Shannon Keough

RE 5100 Midterm Exam

November 3, 2009

A.A student needs to read ninety minutes to two hours a day on their instructional or independent reading level in order to make a year’s growth in reading in a year. Dr. Richard Allington<synthesized> studies on children and the amount of reading they did in a day. He watched these children in school and at home and noted that the children who made a year’s growth in reading were reading ninety minutes a day. As he studied student reading patterns, he also discovered that the children at the bottom quartile in reading read far less than that in a day. In fact, the children in the top quartile in reading read in eight days what children in the bottom quartile read in an entire year. It is evident from this study that all student must be reading ninety minutes a day in order to adequately progress in reading. We cannot allow are below grade level readers to be cheated out of reading. We must set up a school system and school day in which all students are empowered and encouraged to read, read, and read some more!

B.If we are dealing with a ninety minute long reading/language arts block, then students should spend thirty-six minutes (forty percent of the block) of this time actually reading, while twenty-seven minutes of this time should be spent writing, eighteen minutes on words study and nine minutes being read to. Later in the school day students will spend twenty minutes reading science material for their science lesson and ten minutes reading math material for their math lesson. Students will also spend fifteen minutes in the afternoon reading for their social studies lesson. Students will read twenty minutes at home from a book of their choice. They will spend twenty minutes at home rereading the story that they read in class. In addition to this student will read a one page social studies lesson and answer some questions on it. The reading for this will take about ten minutes. This gives students 132 minutes of reading time a day. If they spend seventy-five percent of this time on task reading then they will actually read ninety-nine minutes a day. This is adequate amount for a child to gain a year of reading in a year’s time.

C.Students who are reading below grade level must read more than the time suggested to gain a year’s growth in a year because they need to gain more than a year’s growth. Students reading below grade level should read at least two hours a day at their instructional or independent level.<The first ninety minutes would be accomplished the same way as the other students in question B. The additional thirty minutes would need to be accomplished mainly in school to ensure the reading happens. I would recommend that student’s who needed extra time reading get it the last thirty minutes of the day. During this time the students could have a choice of reading, writing or working on homework. Students who were below grade level would be required to read during this time. The teacher would need to address this individually with these students. The teacher would also need to make sure that they books they were reading were on their level. The teacher could also send the book home for reading at home, but should not count on this happening.>

2.A.If a student was in eighth grade and reading at a fifth grade level, they would need to make a significant gain in order to ever have a chance of catching up with the other eighth graders. If this child, let’s call him Mark, is reading at a fifth grade level than his silent reading rate is between 150-200 words per minute; I will use 175 for my calculations. If Mark is reading ninety minutes a day at the fifth grade level, then he will gain one year in reading during his eighth grade year. Since he is reading below grade level, he needs to gain more than a year this year. If he reads two hours and fifteen minutes, then he can ideally gain 1.5 years in one year. This would put him at level 6.5 when he enters 9th grade; this is not ideal, but better than no gain or less than a year gain. To expect him to do more than a year and a half in one year would be very difficult, so let’s stick with a goal of 1.5 years gain this year. This means Mark needs to read 135 minutes a day. If he is reading at fifth grade level for 135 minutes a day he will read approximately 23,625 words per day (175wpm x 135min). The average fifth grade novel has about 200 words per page and about 125 pages. So, Mark will need to read about 118 pages a day, so just under a book a day. This means that Mark will need to read about 170 books this school year. These books will need to cover many of his academic subjects as well as literature. If he is going to be able to access the material he will need to read on the fifth grade level in all his academic material, not just novels.

B.If students are forced to read at grade level, then those who are reading below grade level will consistently begin reading at their frustration level. There is proof that students do not make any gains in reading when they are reading at frustration level. <Good readers make about two mistakes per one hundred words that they choose to read. The material they are given to read at school is also in the two to five errors per one-hundred word range. Poor readers however are make more than ten errors in these same one hundred words.> Therefore a third grade student who is reading at a first grade level but is forced to read third grade material will likely make no reading gains in third grade. This is detrimental to the student because it causes them to be even farther behind. They will now start fourth grade still reading at a first grade level.

Some say that student must read at grade level because they will be responsible for passing a grade level reading test. However, reading at their frustration level will not help children pass a grade level test. Instead a child should read at their instructional or independent level for more than two hours a day. If this occurs then the child will make gains in reading and will eventually (hopefully) catch up with their grade-level reading peers. If a child is properly instructed in reading they have a chance of making it to grade level and at some point in the future mastering grade level reading tests. If the same child is forced to read at grade level they will make no gains, and will likely never pass a grade level reading assessment in their entire school career.

A.Orthographic knowledge is an understanding of how letters work in words. This knowledge is essential in order for children to discover how print works.< If children do not have a mastery of how spelling works in words then they may not understand vowels. If they do not understand how vowels work then print looks like consonants with a bunch of random symbols in the middle. Although they may be able to pick out some of these words, the task of reading becomes impossible to master and draining to even attempt. Knowing how print works must become an automatic skill for children to become accomplished readers. Processing text must become automatic so that children can focus their conscious attention on the meaning and context of what they are reading. Children will not be able to comprehend what they read until they are at the level where their orthographic processor is working sub-consciously, so that they can focus their attention on the meaning of their reading. Only at this point can a child begin to be an accomplished reader. Orthographic knowledge and mastery is a precursor to accomplished reading.

B.Reading for pleasure or meaning at the independent level reinforces vowel patters and word structures. These vowels patterns and words then become automatic as they are read over and over again. Once something becomes automatic to a child they are able to learn new skills, therefore they are able to grow in their reading ability. <The human eye notices every letter it sees in print, therefore each time a child reads easy text for pleasure they are learning tons of information about how letters work in words without even knowing it. The child is seeing every word and every letter and spelling patters are being reinforced in that child’s mind. This only works if the material is at the independent or instructional level. When a number of people were given a short passage with the word fracture spelled fraoturemost people did not consciously notice the spelling error. But, studies showed that their eye not only noticed it the first time, it went back to it. This did not happen with readers who were reading at their frustration level.>

Writing without the fear of spelling words wrong allows children to exercise their present theory about how letters work in words. They can test the way they think a word should be spelled. All children must go through this process to discover how letters work in words and how to spell and read. As children test their present theory against correct spelling they will begin to recognize patters in spelling and how meaning relates to spelling. Both of these things will allow them to recognize and spell a greater number of words. A child cannot become a proficient writer until they are comfortable with spelling and understand how spelling works.

A.The orthographic, meaning and context processors in an accomplished reader’s brainbegin to overlap, or become amalgamated. This means they are all working simultaneously and it is difficult for the reader to consciously exercise these processes separately. When an accomplished reader reads “The none tolled hymn she had scene…”, the orthographic processor is working properly to figure out the word that is presented, however the meaning that is associated with that word is making the sentence hard to read. So, although an accomplished reader can read this passage, they are unable to read it as quickly and fluently as correctly written passages. They are able to understand the meaning from this passage, but it takes more time because words and meaning are so closely linked in their reading process, that in this case they must separate the word that they see from the meaning that they know and reassign the meaning if they want to understand the passage.

B.Students must not only make the connection between spelling and sound, but they must also make the connection between spelling and meaning. Students cannot become accomplished readers until the orthographic and meaning processors are amalgamated for many words that occur regularly. Reading intervention must require kids to read for meaning. They must make a connection between spelling and meaning. Exposing kids to reading for meaning is essential to this. This can be done by asking predicting questions at key points of anticipation throughout the story.

A. Children need to develop a sense of book language early on if they are ever to comprehend the language in books. Children who are read to from rich language books are able to understand the particular language that is only present in books. This language does not typically show up in children’s books until fourth grade, but children must be exposed to it in order to be able to understand it when they enter fourth grade. Book language is like many other languages in that a child has no hope of understanding it or writing it if they have not been exposed to it.
A.
Word Recognition, phonics and spelling: Children with a non-standard dialect can learn to read and recognize words just as easily as children who speak a standard dialect. It is important that children are able to use their native dialect when learning to read because if they are correct as to how to pronounce something, they may forever misspell their own words to match the spelling the teacher gives. For example, a child who pronounces dog “dawg” will pronounce every “og” word the same way and will learn to recognize the wounds “awg” goes with the letters og. If the teacher tries to correct their pronunciation of og, then the child will try to spell dog as dawg to match their own pronunciation. This becomes a much larger problem then the slight pronunciation difference that they teacher tried to correct.
All students must learn the formal standard dialect of book language. No child speaks this dialect. Therefore all children are required to learn a new dialect in order to read. There is not a particular spoken dialect that makes it easier or harder for a child to learn to read.
Written composition is not affected by dialect. Once again, all students must learn formal standard dialect in order to read and write. All children have to learn the dialect of formal writing, so there is no particular dialect that will affect writing composition more than another.
Attitude toward literacy. Dialect does not directly play a role in this, however it may indirectly affect a child’s attitude towards literacy. Standard dialect is determined by those with money, education and social status; therefore it can be assumed that those that speak a vernacular dialect do not possess these things. Because of this correlation it is less likely that student who speak a vernacular dialect come from a wealthy home, and there is a high correlation between literacy level and wealth in the United States. These children may not come from a literate home and therefore have not been exposed to literacy practices. In addition to this students may believe that reading and book language is something that belongs to somebody else. And until they believe that it is something that belongs to them their attitude about it will be negative.
There is nothing to discuss. The dialect you speak does not affect your ability to think.
All dialects possess the ability to communicate complex, abstract thoughts. The only issue will be when a person tries to communicate these thoughts to someone who does not accept the dialect as standard.
This is when dialect can negatively affect those who speak a vernacular dialect. As much as we try to become more educated and enlightened, prejudice still exists. It is ingrained in our minds from the time of childhood and is very difficult to unlearn. Students who do not speak a standard dialect will, at times, be looked over by employers. This comes from the misperception that those who speak non-standard dialects are simply messing up standard dialect. The idea that they are trying to talk right, but they can’t. The instructional implications of this are that teacher’s must teach children to code switch. That is, to switch between their own dialect and one that is considered standard. This must be done with a respect for the original dialect, and not under the false assumption that any dialect is worse than another.
A.There is a high correlation between socioeconomic status and the acceptability of the dialect spoken because those at the top of the socioeconomic status continuum are the ones who determine what standard dialect is. The people with money, education and political clout or social status are the people who determine what makes standard dialect. The dialects they consider to be non-standard are going to be the dialects of the people who do not fit into these categories. One can assume that this will be those at the bottom of the socioeconomic continuum, who are less educated and have less social status. So, you don’t speak “wrong” because you are poor, but because you are poor you speak “wrong”.

B.Literacy correlates with dialect because socioeconomic status correlates with dialect. Those of a lower socioeconomic background are less likely to be fully literate; therefore their children are less likely to grow up with words and books around them on a regular basis. As mentioned above, the rich, literate people set the standard for dialect, therefore those who are poor, speak a non-standard dialect, and have little social power are less likely to produce fully literate children. Dialect itself has no effect on a child’s ability to read, but the other factors that accompany dialect do have an effect on reading.

8.A.Children are born with the ability to discriminate between phonemes. When adults were tested with the sound ba changing to pa, they all stopped and said it was pa at the same time. This same test was given to infants while monitoring heart rate, breathing, and sucking, these infants also noticed a difference in the sounds at the same time that the adults did. They recognized sound difference just as well as fluently speaking adults.