Chapter 2

Project Suggestions

1. Arrange to meet with a teacher and examine the report for one student’s achievement test results (no need to see the student’s name). With the teacher, analyze the report as though you were trying to use the data for planning instruction. What additional information do you feel might be helpful?
2. Administer a reading or writing attitude survey to a student from grades 4–8. Tabulate and analyze the responses. The following questions are provided to help you analyze the information. What are the implications for instruction?
1. What are the student’s perceptions about reading/writing?
2. What does the student feel are important characteristics of good reading/writing?
3. How insightful is this student in terms of how he or she perceives reading/writing?
4. What other relevant information did you discover about the student?
5. Do your data indicate that the student has a healthy attitude toward reading/writing?
3. Observe classroom teachers as they administer a specific literacy assessment tool (e.g., running records, cloze test, word lists, spelling test, district writing prompts). Discuss the interpretation of the results with the teachers. Why was the assessment given? What was learned? How will they adapt instruction as a result of the information gained?

Discussion Questions

• Chapter 2  

Chapter 3

Project Suggestions

1. Find a teacher in grades 4–8 who is currently preparing a dramatic production with students. Discuss with the teacher her reasons for using this instructional activity. Observe the students as they practice their roles. Are all students involved? In what capacities? What major oral language goals are being achieved through this activity?
2. Observe a class giving oral reports. In what ways, if any, are students encouraged to use technology and multimedia to enhance their presentations? How has the delivery of oral presentations changed since you were in school?
3. After carefully reviewing the guidelines in “Suggestions for Teacher-Guided Discussions,” earlier in this chapter, lead a discussion with a small group of students on a controversial topic such as “Is homework a necessary evil?” Reflect afterward and share your reflections with the rest of the class. What went well? What was difficult? What would you do differently next time?
4. With another small group of students, examine several curriculum guides to determine what provisions are made for the development of oral language from grades 4 through grade 8. Categorize your findings according to the types of purposeful speech activities presented in this chapter.

Discussion Questions

• Chapter 3  

Chapter 4

Project Suggestions

1. With the other members of your class, list 10 words from an article on an Internet news site. From this chapter, consider the different instructional strategies you might use to teach these words to students. In a classroom of students in grades 4–8, use one of the strategies to teach the selected words to a small group. How successful were you? Compare your experience with that of other classmates who chose to use a different instructional strategy.
2. Administer a spelling inventory (see Appendix C.10) to three students. Analyze their responses as to what reading/spelling stage is represented most often in their spelling. What instructional activities would benefit these students?
3. Develop a list of 15 words based on similar or related roots, affixes, or derivations. Invite a small group of students to sort the words as they think they should be sorted. Then have these students make statements about their findings. Present your list and your findings to your classmates. What were the students able to learn from the sorting activity?
4. Observe a word study lesson. Through discussion with the teacher and your direct observation, answer the following questions:
1. What strategies are students being taught about how to spell new words?
2. How are students being taught about syllables, affixes, and derivations?
3. How is word study applied in reading and writing situations in the classroom?
5. Spend a day discovering the interesting words that students are naturally curious about. Can you categorize these words? How would you incorporate these concepts into the daily curriculum to encourage curiosity about words?
6. Prior to reading a short story to a group of students, ask them to guess the meaning of three or four words that you feel are especially difficult. While reading, ask them to determine the meaning of each word after it occurs. Are the responses enhanced with the additional contextual information? What does this experience teach you about the value of discussing words as they occur when reading aloud?

Discussion Questions

• Chapter 4  

Chapter 5

Project Suggestions

1. Choose several representative printed materials that students in grades 4–8 are expected to read. Determine their readability levels using the Fry Readability Graph, and look carefully at the demands of the text overall, considering sophistication and text complexities. Discuss this information with a classroom teacher. What other possible factors would make these materials more or less readable than the graph indicates?
2. Select one of the comprehension strategies from this chapter. Locate a reading selection that would be appropriate material for teaching this strategy. Teach the strategy to a small group of your classmates. Discuss their reactions. How would you modify your teaching for grade 4–8 students? What feedback helped you the most?
3. Teach a comprehension strategy to a small group of students or to an individual student. Did they have any problems with the lesson? Did you have any problems with the lesson? What did the students like and dislike about the strategy? Discuss the results with your class.
4. Observe a classroom teacher during reading lessons for at least five days (try to observe a full week, or different days). Make a list of all the activities the teacher and students engage in during this time. Keep track of how much time is spent on each activity. How much time was spent on direct teaching of comprehension strategies? How much time was spent on the application of these strategies? How much time was spent on actual reading by the students? What did you learn from these observations?

Discussion Questions

• Chapter 5  

Chapter 6

Project Suggestions

1. Arrange to visit a middle school classroom during writing workshop. Listen to the conversation that accompanies the composing process. Take notes on what you hear. How did “talk” facilitate the writing process?
2. Ask a small group of students what they prefer to read and what they prefer to write: fiction (stories, novels), nonfiction (informational texts, biographies, arguments), or poetry. Is there a difference between the genres students choose to read and what they choose to write? Why might this be so?
3. Survey a small group of students about their computer literacy. How comfortable are they with using the computer as a writing tool? How accessible are computers to these students when they are writing? How many use Inspiration, Prezi, or other multimedia tools while writing? How often do they actually publish and share their work online? Is their audience limited to class members only, or is it open to a wider group?

Discussion Questions

• Chapter 6  

Chapter 7

Project Suggestions

1. Model for students how to organize ideas into a graphic organizer, as with this chapter’s whales and dolphins example. Then ask students to write about the information using the skills they have developed; have them practice moving from the brief points in the graphic organizer to writing complete sentences to describe, compare, and contrast the ideas. With new material, let the students try the technique. Question them regarding the effectiveness of the technique of moving from graphic organizer to fleshed-out writing. Did they feel the strategy was helpful? Why or why not?
2. Prepare a paragraph frame based on a content area selection read by a student. Discuss the detail sentences with a student who typically has difficulty with expository text material. Have the student sequence the detail sentences and then complete the paragraph frame. Reflect with the student on the effectiveness of this technique. Did the student find this strategy helpful? Why or why not?
3. Choose a topic or theme that is widely discussed in your local school districts (e.g., rain forests, conservation, the planets, geometry in our daily lives), and prepare an annotated bibliography of fiction and nonfiction materials (not just text materials) that span a wide range of reading ability levels for this topic/theme.

Discussion Questions

• Chapter 7  

Chapter 8

Project Suggestions

With a classroom teacher’s help, identify a fluent reader and a disfluent reader. Observe each student reading a passage. Describe the differences between their reading. What would you predict their relative comprehension abilities to be, based on their oral reading? Check your perceptions with the students’ teacher.

Discussion Questions

• Chapter 8  

Chapter 9

Project Suggestions

1. Find a lesson plan online at ReadWriteThink.org that relates to a literacy lesson in grades 4–8. Select three of the groups of diverse learners discussed in the chapter and plan ways to differentiate the lesson for their special needs, including differentiation by content, process, and product.
2. Interview a student whose first language is not English. Ask the student how he came to learn English. Ask about the student’s attitudes toward both English and his native language. Try to discover some of the problems the student experienced when translating from one language to another. Then use the information from this interview to identify the unique features of the student’s language (phonology, syntax, structure, semantics, and lexical questions). What differences and similarities of language do you have with this student?
3. Over a period of three to five days, observe a student with one of the special needs discussed in this chapter. What can this student do well, and what seems to be difficult for her? Summarize your observations, and make suggestions about how you could differentiate instruction to meet the needs of this particular student. 
4. Begin to develop an annotated bibliography of novels and reference books, articles, poems, websites, videos, or other materials that deal with students who have overcome adversity due to learning disabilities, physical challenges, language diversity, behavioral issues, or social problems caused by giftedness or by conditions of poverty. Sharing such materials with students in similar situations can be a form of bibliotherapy. (The article by Landrum [2001] can help you get started.)

Discussion Questions

• Chapter 9  

Chapter 10

Project Suggestions

1. Interview a student and use one of the reading attitude or interest surveys found in Appendix C (or develop your own set of questions to ask). Analyze the results to draw some conclusions about the student’s level of motivation. Then, if possible, observe this student within the classroom setting. Do the survey results match the student’s actions?
2. Complete for yourself a chart similar to the one Mr. Fortier made with his students in the chapter’s opening scenario. Then complete a similar chart with a group of students. Have a discussion with them on why it is important to be literate in today’s world.
3. View a sitcom that is popular with your students. Analyze the program for how various groups of people are portrayed. Identify any stereotypes presented. Then plan a lesson that will help your students critically analyze television’s influence on personal and societal values.

Discussion Questions

• Chapter 10  

Chapter 11

Project Suggestions

1. Arrange to sit in on a parent-teacher conference. To what extent were the suggestions in this chapter followed? What do you feel might have made the parents or caregivers more comfortable?
2. Read a short story to a small group of students using either the questioning or the think-aloud activity. Do you feel sharing such an activity with parents is preferable to telling them simply to “read to your child”? Why or why not?
3. Find out if there are any family literacy programs in your area. If there are, visit a center to determine what its programs offer and how often they are used by the parents of students in your community. Share your findings with others in your class.

Discussion Questions

• Chapter 11  

Chapter 12

Project Suggestions

1. Reflect on a teacher you know who appears to be highly effective in teaching students to read for knowledge and enjoyment. In light of this chapter, what do you believe makes this teacher effective? What do you believe makes Mr. Fortney such an effective teacher of intermediate literacy? What are the similarities between the two teachers? Differences?
2. Brainstorm a list of ways you can ensure that the students in your class will read not only for knowledge but also for enjoyment. Share and discuss this list with the others in your class. What do you consider the most effective methods?
3. Discuss the provisions that must be made so that linguistically and culturally diverse learners may succeed. How do you believe such provisions affect the native English speakers in the class?

Discussion Questions

• Chapter 12