Chapter 1: Highly Effective Teacher There are seven pillars of effective reading instruction.

These pillars include: teacher knowledge, classroom assessment, evidence-based teaching practices, response to intervention, motivation and engagement, technology and new literacies, and finally, family and community connections. While at Trace Crossings I have specifically observed Mrs. Norris exemplify classroom assessment, motivation and engagement, technology and new literacies, and family and community connections. Mrs. Norris would be classified as a highly effective teacher. She has had over twenty years of experience teaching and has learned throughout those years what works for students and what does not. Although I did not observe concrete evidence of every pillar being implemented in the classroom, I am confident that Mrs. Norris does in fact use these pillars to guide her teaching instruction. Each week the students have the opportunity to choose four books from the classroom library to read. The books they choose must be in their reading level based on the Fountas and Pinnell lettering system. This allows Mrs. Norris to assess the students reading progress and monitor what level they need to be reading at. Each week the students must complete a sequencing worksheet for one of the books they have chosen. On this worksheet the students will write the beginning, middle and end of the story and draw the pictures to go along with the events. This ensures that students are not only able to read the words, but retain the information about what they read. Whenever Mrs. Norris is reading to the students she is constantly asking them questions to keep them engaged and motivate them to want to learn more about the book. I have observed that the more the students are involved in the reading and actively participating in the lesson the more motivated they are to read, and Mrs. Norris does a wonderful job of incorporating both into her lessons. Each day the students have centers time and one of the centers is computer. The students have the option to play two games: Raz Kids or Spelling City. Spelling City helps students learn different words, how to spell them and pronounce them. Raz Kids is another game online that has

eBooks available to the students to read and interact with. This program is also accessible online, and will keep track of the students progress on their reading level. This way the students will improve when they read at home instead of fall behind. I was able to attend the open house night at Trace and made my way to different classrooms to see the parent teacher interaction. I went to Mrs. Norris room and no one was there. She reassured me that she had already had a handful of parent conferences that day and the rest of the week. She tries to have meetings with the parents at the beginning and end of the year, and it is ideal to meet in the middle of the year as well. In order to ensure that students are practicing reading at home, the parents must be involved and actively participating. She explained to me that all of her students parents have been very cooperative and involved. Mrs. Norris prioritizes her relationships with the parents. The traits that I personally feel most apprehensive about would be teacher knowledge and parent connections. I have always been insecure that others know more than I do, but since being at Samford I have become more and more confident in what I have learned and experienced. Parent involvement is so important to me that I am nervous about doing something wrong or missing an opportunity to reach out to families.

Try it Out! The Classroom Library In Mrs. Norriss second grade classroom she uses the Fountas and Pinnell reading level system. The books are organized by reading level/Alphabet number into their own bins. Each bin is labeled with the corresponding letter, for easy access for the students. Each book has the letter written inside to make sure the book will find its way back to the correct bin if it is misplaced by accident. The bins are located in the cubbies in the back of the room, so when students need to get new books and return old ones they do not disturb the rest of the class. The cubbies are at the perfect height for the students, which is easy access as well. When the students check out books each week they choose from the appropriate bin four books that interest them, and they must take them to Mrs. Norris for her to record the titles in order to keep a log of the students reading records.

Chapter 5: Fluency The most effective ways to teach fluency are: explicit instruction, modeling reading fluency, repeated readings, oral and silent readings, and partner reading. Explicit instruction refers to the teacher directly teaching students words and strategies for reading to promote independent reading and fluency. Explicitly teaching fluency requires patience and time in order for students to learn phonemic awareness, identify a variety of words, and broaden their vocabulary. Each of these areas provides an opportunity to explicitly teach content in order to improve the students fluency. Modeling reading fluency is the easiest way to teach reading fluency. With repetition, students are able to hear and understand what fluency is supposed to sound like and in return the can follow the example given to them. Repeated readings give students confidence in their ability to read fluently. Once they have read a passage multiple times and have mastered reading it fluently, they want to keep reading because they are having success. When selecting a text for a repeated reading activity it should be short, predictable and easy. This will help students recognize their potential to read quickly and accurately. Oral and silent reading has an equal success rate for students in second and third grade. Oral reading helps students hear others and themselves to recognize when they are reading well, or not fluently. Silent reading takes the pressure away and allows students to read and take their time on pronouncing words, and in time they will have a better understanding of words, which will improve their fluency. Partner reading is the last effective teaching strategy for fluency. Pairing students together gives students are struggling with fluency the opportunity to read aloud with more fluent students. Students are more engaged when they have a change of activity and can listen to their peers rather than the teacher the whole time. The DIBELS test is an extremely efficient way to assess fluency. This test monitors students progress throughout the year. The student reads a short passage from the book in one minute. As the student reads, the teacher follows along and marks off the words the student pronounces wrong or skips. At the end of the minute the

teacher counts the number of words the student read and subtracts the words he or she marked of and that determines how fluent the student is. Tracking how many words per minute a student can read is an easy and accurate way to assess fluency. Research has proven that reading fluency is an important goal in becoming a proficient and strategic reader. The National Reading Panels analysis from 2002 of fluency studies showed that fluency practice if most effective when the reading practice is oral, it involves repeated readings of a text and students receive guidance or feedback from teachers, parents, volunteers, and peers.

Try it Out! Neurological Impress Method Each day the students have independent reading time. Each day I would sit individually with students and have them read aloud to me. There were two students I worked with outside of the classroom to work individually with. Both of these students although in second grade have a difficult time reading fluently and even pronouncing on level words on their own. One of the students in particular was trying to read a story on her level and could not make it through the first page within minutes, so I decided to guide her along by using the Neurological Impress Method. I sat right next to and used my finger to follow along with the words. The first time we did this I read louder than the student but very slowly to get used to the process. Once the student I felt more comfortable we sped up the pace just a little bit. It was very encouraging to see how well the student could read when we were using this method. As we were reading it started to seem as though she was just waiting for me say the words and she would say them delayed after I said them, so I told her when we read through the story again I wanted her to focus on the words because she would read the book out loud on her own once we finished. We read through the story a third and last time using this method. When she read the story by herself after we had read through it together, her fluency drastically improved. I was amazed with how well repletion and this method worked. I will use this method again with students who get caught on words easily. One thing I would have done differently when using this method would be to have the student point their finger along with my finger while we read together.

Raz Kids Each day the students have center time. There are groups of students and they rotate to a different activity each day. One of the center activities is Raz Kids, a reading program on the computer. The program has an entire selection of eBooks for the students to read. The program also keeps track of the book level the student is on, so that he or she can continue to progress to higher reading levels. As the students read a book there is a voice on their headphones reading the text and the words are highlighted as they are being read to the student. While I was working with an ELL student on Raz Kids I asked her to take off her headphones and read the story out loud to me as the words were being highlighted. I wanted to implement oral reading since the program focuses on modeled reading. As she began to read aloud, she was doing a good job until the words were being highlighted more quickly than she could read them. She started to get frustrated and I realized this program was not the best opportunity for oral reading. For the future I will continue to seek out opportunities to switch up activities, so that the students can differentiate their activities, rather than doing the same thing all of the time. What I would change is that I should figure out how to implement change within an activity before trying it with the students, in order to make sure it will work.

Sight Words Game During center time I played a sight word game with one of the groups. I wrote a variety of sight words on notecards and laid all of the cards out on the table in front of the two students. The game we played is much like the fly swatter game. When I read out a word, the first student to slap the notecard that matched the word got to keep the notecard, and at the end whoever had the most notecards won. It was encouraging to see both of the students win a few times. I was nervous that one student might dominate, but the game definitely provided an even playing field. I would definitely play this game again with my students! The kids loved the game and helped them quickly recognize their sight words. One thing I think I would change for the future is maybe have one student flip through the notecards with their peer and have the peer name off the words to get practice with the ones he or she didnt get, and the same for the other students.

Chapter 6: Vocabulary Research has shown that most vocabulary students learn is from experience, and living everyday life. Young children are always asking questions, and their natural tendency is to understand why things are the way they are. With conversation children are able to pick up the meaning of words due to the context. Other times children just ask what a certain word means when it is used, and learn that way. However, some vocabulary must be taught explicitly. According to the 2000 National Reading Panel, students learn vocabulary when they are explicitly taught individual word meanings and word learning strategies. Explicit instruction is especially necessary to teach students unfamiliar words; words they wouldnt normally use in everyday conversation. Also research has shown that when teachers pre-teach vocabulary words used in a text, the students will have better reading comprehension and understanding of the text. One of the best practices for teaching vocabulary would be to have the students fill out a Frayer Model. This tool helps students understand new vocabulary and understand the meaning of a word on a deeper level. The model provides a picture, meaning, characteristics, examples and non-examples of the word. Word banks are another practice for teaching vocabulary that gives the students practice with their words and a record of the words so they can review them. For example in the upper grades students will make flashcards of vocabulary words including the definition and picture on one side and the word on the other. They will store these notecards in a box of their own to keep and it will serve as a dictionary and a tool used for reviewing.

Try it Out! Vocabulary Lesson For this lesson I read Giles Andreaes Giraffes Cant Dance and chose five words from the text to learn as vocabulary words. Before reading the book we made connections about how we dance and if we like dancing. The students were very engaged in the book as I read to them. It is a fun book, so the students really enjoyed it. The words I chose to teach were: elegant, useless, buckled, miracle and crooked. After reading the story we went through each word and discussed what the students thought the word meant, had them give an example and non-example of the word. If the students had a hard time understanding the word after that I would go into more detail on the definition of the word, use it in a sentence and give more examples of the word. I used flashcards to make sure the students could easily recognize the word, and on the back I wrote the definition of the word as reference. Then the students played a game where they have a word written on a post it on their forehead and their partner has to describe the word without using the word, and the person has to guess what word is on their head. This helped the students explain their own thinking and describe the word. Then we played a game where the notecards were laid out on the table in front of the students and when I read the definition of the word, the first student to slap the word got it! This was a fun and engaging activity that the students loved! At the end I assessed the students by having them complete five sentences that had a blank in each of them, and they had to choose one of the words from the word bank to fill in the blank. One thing I would do differently that I did not do was to review the fill in the blank worksheet with the students after they completed it rather than have them turn it in and be done.

Word Map Within my action research group I am working with the students on vocabulary. During one of our meetings we focused on reviewing the words they have been learning in class. At the end of reviewing the words I chose the word victory for the students to fill out a word map for. The word map I made divided the sections into boxes to organize the students thoughts. One box requires the student to write the meaning of victory in their own words, write a synonym of the word in another, the antonym of the word in another box, draw a picture representing the word in another box, and write a sentence using the word in the bottom box. While filling out the organizer, I had to guide the students through the process and really help them think of a response for each box. The students had never completed a worksheet like this before, and they seemed to be a little overwhelmed by the focus on the meaning of one word. The students did remember the word very well after completing the organizer, so I would use it again. One thing I would change would be to tweak the organizer and make it a little simpler and maybe use the definition, synonym and antonym box and after the students are comfortable using that organizer add more boxes to promote high-level thinking.

Word Wall The word wall is for the entire second grade, and is located at the end of the hallway. Twice a week the students learn two more vocabulary words that come from a book they will read. After the teacher reads the students a story she picks out the vocabulary words they are going to be focusing on for that week. The teacher first goes back in the story to show the students how the word was used. Then they talk about connections they can make to the word for example if they have heard it before and if they have how has the word been used. Once they have gone over the meaning of the words I could tape them to the wall under the letter that it starts with. The vocabulary words are organized alphabetically. The words are also displayed on the wall right behind the teacher when the students sit on the carpet. The students enjoy learning new vocabulary words and making connections to their own lives. I would keep using the word wall having it displayed in the hallway and in the classroom as it is to make sure students are always seeing the words. In the future I might pick a word off of the wall every time we walk by it in the hallway and call on a student to see if they can say the meaning, and if not have them phone a friend as we walk to wherever we are going.

Chapter 9: Childrens Literature Read for the Record was a fun event that I had never even heard of before. The whole school was together in the lunchroom and they read aloud the story of Otis. At the same time students all over the country were reading the book as well to set a record for the most people reading the same story at the same time. Being a part of the leadership team, we played a large role in helping prepare the stage and lunchroom for the event. We coordinated with the teachers about their vision for the stage and the event, and then we delegated different tasks to groups of us in the class to make sure we all had a part in preparing for the event. It was a great experience and I enjoyed getting to be a part of the experience having put so much effort into it.

Try it Out! Library Story Time As a class we split into two groups and read two different classes a story during their library time. Our group read Chris Van Allsburgs The Sweetest Fig. We started out our time asking background questions for the students to get an idea of what the story would be about, and help them make connections from the book to their own life. One specific question we asked was Have you ever had a dream before that you wish came true? and the students loved it, they were so excited about the story because they knew it had something to do with dreams. We read the book out loud each taking a turn to read two pages. Abbi Hope took on the voice of the main character each time he spoke, which made it fun and engaging for the students, instead of reading the book straight through. The whole time we were reading the story, the students were engaged and responding to the book. At the end of the book the reader is left with a cliff hanger, so we asked the students, What do you think happened next? and called on students to give their predictions. After some discussion we passed out a piece of paper with a fig printed on it and asked the students to write their dream they wish could come true on the fig. The kids loved this activity. I liked how we had a designated person to speak the main characters lines throughout the story, and would love to implement that in future read alouds. One thing I would change would be to act out more of the story for the students instead of standing in front of them each reading just two pages one by one.

Reading Response To teach sequencing of events in a story to my class I read Chris Van Allsburgs Jumanji to teach the students how to put the events of the story in order. Before reading the story I told the students to pay close attention to the order that each event occurs. When something new happened I would review from the beginning and say, so what has happened up to this point now? and the students would get a lot of practice naming the vents in order each time. After reading the story at the carpet the students returned to their seats. I had posted pictures from the book of each event with a caption attached to the picture and arranged them out of order. I called on one student at a time to come up to the board and place the first picture at the beginning and the next student to place the second event after it and so on. Once we finished this activity we went over it as a class and said out loud the events as they happened in the story. Once I felt the students had a good grasp of the concept the worked individually on cutting out strips of paper with the events from the story on it and they had to glue the strips with the events on another sheet of paper in the order that they occurred. The students were engaged for the entire activity, and about 90% of the students accurately glued the strips in the correct order. I would definitely go over the events by ordering the pictures on the board before doing any other individual activity to give the students confidence. One thing I would do differently is go over the cut out strip worksheet together once all of the students are done instead of them turning in their work and not getting immediate feedback.