Module 3 Reading Responses

Chapter 7 discusses the importance of assessing students in primary grades and teaching early literacy. Assessing a students early literacy is important to gauge a students readiness.  First to assess a students literacy level you provide the students with a selected text. It should not be a cold read. Often times when I've assessed students I've been told to just pull a text, give a brief overview of the story the student will be reading and then assess how the student performs. This is not a good way of assessing students fluency in early literacy. There are several different assessments you can use to help early literacy learners. Yopp-Singer provides the teacher with the students' knowledge of phenomic awareness. For a student to be a successful reader, they must be proficient in both phonological awareness and phenomic awareness. It's important for students to receive extra assistance when struggling with reading. Early intervention provides students with the opportunity to become successful in reading with specialized instruction. Using a variety of assessments, teachers can determine a students' needs easily. 

Throughout chapter 8 I was able to take away the importance of running records and other oral assessments. During my student teaching experience I had the opportunity to assess several students using the DRA. It provided me with the information I needed to know and helped me to place students in guided reading groups based on their needs and reading levels. The listening capacity test is something I had never heard of before reading this chapter. I believe it's important to know how are students are listening since much of their comprehension comes through listening. I can't even count how many times I've repeated myself in the classroom or during a read aloud and how many students miss what I've said. I would definitely like to try the listening capacity test in my own classroom.

Teaching phonics is something I'm really excited about, so chapter 12 was very interesting for me to read. Many teachers focus on just emphasizing phonics through worksheets, but the text provided excellent exercises of how to teach phonics. I believe students primarily learn phonics best through read-alouds, shared reading, guided reading, and individual conferences in a comprehensive literacy approach to reading.  It is important to remember when teaching phonics to focus on determining meaning, not to put emphasis on phonics and phonemic awareness.