As I read this week's articles, I was pleasantly reminded of my real-life application observation I completed a few week's ago. I visited a second grade reading specialist's classroom and sat in on a small group guided reading lesson. Like Mr. Turner of the article, Mrs. Dyar coached by encouraging a struggling reader to use what he knew about picture cues to figure out an unfamiliar word. Mrs. Dyar was an expert at really stretching the students' capacity for solving problems on their own as obstacles arise in reading. This is what I was reminded of as I read that coaching teachers "enable readers to think to the edge of their knowledge as they attempt to recognize unfamiliar words" (pg. 445). In the Yopp article, one of the activities with syllable manipulation was clapping out the syllables of one's name. Mrs. Dyar used a similar technique within her reading instruction by encouraging students to "tap out" syllables of harder words. She even provided some really fun tappers which are pictured below. I found it very rewarding to see these effective strategies first hand and then read about them in our articles.
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| The students put this tapper on their pointer finger during a reading exercise. They are allowed to play with them at the end of the lesson. It was very effective and fun for the students. |
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| I just thought this was a really neat picture for the teacher-coach idea! haha |
Just like a coach of a sports team, teachers are coaches to the children in their classroom. Being encouraging and supportive through the literary process is key!
ReplyDeleteCaroline, I love that you are bringing in the information from your real-life application project and relating it the reading!
ReplyDeleteI really like the idea of the clapper! I had visited a classroom once and they had something similar to that and the reason was because it helped keep the noise level down due to the soft tips. I think it is awesome when teachers can incorporate learning with fun objects!
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