try to read it. However with time and repeated readings or tuning in of your visual perception, you can start to piece together what is being said. In my third grade classroom, I feel as if I do something similar to facilitate visual learning by having students reread chunks of texts for various purposes. With each read, the students can fine tune their perception of the text and we can delve deeper into the meaning of what is being read. I also read on page 168, about how students cannot effectively check word sequence of print until they can speak the words in sequence properly. This made me think of how I try to have my students speak the language properly, and how over time as this becomes easier for them I start to see this language being copied over into their own writing. This again reminded me of the importance and connections of reading, speaking, writing, and listening and how when we make gains in one area it also causes us to improve in the other areas.
I couldn't agree more with you on the importance of the teacher's role with self corrections. I too have been trying to give my students more time to self correct a word before rather me jumping in and saying it for them. On page 208 the author also stated that we should reinforce children with positive encouragement when they attempt to self correct their miscues. I think this is hugely important, and I’ve been really trying to reinforce the concept of straying away from skipping unknown words or taking wild guesses with my students. Instead I have been having my students practice relying on syntactic (grammar), semantic (meaning), and graphophonic (visual letter/word patterns) cues to help them predict new words in sentences. I like how the author suggested using the phrase I like the way you did that, and I have definitely been putting that to good use as well.
DeleteThanks Theresa for these questions that will encourage taking the information and connecting to practice. Remember, all, to bring your ideas back to the text ideas as Karen did.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteSupport for visual learning in my lessons and activities in the classroom are Like Jesse’s instruction, when students reflect about texts, reading and knowledge, except we engage students when we create mind maps, and charts, table, and graphs for visuals using color markers to refer to text contents.
Behaviors as cues to gauge student understanding. Be sure that wandering eyes become disciplined and notice the feature of letters, and the detail of print. The order of inspection is critical. The co-ordination of body, hand and eye movements is involved when children are learning to pay visual attention to print. The learning is gradual, not sudden (McQueen 1975), and occurs as children are reading their first books and writing simple messages. (Clay, p.146)
Students that continue to look around the page and/or the room while reading are ‘read it with your finger’. (Clay, p. 183) Have students explain why they did something to gain insight into how a child worked, to scaffold instruction. (Clay, p.186) Give time for pausing “wait time” for self-correcting. (Clay, p. 193) Talk about what occurred, link to other features of print, focus on problem-solving. (Clay, p. 202) Suggest the student, ‘Work it out’. (Clay, p. 203) Accept self-corrections as valuable activities. (Clay, p. 207) Reinforce the child with comments directed toward behavior like “I like the way you did that.
My future literacy lessons and interventions, If the student makes an error then corrects it, I can prompt, demonstrate, or teach immediately to adjust the processing after reviewing records of the lesson, analyze the kinds of information being ignored to product the error (Clay, p. 200)
Support comes from exposure to texts with multiple perspectives, and with activities and questions related to their knowledge and learning, as Jesse helps his students better understand their epistemic beliefs and become more critical readers. I do the same for my students. In the future, I will give hunches enough thought to open new possibilities for the learners but remember that any strong conclusions are likely to close out new learning opportunities. Always get a second opinion from peer and tutors or teacher leaders. (Clay, p. 163)
Some new ideas/strategies to explore from the article and incorporate into your lessons to support metacognition, self-efficacy, engagement and motivation, and epistemic beliefs are use scientific research as evidence to measure yearly progress, use questions, checklists, ask readers, “does this make sense?” Print statements on bookmarks to remind students of metacognitive thinking (Afflerbach, Et al, 2013)
Running records help me to monitor students’ visual perception, awareness of letters, word forms, or some directional rules for attending to print, or mismatch between spoken and written word (Clay, p. 184) Linking reading development and comprehension to self-efficacy to encourage development of students’ epistemic beliefs. Self-correcting is a sign that students are aware that something is wrong. They look for ways to correct the error. Providing strategies will better help students to understand the written code. (Clay, p. 145) Give time for pausing for self-correcting. (Clay, p. 193)
Assessment measures cognitive strategies and skills from phonics to comprehension which are necessary for reading development. (Afflerbach, Peterson, & Paris, 2008, Stanovich, 1986) There are other factors that directly impact reading development. Other factors that are not being measured through high stakes testing but are critical to literacy development include: metacognition, motivation and engagement, epistemic beliefs, and self-efficacy are essential for students’ reading development. (Afflerbach, et al 2013)
Cynthia,
DeleteMetacognition, motivation and engagement, epistemic beliefs, and self-efficacy were very well explained as important factors for reading development in the article this week. I really enjoyed reading the detailed examples of how those aspects can be supported in the classroom. I especially liked the example of the 2nd grade teacher, Beatriz, supporting metacognitive reading in the classroom by providing oral questions, along with bookmarks and checklists for students to remind themselves what they should be doing and thinking as they are reading. Questions and ideas like the ones presented will really resonate with the students as they refer to them frequently when reading and, in hopes, will become automatic. With continuous practice in metacognitive thinking, comprehension skills will be enhanced, as stated on p. 443.
Engagement and motivation are two concepts that are linked together. As stated in the article, " engaging classroom environment helps motivate readers...motivated readers choose to invest time and effort in the reading process". This probably looks different in each one of our classrooms but it is vital to developing stronger readers.
ReplyDeleteTheresa, Your comment about how the author mentioned giving students a text where they can have 90% accuracy really reminded me of the importance of making sure are students are reading books at their level. In doing this like you said, we can truly use their miscues as windows into their thought processes. I like how Clay, explained that miscues are not to be thought of as negatives, but rather a means to guide instruction because they are way for us to make in the head processes more apparent. Like you I have also been trying out some these things with my guided reading groups. I especially liked how Clay mentioned the importance of keeping running records and then analyzing our notes to determine patterns we may see that can help us to alter our teaching to better meet the needs of our learners. One struggle I am having and have thought about more recently after reading this chapter is the act of having the students explain why they went back and self corrected the word the way they did. The author explained that in doing this it may help give us more insight into how the student is processing the text. This in turn can also help us to better scaffold learning. However, the author also mentions that this may interfere and slow the processes. I can see the importance and value of having the student verbalize why they made the self correction they did, but I also think that in doing this it would affect comprehension of the text. I wonder how often we should have students explain why they did the things they did, and worry about doing this too often as it might interfere with the meaning making process???
ReplyDeleteI think your worries are important. You would not want to ask a child to explain every self-correction and if you did ask about one, I wouldn't do it right then but after the passage reading is complete.
DeleteJamie,
ReplyDeleteI had similar thoughts regarding self corrections and explanations of said corrections while reading the text as well. I too can see the value of gaining insight into that students processing, but I would really like to know as you mentioned, at what point do the negatives outweigh the positive of gaining that insight?
In regards to having students reading books on their level, while I have not taught students how to read- I do know the importance of having students feel successful. Like we were discussing last night in another class, success is a result of success, not failure! If you were to give a struggling student a reader that was too challenging it would certainly frustrate them and likely create a larger problem. It seems that giving a student a book that they can read with 90% accuracy is exactly what Clay was talking about visual perception and how "it becomes faster as we have more encounters with print" (Clay, pg. 167).
Theresa,
ReplyDeleteI had a little trouble when thinking about how to respond to your post originally. Although I cannot give any valuable feedback about literacy lessons, classroom instruction, or how to handle students whose eyes tend to wander the room while reading- I still definitely feel like I am connecting to the text and understanding what is being presented. Working with the specific population that I do, it is perhaps even more important to think about visual learning and potential distractions. To facilitate visual learning in my small group sessions, I have learned that the area really needs to be free of any materials that we are not currently focusing on. As Clay mentions, "teachers must ensure that the childs visual attention is directed where it needs to be" (pg. 167). I have decorated my classroom sparingly in order to prevent as much "wandering eye" problems as possible. Overall I really enjoyed reading these two chapters and I feel like I have a much better grasp on the visual working system for literacy. I really liked her prompts in order to get the reader thinking more in depth about visual input, processing, and output.