Week 7

Assignment 1:

To advance students' word fluency and language development, the teacher uses rich language and exposes students to new vocabulary in a variety of ways. Students have access to grade-appropriate books and other reading material. There are word walls for students to practice decoding words. The teacher effectively conducts read-aloud groups to build students' fluency and vocabulary.
Word Study and Fluency Chart:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_oQuq47ngaEZ3NMOGRZc2JRS25CZEFpZmNTamt5RW9wSWE4/view?usp=sharing

Assignment 2:

1 - Providing struggling students with reading material that they can read easily is a great way to help advance their fluency. A big classroom library with books of all reading levels will also help students’ fluency because they can choose books that they read well and advance to higher levels. Students should have time for independent reading every day and the teacher should make sure they read books that are on the appropriate levels. Struggling students should also get time to reread books that the class read together until they master fluency. Slowly advance students’ reading level. Only once a student mastered fluency on one level should the level go up. This is because if students get text that are too difficult to read they will never become fluent.

2 - Students should have many opportunities for reading practice and the opportunities should be varied. Read-aloud should be done often and students can also have reading groups or read a book in partners on different occasions. Of course, there should be time every day for independent reading and the teacher should monitor students’ progress in fluency. Additionally, reading should be incorporated in all subjects across the curriculum so that students get even more reading practice.

3 – Modeling fluent reading is very important in the classroom. Every time the teacher introduces a new word she should model decoding and fluent reading of the world. Also, during a read-aloud or group reading, the teacher should model fluent reading and stop at difficult words to model decoding and fluent reading.

Assignment 3:

1. The three level of words are:

A – Simple words that don’t have to be taught.

B - Words that appear often and usually need to be taught.

C – Technical words that need to be taught usually by math, science, e.t.c.

Words that fall into the second group would be most important to teach because students will see these words in text often. During science or math lessons words from the third group should be taught.

2.  Students should be taught to use the chunk strategy to help them decode unfamiliar words. Encouraging them to write the words on paper clearly, then cover or cut beginnings ends or halves of words until they come across a familiar looking word that they can read and understand will help them with decoding. After, they should say the word, and then reread the full sentence. This strategy should be taught until it becomes an automatic process in which students break apart words in order to decode difficult words. 

3. Writing a sentence with a new and unfamiliar word on the board every morning for the children to see when they walk into the classroom makes the students curious about the new word. During morning meeting the class should discuss the sentence and based on context and chunking the class should master the new word. There should be a word wall where all new words are put up every day and students should be encouraged to use new words in their vocabulary and writing.