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Kate Chambers
ECI 540
Dr. Harrington

Final Exam: Top 10 Synthesis

Students who are not motivated will not learn. It is as simple as that, yet motivation is a

very complex idea to understand, and it is different for every student. I have learned many great

ideas from my colleagues and work during this class that relate to motivation. I enjoyed reading

about this topic in chapter three in Best Practices in Literacy Instruction, which identified three

key motivations to reading: interest, confidence, and dedication. This chapter discussed how

extrinsic motivation for reading can be effective but usually only in the short-term (Hiebert,

2015). It was so interesting to me to tie this into our class discussion of different reading reward

programs and their pros and cons. As with anything in the classroom, I think it is all about

approach. In our ABC book, The Book Whisperer, Donalyn Miller recommends engaging

students in a 40 Book Challenge, something that some of my colleagues currently do in their

classrooms and something I am looking forward to trying with my students. In one way, this

challenge could be viewed as extrinsic motivation, as students could be trying to finish books

just to get a sticker on the wall or to beat the challenge. However, the key part here is that they

are finishing books! If this challenge gets students to try new genres, challenge themselves to

finish more books, gets them excited about reading, or all three of these, I think it is a

worthwhile endeavor. That being said, I dont think it is effective to just print out a genre

challenge and leave it at that. Miller suggests many ideas to engage students in reading,

including giving reading surveys to find out their preferences, recommending books to students

and vice versa, having reader's notebooks with a variety of authentic choices for response,

holding frequent conferences with students about their reading, and so on. (Miller, 2009) With
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these practices in place, students are bound to find books that will entrance them and change

them into lifelong readers with or without a challenge in place.

Another key idea I took away from this class is the concept of promoting real-world

literacy skills. Many of us can remember sitting in classrooms and thinking to ourselves, Will I

ever use this again some day? I hear the same question from my students years later when Im

teaching skills like annotation or persuasive writing. Relevancy has so much to do with students

motivation to learn, and if they dont think an assignment matters, they wont give it their best

effort. Some great ideas to address this dilemma, as described in chapter 3 of Best Practices, are

bringing in intriguing newspaper articles and work-related texts, writing for a real audience like

adult pen-pals in the business world, using project-based activities around a common topic like

social justice, allowing students choice in topic, materials, technology, etc., and having students

create inquiry questions (Gambrell, 1999). We cant limit our students to literacy that is

contained to being helpful only in the classroom, or we will lose their interest and willingness to

learn.

One of the most difficult, yet important, topics we discussed in this class is assessment of

reading. For this topic especially, I was so grateful to have such a diverse group of educators in

our cohort to share such varied experiences and opinions. Though many of us lean toward the

same kind of thinking in terms of assessment- we know that testing isnt authentically measuring

reading, we know what kids are struggling well before these state-tests are administered, and we

know that there is just too much- it was mind-opening to hear about the assessment process as

young as kindergarten and how it varies so much from school to school. It concerns me so much

that many of the people making the decisions about how to assess our students are not reading

educators, but it was relieving to hear that several of our colleagues are planning to go into
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education law and reform. For this topic, much of what I learned was factual, like what type of

assessments our students take in elementary school, but I also got a much clearer understanding

of the value of real, teacher-given assessments like observations, formative assessments,

conferences, etc. and I am determined to bring back this information to my school and try to

have an impact wherever I can.

A game-changing understanding for me this semester was learning about reading fluency.

This is a topic I dont remember learning about at all during my undergraduate degree, when my

classes were preparing me to teach middle and high school English. Although I have a dual

degree in special education, I remember learning more about different disabilities and education

law and general best-instructional practices, not the specifics that I need to know as a middle

school special educator teaching students working on foundational reading skills. Now I

understand that fluency needs to be practiced and assessed multiple ways, that it is not just

reading speed but reading with expression and reading to understand. I had an inevitable and

painful flashback to my first year teaching, when I was thrown a group of 15 students I had never

met for a reading intervention class (plus my six other classes of 6-8th graders with no one to co-

plan with, but I digress). Not knowing where to start, I went to our RTI coach, and she set me up

with a program using high interest magazines and related passages that we read each day to

practice fluency. Students would read for a minute and we would mark how many words they

read on a chart, trying to read more each day. If only I could go back to my younger self and

intervene! I wish I knew then what I know now about modeling expressive and fluent reading,

making sure Im giving students passages on their independent level to develop fluency, and

expecting students to demonstrate fluency that goes beyond a number on a chart. I never knew

working on fluency could be so much fun! I loved so many of the instructional practices
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described in chapter four of What Research Has to Say About Reading Instruction. This year Ive

been trying different things from our class, including choral reading, readers theater, and two

voice poems. I wish I had known before that my students could gain so much confidence from

being able to practice text and perform it with success (Farstrup, 2011).

I also really enjoyed our readings and discussions about diverse learners. It was pretty

eye-opening for me when we sat down and tried to think of all the ways our students are diverse-

from appearances to backgrounds to languages to gender to interests and more. No child can be

defined by just one of these labels because each child is multidimensional. Therefore, our

instruction should be multidimensional as well. From offering more choice in text and

assignments to having a variety of instructional settings (large group, small teacher-guided

group, small student-led group, partners, independent work) to learning more about the research-

proven strategies that can reach diverse learners, teachers need to be able to carefully plan

lessons to meet student needs, adapt instruction in the moment as needed, and constantly reflect

afterwards so that we can grow and improve. Moving forward, I want to do a better job of

helping my colleagues differentiate in their classrooms. I also want to make sure that I am

acknowledging the strengths that students do have, especially those that are often over-looked,

like students who are the language link between school and their parents who are not fluent in

English. Weve learned that being proficient in your home language is important to being

successful in a new language, and I think it is important to share that understanding with other

teachers and my students.

Another big understanding for me is the importance of having quality literature in the

classroom, books and magazines that students want to read and will make them fall in love. I so

enjoyed our beginning-of-class book talks and sharing of Wow books. I plan to have my
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students spend some time reviewing books- and looking for new books- on GoodReads or a

similar student-oriented website. I had started to forget how wonderful it is to be in a community

of people who love reading and are passionate about books It was so refreshing to work with my

ABC group of teachers who all wanted to inspire lifelong readers, from Kayla with her 1000+

book classroom library to Frances with her student book reviews and reading buddy program. I

was truly inspired by them! We discussed how if you have a large selection of quality books and

magazines with a variety of genres and topics, it is actually very easy to match readers with

books that they will love, and this is so important so that students dont lose the fire in their heart

for the magic of books. I hope to encourage other teachers at my school to grow their libraries

through donations, used book sales, library sales, and so on, so that all students at my school can

be a part of a book-loving community in every classroom.

For teachers to truly prepare students for the modern world, we must help them develop a

variety of literacies. I appreciated the ideas shared in chapter six, page 100 of Research-Based

Practices for Teaching Common Core Literacy, the complexity inherent in the rapidly changing

nature of todays technology-enabled thinking and learning have fundamentally altered a static,

reductive model and thus must be replaced by a dynamic model. As a result, a

reconceptualization of multiple-source reading comprehension is needed; simply to change a

static model will not do, and there is a need to move beyond the one reader, one text

perspective (Hiebert, 2015). I have learned that it is so important to help develop students who

are literate not just in reading and understanding print text, but also being able to critically

evaluate and create video, online text, various visual media, podcasts, blogs, social media, and

more. In my classroom I have made a bigger effort to include current events (like Flocabularys

Week in Rap), visual media (through gallery walks to open a unit), and online text (through the
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annotation resource Scrible). Our students will fall behind if we limit them to our own

technological knowledge, so I have learned it is so important for me to collaborate with teachers

and specialists who understand new technologies and new literacies to help me improve my

instruction.

It seems so obvious that we should make time for independent reading in our classrooms,

yet it is not commonplace in many classrooms. Why? An emphasis on teaching reading

strategies, or push for guided reading, or simply the often unstated view that independent reading

is not a valuable use of instructional time. This concept was critical to me in our readings this

semester as well as in my ABC book, The Book Whisperer. In The Book Whisperer, Donalyn

Miller argued that there is nothing more valuable to learning or classroom climate than giving

students time to choose materials to read and enjoy. She argues that too much emphasis on

learning reading strategies is not beneficial to students, places too much responsibility on the

shoulders of the teacher, and does not give students time to practice the reading comprehension

targets that are learned in class (Miller, 2009). This hit home for me, as Ive taught many reading

strategies in an effort to provide reading interventions to my struggling readers. However, it

definitely correlates- at least in my classroom- between the students who rarely complete

homework and who dont have books at home and the students who are the most struggling

readers. If we dont make time for independent reading in the reading classroom, these students

may not ever do it, and will slip further behind their peers. In chapter ten of Research-based

Practices for Teaching Common Core Literacy, a variety of evidence is described that indicates]

that reading volume is related to reading proficiency (Hiebert, 2015). According to many counts,

it is vital that we make time for independent reading a priority.

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I got a lot of great ideas about how to support struggling readers from our discussions this

semester. I appreciated David Reeses presentation about all the hard work he and his partners

are doing to help the families of East Durham. Like weve talked about many times, unless their

basic needs are met, we know that our students will not be able to really progress academically,

and they wont meet their potential. I learned that there are so many challenges with RTI/MTSS,

from time to resources to lack of qualified teachers. It is easy to get discouraged by all of this,

yet there are people like David Reese and Geoffrey Canada who are taking big risks to change

things for the better. I understand now that the quality of instruction is the biggest factor,

regardless of the program used, and that teachers need to form meaningful relationships and

develop supportive classroom climates so students can feel safe and ready to learn. We

absolutely must find a way to stop the reading loss that inevitably occurs each summer for

students from disadvantaged backgrounds, whether that is through scholarships to quality camps,

charity programs to get books into homes, year-round schools, or something else. Finally, it is so

important that we advocate for the schedule to fit the needs of our students. It is unfortunately so

common for schools to not have enough teachers or classes to meet the needs for our students,

resulting in inappropriate class placements or students being pulled out for intervention support

during literacy time in their regular classroom, instead of getting additional instruction during a

different time. It is clear that this needs to change, and it is our job as informed teachers to help

our administrators see this truth.

Finally, the biggest understanding Ive made during this semester is the importance of

teacher quality and advocating for my students. As explained on page 2 of the introduction of

What Research Has to Say About Reading Instruction, if the goal of education is to give all of

our children an equal opportunity to have happy, successful lives, then quality of instruction is of
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the utmost importance (Farstrup, 2011). I understand that if I wasnt truly prepared to teach

students with severe reading disabilities when I graduated college as a special educator, then

many of my regular education colleagues are likely unprepared as well, and it is my job to share

my learnings with them to help as many students as possible. I have already started sharing ideas

and resources with my special education department, my Language Arts department, the

Beginning Teacher support program, as well as the entire staff of my school (I emailed my PBI

project from ECI 546 to my staff and let them know I could help them with those tech tools if

they would like!). I understand now that although there is no one perfect way to teach every

group of students, there are many research-based, time-proven strategies and methods that should

be in every educators toolbox to help us build a stronger world for tomorrow.

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Works Cited

Farstrup, A.E. & Samuels, S.J. (2011). What research has to say about reading instruction (4th

ed). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Gambrell, L.B. & Morrow, L.M. (1999). Best practices in literacy instruction. New York:

Guilford Press.

Hiebert, E.H. & Pearson, P.D. (2015). Research-based practices for teaching Common Core

literacy. New York: Teachers College Press.

Miller, Donalyn (2009). The Book Whisperer. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.