Literacy Inquiry Project: Partnerships for Collaborative Inquiry - Coursework Example

Literacy Inquiry Project: Partnerships for Collaborative Inquiry Literacy Inquiry Project: Partnerships for Collaborative Inquiry Introduction Our question on motivation of students to improve reading skills depended on what we researched about how the brain learns to read. Our motivation also depended on how phonological awareness comprises the skills needed for reading and how these relate to the increase of student comprehension. One importance of understanding how the brain learns to read is to find different strategies that can help motivate struggling readers. Specifically, understanding how the brain needs to learn is related to a higher need of improving readers’ skills as it pertains to phonological awareness and comprehension. How the Brain Learns to Read Frey and Fisher (2010) states that the human brain has the capability of accomplishing print through such processes like neuronal cycling and repurposing of structures. A good example given by the two authors include the brain’s ability recognize and characterize words and letters, which is done by the occipital region. This ability goes further to the coordination of letters and word, which takes place in the brain’s auditory area in order to process language and sound and also assemble the same into a meaningful thread (Frey and Fisher, 2010 p. 7). Apart from reading and converting objects into letters, words and then sound, the brain also learns to read through imaging. According to Hruby and Goswami (2011), “The two most noted areas of brain research relatable to reading are correlational imaging studies that localize functional brain activity anatomically and correlational studies of neural activity that localize it in the time course of a reading event” (Hruby & Goswami, 2011 p.157). This means that when a child looks over a word that catches his or her attention, the child stores it in the brain. Later when the child sees this word again, he/she correlates it with the first time she saw it and makes an instructive meaning, known as imaging.  This imaging will come into play when the teacher wants the student to learn phonological awareness since they are able to connect print to a designated meaning. The teacher can ask the student if the word enables them student to comprehend. For instance, if the teacher is talking about rhyming words and she asks “Does chair and fair rhyme or chair and bed?” The students might not understand the idea but when they visualize it and hear these words again it will eventually hold on to their retention memory since they have heard it before. Not only will the children learn a part of phonological awareness, but they will also ultimately comprehend what the material is about by making those connections in their brain. The Importance of Reading on a Child’s Brain and Strategies Used to Develop Reading Skills Frey and Fisher (2010) confirm the importance of early experiences with print. They explain that this prepares young children to eventually read instructions since it strengthens the coordination of the phonological loop, which produces the sounds of meaningful language with the long-term memory systems (Frey & Fisher, 2010). The earlier the students are read to, the better the connections it will make with the long term memory systems enabling them to learn how to read. Another step that helps the brain in grasping different instruction is repetition. This allows diverse students whether English Language Learners (ELL) or students with different abilities to comprehend reading. This skill is used in different learning outcomes since it enables the brain to hold information since this information is being repeated constantly. Repeated firings lead to physical changes that over time and with repetition become more permanent in the brain (Frey & Fisher, 2010). A brain movie is another strategy to motivate students’ reading skills since it allows them to create mental images while reading. Wilson (2012) states this strategy pays dividends in the form of students reading with more care and concentration so that they develop deeper meaning and greater retention. This strategy is mainly used to motivate students’ comprehension when reading since it modifies their interest. Automaticity is another way of allowing students to comprehend and learn phonological awareness specifically in the working memory. Frey and Fisher (2010) explain that automaticity is important since it is highly correlated with understanding and fluency. The latter helps with comprehension and also contributes to the learner’s aptitude to process a text’s meaning since less effort is needed in the decoding, recognition and assigning of meaning to words (Fisher, 2010) Lastly, the best strategy to use with struggling readers is connecting their reading material with their cultural background. Insofar as a reader perceives and responds, mentally or behaviorally, to representational elements of his or her socio cultural landscape, there will be correlated neurological activity and development to study (Hruby & Goswami, 2011). Overall neuroscience enables students to learn how to read using the strategies listed above. Although they might not all work on every single child, it will definitely open a new pathway to reading. Comprehension and phonological awareness go hand in hand particularly when opening the working memory because if the brain learns to decode different words it will ultimately comprehend how to read. Phonological Awareness and a Child’s Learning Abilities The International Reading Association and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (1998) defines phonological awareness as, “a child’s understanding and conscious awareness that speech is composed of identifiable units, such as spoken words, syllables, and sounds” (as cited in DeVries, 2011). It is the umbrella, which encompasses the awareness of sounds in a language.  Other parts are rhymes, the awareness that sentences can be broken down into words, syllables, and sounds.   These skills provide the ability to talk about, reflect upon, and manipulate sounds and understand the relationship between written and spoken language. According to Gillon (2004), “Phoneme awareness performance is a strong predictor of long-term reading and spelling success and can predict literacy performance more accurately than variables such as intelligence, vocabulary knowledge, and socioeconomic status” (Gillon, 2004 p. 57) Educators’ Role in a Child’s Learning Abilities Educators play an extremely important part in the children’s learning process.  According to Hruby and Goswani (2011), “Literacy educators are creating the context within which children’s brains develop, enabling them to perform increasingly demanding reading tasks and develop capacities for comprehension, understanding, and lifelong learning across many situations and domains”.  The children will benefit from intentional and explicit teaching.   Even though, socioeconomic status is a factor that affects children’s learning, children who begin school at an early age are able to quickly grasp sounds and then make the connection to the letters in the alphabet.  Exposure to literacy activities is also a key component to help young children prepare to enter school.  According to Bingham and Patton-Terry (2013) children who come from low socioeconomic homes but are lucky to obtain early literacy instruction, which provides instruction aimed at increasing children’s oral language such as phonological awareness and vocabulary on one hand and print such as alphabet knowledge skills, on the other hand always demonstrate notable growth in these skills. This is especially so when these children are compared to their more privileged peers in terms of socioeconomic status (Bingham & Patton-Terry, 2013).  The same authors note that studies from other researchers have revealed that young children have the capability of experiencing significant early learning success when they receive literacy instructions and comprehensive language instructions during their kindergarten and their prekindergarten and years (Bingham & Patton-Terry, 2013). Intervention and its Role in Learning Intervention is an extremely important way to reach struggling students. According to DiLorenzo, Rody, Bucholz, & Brady (2011), poor phonological skills leads to some inabilities bo of some beginning readers to automatically use the alphabetic principle successfully; therefore, early reading intervention should include instruction on these skills” (DiLorenzo, Rody, Bucholz, & Brady, 2011).   This is even more crucial in the Success of English Language Learners.  According to Gyovai, Cartledge , Kourea, Yurick, and Gibson (2009), it is important to have successful interventions for effective improvement of student’s reading abilities.  In fact, explicit phonic instructions and phonological awareness have helped ELL’s in outperforming their ELL peers since the latter did not receive instructions that would help them in exceeding the reading performance showcased by non-ELL’s (Gyovai, Cartledge , Kourea, Yurick & Gibson, 2009).  In order to reap the most benefits of the intervention the teacher should plan lessons that are purposeful and engaging for all students.  These lessons should be conducted during small group instruction to target the diverse needs of all the children. Phonological Awareness and Its Relation to Reading Development Recent research by Leger & Cameron (2013) has proven that phonological awareness is the basis for reading development.  According to these researchers, some of the basic processes that develop when the memory system is under constraint include semantic access, letter recognition, word-coding skills and lexical skills. The same authors argue that for children to become successful readers, educators need to be able to find creative ways to help them while still considering that not all children learn in the same manner. They also need to understand that visuals are a great way to help all children since it helps the children to make better sense of what is being taught.  When contributing to this topic, DiLorenzo, Rody, Bucholz, & Brady (2011) explains that integrated picture mnemonics comes by building familiar pictures around the letter shapes.  The authors give examples using letter b, which can be represented using such pictures as that of a bat or a baseball in order to have the picture beginning with the target sound (DiLorenzo, Rody, Bucholz, & Brady, 2011). Another research by Werder, Hier, & Koenig (2012) shows that phoneme blending influences fluency.  The researchers define phonemic awareness as the ability to categorize and manipulate spoken language units, which are also known as phonemes in order to form words and syllables. The researchers argue that not all children acquire phonemic consciousness through early home literacy experiences. Such children, according to the authors, are at higher risks of reading failure at a later period. In order to eliminate this risk, such children need clear instruction on how to segmentation, delete and blend phoneme sequences in order to stimulate phonemic awareness (Werder, Hier, & Koenig, 2012). Therefore, from what has been discussed earlier, it is clear that phonological awareness is the path to achieve fluent reading.  In addition, it is also clear that teachers have a responsibility to find innovative ways of reaching their students.  Student’s, on their part develop confidence to tackle the next step after seeing that they have succeeded in an area they were struggling with. When contributing on this, DeVries (2011) suggests that teachers can use various strategies in order to engage their students. These strategies includes, nursery rhymes, songs, jingles, poems, jump-rope, tongue twisters, riddles stories and jokes since such things are full of words and phrases that put an emphasis on a language’s sound and rhythm. DeVries (2011) continues to state that some of the useful phrases from the named strategies have literary styles such as alliteration. For example, some of alliteration sentences include a sentence like “Silly Sally shines sea shells” among others. Apart from alliteration, they also include other styles such as assonance, which are the phrases or sentences that contain repeated vowel sounds. An example of an assonance phrase includes “Aunt Bee flees when she sees bees” and other similar phrases. Another literary style that is useful among children is onomatopoeia, which includes words that have a sound similar to their meaning such as the word pop and the word crackle. Other words that can be included in the useful phrases are and nonsense words, which include words like jabberwocky among other similar words (DeVries, 2011). In support of his own view, DeVries (2011) explains the first step in language is oral language where children first learn how to hear and later speak the words followed by writing these words. Later, children use reading in order to obtain success across all subject areas in school.  Therefore, reading is a skill that is crucial in everyday life as it transfers into children’s future careers as well.   Comprehension When explaining about comprehension Devris argues that one of the main reasons for reading is understanding of text and the message it gives. We read for information, directions, safety, and for entertainment. If a student is able to answer questions pertaining to the text and retell what they have read in their own words, then that student has comprehended the message being conveyed.  Often, students show mastery of decoding and encoding skills, but fail to comprehend what was read.  Therefore, comprehension requires active cognitive processes like higher order thinking, critical analysis, and vocabulary knowledge (DeVries, 2011). Accessing these cognitive processes can increase a student’s comprehension of what was read and in turn improve fluency. Student’s Motivation and Learning Experiences         Saeed & Zyngier (2012) explains that who are engaged cognitively use different types of strategies to learn a task. Also the amount of time spent learning a task varies and depends on each student’s incentive for learning that task (Saeed & Zyngier, 2012). One study, designed to gain an understanding of students’ perceptions about their own motivations, identified the relationship between student engagement and types of motivation (Saeed & Zyngier, 2012).  Among typical students there are various degrees of intrinsic (self-determined) and extrinsic (competition, acceptance, reward) motivation. Teachers should be aware of these motivations and how they relate to students’ interests. Student motivation is enhanced when student interests are taken into consideration as much as possible (Williams & Williams, n.d). HHoH There are many strategies to help students improve comprehension.  It is important to help students struggling with comprehension find out what they are having difficulty understanding. Reading Rockets’ Target the Problem (2014) is a great tool to find out the area of difficulty. Common issues are presented from the perspective of the student, the parent, or the teacher, and tips are provided for the student to help themselves and tips for parents and teachers to have an idea of where to begin. One strategy that has a direct correlation to comprehension is word meaning. Research shows that increasing vocabulary has a direct relationship to improvements in comprehension (Bingham & Patton-Terry, 2013). The more words students know and understand the meaning(s) of, the better they will be at comprehending text.  Direct instruction in vocabulary strategies can help English language learners to develop their oral language and increase comprehension. For example, a first grade ELL student read the words ‘Phil flopped on Sam’. The student did not know what flop meant so was not able to explain what was happening. The illustration was of a dog in the air over a boy. When the student was given a demonstration of the word flop and the meaning, the student was able to make a connection to their younger sibling “flopping on me when I get home.” Another strategy that can improve comprehension is asking questions. The Question-Answer Relationship (QAR) can be effective because they give students a purpose for reading and help them to focus on what they are to learn. Questions also help students think actively as they read and relate what they have learned to what they already know (Adler, 2001 as cited in Reading Rockets, 2014). On the other hand, Cockrum, Timerman, and Kurth (2009) propose making statements instead of asking questions. After reading a text, a series of statements are made that could be true, probably true, false and probably false (Cockrum, Timmerman & Kurth, 2009). The students must decide the answer to each statement and give their reasons why they chose that answer.  According to Cockrum, Timmerman and Kurth (2009), bringing the background knowledge of a reader influences a reader’s comprehension. The same authors argue that this is more important than just using or asking questions or using other strategies like labeling a student’s response as either correct or incorrect (Cockrum, Timmerman, & Kurth, 2009 p83). References Adler, C. R. (2007). Seven strategies to teach students text comprehension. Retrieved October 2014, from Reading Rockets. Bingham, G. E., & Patton-Terry, N. (2013). Early language and literacy achievement of early reading first students in kindergarten and first grade in the united states. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 27, 440-453. Cockrum, W. A., Timmerman, J., & Kurth, J. (2009). Statements not questions: A reading comprehension instruction strategy. The Journal of the International Association of Special Education, 10(1), 82-83. DeVries, B. A. (2011). Literacy assessment and intervention for classroom teachers. Scottsdale, Arizona: Holcomb Hathaway Publishers, Inc. DiLorenzo, K. E., Rody, C. A., Bucholz, J. L., & Brady, M. P. (2011). Teaching Letter Sound Connections with Picture Mnemonics: Itchys Alphabet and Early Decoding. Preventing School Failure: Alternative Education for Children and Youth, 55(1), 28-34. Retrieved April 9, 2011, from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10459880903286763 Foorman, B. R., & Torgesen, J. (2001). Critical elements of classroom and small-group instruction promote reading success in all children. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 16(4), 03-212. Frey, N., & Fisher, D. (2010). Reading and the brain: What early childhood educators need to know. Early Childhood Education Journal, 38(2), 103-110. Gillon, G. T. (2004). Phonological awareness: from research to practice. New York: Guilford Press. Hruby, G. G., & Goswami, U. (2011). Review of research: Neuroscience and reading -- a review for reading education researchers. Reading Research Quarterly, 46(2), 156-172. Léger, P. D., & Cameron, C. A. (2013). Meaning Construction in Early Oral Reading. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 27(4), 454-471. Martens, B. K., Werder, C. S., Hier, B. O., & Koenig, E. A. (2013). Fluency Training in Phoneme Blending: A Preliminary Study of Generalized Effects. Journal of Behavioral Education, 22(1), 16-36. NAEYC. (1998). A position statement of the International Reading Association and the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Young Children, 30-46. Reading Rockets. (2014). Target the problem. Retrieved from Reading Rockets: http://www.readingrockets.org/helping/target Saeed, S., & Zyngier, D. (2012). How motivation influences student engagement: A qualitative study. Journal of Education and Learning, 1(2), 252-267. Strickland, M., & Abbott, L. (2010). Enhancing the early reading experience: Books, strategies, and concepts. The Reading Teacher, 64(1), 66-68. Williams, K. C., & Williams, C. C. (n.d.). Five key ingredients for improving student motivation. Research in Higher Education. Wilson, D. (2012). Training the minds eye: "Brain Movies" support comprehension and recall. Reading Teacher, 66(3), 189-194. Read More