NYSTCE CST Multisubject Part 1 (241)

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813)

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." So begins Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen's witty comedy of manners—one of the most popular novels of all time—that features splendidly civilized sparring between the proud Mr. Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet as they play out their spirited courtship in a series of eighteenth-century drawing-room intrigues.

Moby-Dick by Heman Melville (1851)

'Call me Ishmael.' So begins Herman Melville's masterpiece, one of the greatest works of imagination in literary history. As Ishmael is drawn into Captain Ahab's obsessive quest to slay the white whale Moby-Dick, he finds himself engaged in a metaphysical struggle between good and evil. More than just a novel of adventure, more than an paean to whaling lore and legend, Moby-Dick is a haunting social commentary, populated by some of the most enduring characters in literature; the crew of the Pequod, from stern, Quaker First Mate Starbuck, to the tattooed Polynesian harpooner Queequeg, are a vision of the world in microcosm, the pinnacle of Melville's lifelong meditation on America. Written with wonderfully redemptive humour, Moby-Dick is a profound, poetic inquiry into character, faith, and the nature of perception. Based on the Northwestern University Press edition, this Penguin Classics edition includes a critical introduction by Andrew Delbanco, as well as valuable explanatory notes, maps, illustrations and a glossary of nautical terms. Herman Melville is now regarded as one of America's greatest novelists. Much of the material for his novels was drawn from his own experience as a seaman aboard whaling ships. He wrote his masterpiece Moby-Dick in 1851, and died in 1891.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1859)

'Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; -- the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!' After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror, and they soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine.

Factors Affecting Text Comprehension

- Lack fluency to achieve comprehension - Lack comprehension strategies, such as generating questions, summarizing, and clarifying misunderstandings - Learned strategies only in the context of reading narrative texts - Students are not familiar with the text used in middle and high school

Word Walls

- Provide an approach to meaningful teaching of vocabulary with an emphasis on student engagement and higher level thinking skills; - Build vocabulary, thereby improving reading comprehension and writing style; - Reinforce understanding of subject-specific terminology with a focus on students internalizing key concepts; - Help students improve spelling and awareness of spelling patterns; - Provide visual cues for students; - Encourage increased student independence when reading and writing. Teachers can use a word wall for individual, small group, or whole class activities.

Adventure Stories

1. A heroic protagonist 2. Journey or quest 3. Unusual locations 4. Action and danger i.e. Moby-dick by Herman Melville, Odyssey by Homer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Six basic syllable types

1. Closed syllables (most common) - have one vowel, followed by one or more consonants. Vowel has a short sound. Closed in on the right side by one or more consonants. 2. Open syllables - ends in one vowel and the vowel says its name (long sound) i.e. me, so, fly, flu 3. Vowel-Consonant-E syllables - vowel followed by a consonant and silent e. The silent e makes the vowel before it say its name (long sound) i.e. hate, mile, hole 4. Vowel Team syllables - contains two vowels next to each other. Vowels make one sound. i.e. wait, beach, beet, play 5. R-Controlled syllables - a vowel followed by the letter r. R "controls" vowel. i.e. car, bar, tar, or, sailor, regular 6. Consonant-le syllables - normally found at the end of a word. Sounds like ul. i.e. turtle, little, stable

Development of Oral Language

1. Cooing 2. Babbling 3. One-Word Stage 4. Telegraphic Stage 5. Beginning Oral Fluency

Development of Reading

1. Emerging pre-reader (6 mo to 6 yrs) 2. Novice reader (6-7 yrs) 3. Decoding reader (7-9 yrs) 4. Fluent, comprehending reader (9-15 yrs) 5. Expert reader (16 yrs +)

Brainstorming

1. Free writing - Write and keep writing 2. Listing - Jot down a list of phrases or single words. 3. Research

Types of Reading Disability

1. Phonological deficit - implicating a core problem in the phonological processing system of oral language. 2. Processing speed/orthographic processing deficit - affecting speed and accuracy of printed word recognition. 3. Comprehension deficit - often coinciding with the first two types of problems, but specifically found in children with social-linguistic disabilities (e.g., autism spectrum), vocabulary weaknesses, generalized language learning disorders, and learning difficulties that affect abstract reasoning and logical thinking.

Development of Spelling

1. Preliterate 2. Phonetic 3. Skill Development 4. Word Extension 5. Derivational Constancy

Realistic Fiction

1. Realistic fiction stories tend to take place in the present or recent past. 2. Characters are involved in events that could happen. 3. Characters live in places that could be or are real. 4. The characters seem like real people with real issues solved in a realistic way. 5. The events portrayed in realistic fiction conjure questions that a reader could face in everyday life. i.e. Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli, Looking for Alaska by John Green, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

Development of Written Expression

1. Scribbling 2. Letter-like Symbols 3. Strings of Letters 4. Beginning Sounds Emerge 5. Consonants Represent Words 6. Initial, Middle, and Final Sounds 7. Transitional Phases 8. Standard Spelling

Myth

1. Stories told as fact 2. Usually have gods or goddesses and supernatural powers 3. Creation of the world and natural events 4. Provide lessons about good and bad behavior 5. Unknown authorship i.e. Hercules

Development of Phonological Awareness

1. Word awareness 2. Responsiveness to rhyme and alliteration during word play 3. Syllable awareness 4. Onset and rime manipulation 5. Phoneme awareness

Phonics

A method of teaching students to read by correlating sounds with letters or groups of letters in an alphabetic writing system. Children are taught, for example, that the letter n represents the sound /n/, and that it is the first letter in words such as nose, nice and new.

Narrative Poetry

A narrative poem has a narrator and the story is told from the point of view of that narrator. The narrator may be the main character, a secondary character or an observer. A narrative poem also contains many of the narrative elements found in other types of fiction including setting, characterization, plot, conflict, tone, dialogue and symbolism. Because it has a plot, a narrative poem also has rising action, climax and resolution.

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison (1786)

A series of papers that led to the ratification of the Constitution of the United states of America

Antonyms

A word opposite in meaning to another (i.e. bad and good)

Irregular words

A word that cannot be decoded because either (a) the sounds of the letters are unique to that word or a few words, or (b) the student has not yet learned the letter-sound correspondences in the word. i.e. the, you, said, his, to, they, were, do, know

Visual Literacy

Ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image, extending the meaning of literacy, which commonly signifies interpretation of a written or printed text. Strategies: Think-aloud, Gallery walk

Fluency

Ability to read a text accurately, quickly, and with expression. Fluency is important because it provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension. When fluent readers read silently, they recognize words automatically. They group words quickly to help them gain meaning from what they read. Fluent readers read aloud effortlessly and with expression. Their reading sounds natural, as if they are speaking. Readers who have not yet developed fluency read slowly, word by word. Their oral reading is choppy.

Word Processing

Allow students to use a computer for completing written tasks. With a computer, text can be added, deleted, and moved easily. Furthermore, students can access tools, such as spell check, to enhance their written compositions. As with any technology, teachers should provide guidance on proper use of the computer and any relevant software before students use the computer to compose independently.

Collaborative Writing

Allow students to work together to plan, write, edit, and revise writing. Teachers should provide structure. For example, if the class is working on using descriptive adjectives in their compositions, one student could be assigned to review another's writing. He or she could provide positive feedback, noting several instances of using descriptive vocabulary, and provide constructive feedback, identifying several sentences that could be enhanced with additional adjectives. After this, the students could switch roles and repeat the process.

Allegories

An allegory is a prominent figure-of-speech technique used in literature. Often confused with symbolism, which is more narrow, an allegory is an entire story or poem that presents a moral lesson. Characteristics: 1. Writer's values - infusion of political or moral values of writer 2. Multiple meanings 3. Polarizing relationships - oppositional views between characters or objects in the story. Simplest is good vs evil 4. Object personification i.e. Animal Farm by George Orwell, The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, The Giver by Lois Lowry

Exposition Text

An exposition persuades a reader or listener by presenting one side of an argument. By taking a point of view and justifying it, we aim to convince others to see only that side of an issue. Some expositions speculate as to what might be and persuade others as to what should be Exposition texts generally begin with an introductory statement of position giving the author's opinion or point of view.This previews the argument that will follow.The next section has a series of logical arguments that convince the audience why this position has been taken. A conclusion ties it all together by reinforcing or summarizing the author's point of view 1. Statement of position 2. Argument stage 3. Reinforcement of the statement of position

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe (1843)

An unnamed narrator opens the story by addressing the reader and claiming that he is nervous but not mad. He says that he is going to tell a story in which he will defend his sanity yet confess to having killed an old man. His motivation was neither passion nor desire for money, but rather a fear of the man's pale blue eye. Again, he insists that he is not crazy because his cool and measured actions, though criminal, are not those of a madman. Every night, he went to the old man's apartment and secretly observed the man sleeping. In the morning, he would behave as if everything were normal. After a week of this activity, the narrator decides, somewhat randomly, that the time is right actually to kill the old man. When the narrator arrives late on the eighth night, though, the old man wakes up and cries out. The narrator remains still, stalking the old man as he sits awake and frightened. The narrator understands how frightened the old man is, having also experienced the lonely terrors of the night. Soon, the narrator hears a dull pounding that he interprets as the old man's terrified heartbeat. Worried that a neighbor might hear the loud thumping, he attacks and kills the old man. He then dismembers the body and hides the pieces below the floorboards in the bedroom. He is careful not to leave even a drop of blood on the floor. As he finishes his job, a clock strikes the hour of four. At the same time, the narrator hears a knock at the street door. The police have arrived, having been called by a neighbor who heard the old man shriek. The narrator is careful to be chatty and to appear normal. He leads the officers all over the house without acting suspiciously. At the height of his bravado, he even brings them into the old man's bedroom to sit down and talk at the scene of the crime. The policemen do not suspect a thing. The narrator is comfortable until he starts to hear a low thumping sound. He recognizes the low sound as the heart of the old man, pounding away beneath the floorboards. He panics, believing that the policemen must also hear the sound and know his guilt. Driven mad by the idea that they are mocking his agony with their pleasant chatter, he confesses to the crime and shrieks at the men to rip up the floorboards.

3. One-Word Stage

Around 1 yr, children begin to produce word-like units. Known as idiomorphs (invented word). Use a stable language unit to communicate meaning.

2. Babbling

Around 4-6 mo, they begin to babble making repeated consonant-vowel sounds. More complex babbling develops around 8-10 mo.

1. Cooing

As early as six weeks, infants begin to make cooing sounds, resemble vowel sounds. Children are learning to make sounds by manipulating their tongues, mouths, and breathing.

Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945)

As ferociously fresh as it was more than a half century ago, this remarkable allegory of a downtrodden society of overworked, mistreated animals, and their quest to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality is one of the most scathing satires ever published. As we witness the rise and bloody fall of the revolutionary animals, we begin to recognize the seeds of totalitarianism in the most idealistic organization; and in our most charismatic leaders, the souls of our cruelest oppressors.

4. Beginning Sounds Emerge

At this stage, students begin to see the differences between a letter and a word, but they may not use spacing between words. Their message makes sense and matches the picture, especially when they choose the topic.

Inferring

Authors do not always provide complete descriptions of, or explicit information about a topic, setting, character, or event. However, they often provide clues that readers can use to "read between the lines"—by making inferences that combine information in the text with their schema.

Phonological Awareness

Awareness of the sound structure of a language and the ability to consciously analyze and manipulate this structure via a range of tasks, such as speech sound segmentation and blending at the word, onset-rime, syllable, and phonemic levels.

Common spelling patterns

Basic spelling patterns: - i before e except after c (but not when c is "sh" sound (ancient) and not when sounded like 'a' (neighbor)) - change y to ies except when the word ends in a vowel (key > keys) - add es to words ending s, ss, z, ch, sh, x (i.e. boxes)

1. Preliterate

Before children can read, write, or spell, they must first acquire some fundamental understandings about language. This process occurs during the preliterate stage. As children experience the printed page, both as a result of watching books being read and of exploring books on their own, they develop concepts of print. For example, they become aware that English words are written from left to right and flow from the top to the bottom of the page. Beginning writing experiences might include "pretend writing" with scribbles or random marks that eventually become more linear. Children then learn to write actual letters, often beginning with their own names, showing words as strings of letters or letter-like symbols. These activities lay the foundation for the language skills that are developed in the next stage.

5. Beginning Oral Fluency

By age 3-4, children are moderately fluent in language used at home.

4. Fluent, comprehending reader

By this stage, reading is used to learn new ideas in order to gain new knowledge, to experience new feelings, to learn new attitudes, and to explore issues from one or more perspectives. Reading includes the study of textbooks, reference works, trade books, newspapers, and magazines that contain new ideas and values, unfamiliar vocabulary and syntax. There is a systematic study of word meaning, and learners are guided to react to texts through discussions, answering questions, generating questions, writing, and more. At beginning of Stage 4, listening comprehension of the same material is still more effective than reading comprehension. By the end of Stage 4, reading and listening are about equal for those who read very well, reading may be more efficient.

Satire

Characteristics: 1. Relies on humor to bring about social change. When our vices are made humorous, the idea is that it will encourage us to change. 2. Most often implied. The reader has to pick up on the humor or he/she will miss the satirical nature of the writing. 3. Does not go over individual people. Instead, satire is directed at society as a whole, or types of people in society-the politician, the adulterer, the prideful, etc. 4. The wit and irony of the satire are exaggerated-it is in the exaggeration that people are made aware of their foolishness. Elements: Humor, irony, comic juxtaposition, understatement and diminution, inflation, grotesque, and parody i.e. Animal Farm by George Orwell, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

Orthography

Consists of learning the entirety of these visual conventions for depicting a particular language, with its repertoire of common letter patterns and of seemingly irregular usages. Children learn orthographic conventions one step at a time. This includes: grapheme-phoneme correspondence, morphology, common spelling patterns, irregular words, six basic syllable types.

3. Syllable awareness

Counting, tapping, blending, or segmenting a word into syllables. Strategy: Flashcards w/ objects whose names contain different numbers of syllables. (Flashcards can be used in sorting activity.)

Assignments and Activities for Instruction in Reading Literature

Create a cartoon strip, write a short play, character diary (students record connections, comments, or questions while reading. Written as if student were a character in story)

Vocabulary Notebook

Create vocabulary word pages in a notebook. When the word appears in different contexts or content areas, students can return to that page and add new information. This will help them use the words more easily in writing and speaking.

Foster Word Consciousness

Creating an environment that builds word consciousness means that we prioritize finding new words, figuring out what they mean, looking for multiple meanings, and adding them to our linguistic repertoire. Developed through encouraging adept diction, through word play, through research on word origins and histories.

Orthographic Processing

Defined as "the ability to form, store, and access orthographic representations." Orthography is the methodology of writing a language, which primarily consists of spelling, but includes, contractions, punctuation and capitalization.

Drama

Drama is intended to replicate human behavior and action in the midst of tragedy and everyday life. A number of genres exist within drama, each with their own storytelling methods, character types and dramatic approach. There are four main genres of drama: the tragedy, comedy, melodrama and tragicomedy. Characteristics: 1. Idea/Plot 2. Characters 3. Language 4. Music 5. Performance i.e. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, Hamlet by Willian Shakespeare, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Semantic Processing

Encode the meaning of a word and relate it to similar words with similar meaning.

Prewriting

Engage students in activities prior to writing that help them produce and organize their ideas. Prewriting can involve tasks that encourage students to access what they already know, do research about a topic they are not familiar with, or arrange their ideas visually (e.g., graphic organizer) before writing. i.e. Bubble map

2. Responsiveness to rhyme and alliteration during word play

Enjoying and reciting learned rhyming words or alliterative phrases in familiar storybooks or nursery rhymes. Strategy: poetry books, alphabet chants, picture flashcards w/ objects whose names rhyme. (Flashcards can be used in sorting and classifying activities.)

Bridging

Establishing a link between the students prior knowledge and the material. Strategies: Think-pair-share, quick-writes, and anticipatory charts.

Motivate students to engage in independent literacy practice

Five motivations: 1. Interest 2. Ownership 3. Self-efficacy 4. Social interaction 5. Mastery Strategies to foster independent reading: - help students find books they enjoy - make sure the book is not too difficult - encourage children to explore a variety of types of text - making connections to students' lives -creating a safe and responsive classroom - have students interact with text and with each other about text (jigsaw or fishbowl) - using technology to support communication, presentation, and research

Discourse Processing

Focus on the ways in which readers and listeners comprehend language.

Functional Text

Functional texts can include everything from the how-to instructions on a do-it-yourself website to the product manual for your fridge. Other examples include brochures, menus, warranties, directories, forms to fill out, signs, recipes, and even public transportation schedules. What makes a functional text so different than anything else we describe as text? Typically, functional texts are consumed by a reader for the purpose of accomplishing something or getting us to the next step of what we need to do.

Graphic Novels

Graphic novels are similar to comic books they use sequential art to tell a story. Stand alone stories with complex plots. Types of graphic novels: 1. Manga - Manga is read from top to bottom and right to left as this is the traditional Japanese reading pattern. Though, technically Manga refers to Japanese comics, many think Manga refers to a style rather than the country of origin. 2. Superhero story - most popular form of comics and turned what were once brief episodic adventures into epic sagas. Superhero comics are dominated by a few mainstream publishers Marvel, DC, and Darkhorse. 3. Personal narratives - are autobiographical stories written from the author's personal experiences, opinions, and observations. 4. Non-fiction - are similar to perzine's in that they are written from the author's personal experience, but the author is generally using their own experience to touch upon a greater social issue.

KWL Chart

Graphic organizer designed to help in learning. The letters KWL are an acronym, for what students, in the course of a lesson, already know, want to know, and ultimately learn.

Semantic Maps

Graphic organizer that helps students visually organize the relationship between one pieces of information. Semantic mapping can be used as a pre-reading activity to active prior knowledge, or to introduce key words. As a post-reading activity, it can be used to enhance understanding by adding new concepts to the map.

Schema-Building

Helping students see the relationships between various concepts. Strategies: Compare and contrast, jigsaw learning, peer teaching, and projects.

3. Strings of Letters

In the strings-of-letters phase, students write some legible letters that tell us they know more about writing. Students are developing awareness of the sound-to-symbol relationship, although they are not matching most sounds. Students usually write in capital letters and have not yet begun spacing.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey (1962)

In this classic of the 1960s, Ken Kesey's hero is Randle Patrick McMurphy, a boisterous, brawling, fun-loving rebel who swaggers into the world of a mental hospital and takes over. A lusty, life-affirming fighter, McMurphy rallies the other patients around him by challenging the dictatorship of Nurse Ratched. He promotes gambling in the ward, smuggles in wine and women, and openly defies the rules at every turn. But this defiance, which starts as a sport, soon develops into a grim struggle, an all-out war between two relentless opponents: Nurse Ratched, back by the full power of authority, and McMurphy, who has only his own indomitable will. What happens when Nurse Ratched uses her ultimate weapon against McMurphy provides the story's shocking climax.

2. Novice reader

In this stage, the child is learning the relationships between letters and sounds and between printed and spoken words. The child starts to read simple text containing high frequency words and phonically regular words, and uses emerging skills and insights to "sound out" new one-syllable words. There is direct instruction in letter-sound relations (phonics). The child is being read to on a level above what a child can read independently to develop more advanced language patterns, vocabulary and concepts. In late Stage 2, most children can understand up to 4000 or more words when heard but can read about 600.

3. Decoding reader

In this stage, the child is reading simple, familiar stories and selections with increasing fluency. This is done by consolidating the basic decoding elements, sight vocabulary, and meaning in the reading of familiar stories and selections. There is direct instruction in advanced decoding skills as well as wide reading of familiar, interesting materials. The child is still being read to at levels above their own independent reading level to develop language, vocabulary and concepts. In late Stage 3, about 3000 words can be read and understood and about 9000 are known when heard. Listening is still more effective than reading.

Phonological Working Memory

Involves storing phoneme information in a temporary, short-term memory store. This phonemic information is then readily available for manipulation during phonological awareness tasks.

2. Letter-like Symbols

Letter-like forms emerge, sometimes randomly placed, and are interspersed with numbers. The children can tell about their own drawings or writings. In this stage, spacing is rarely present.

Morphology

Morphology is the study of word structure [1]. Morphology describes how words are formed from morphemes [2]. A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a word. i.e. root words, prefixes, suffixes, and grammatical inflections (e.g., -s or -es for plurals) are all morphemes which can be added or taken away from a word to alter its meaning.

Lyrical Poetry

Most lyrical poems are short, but there are longer examples. They also tend to be written in first person and include the writer in the poem. Another characteristic of lyrical poetry is in the types of moods and emotions the poem expresses. These emotions tend to lean toward the extremes in life, such as love, death or loss. Other emotions can be expressed, but the emotion is always very intense.

Cornell Notes

Most often used with expository texts, but is a strategy that can be used with any type of reading.

Syntactic Categories

Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884)

Of all the contenders for the title of The Great American Novel, none has a better claim than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Intended at first as a simple story of a boy's adventures in the Mississippi Valley - a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - the book grew and matured under Twain's hand into a work of immeasurable richness and complexity. More than a century after its publication, the critical debate over the symbolic significance of Huck's and Jim's voyage is still fresh, and it remains a major work that can be enjoyed at many levels: as an incomparable adventure story and as a classic of American humor.

4. Onset and rime manipulation

Onset is the initial consonant in a one-syllable word. Rime includes the remaining sounds, including the vowel and any sounds that follow. The ability to produce a rhyming word depends on understanding that rhyming words have the same rime. Recognizing a rhyme is much easier than producing a rhyme. Strategy: Blending and substitution activities.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (1847)

Orphaned into the household of her Aunt Reed at Gateshead and subject to the cruel regime at Lowood charity school, Jane Eyre nonetheless emerges unbroken in spirit and integrity. She takes up the post of governess at Thornfield, falls in love with Mr. Rochester, and discovers the impediment to their lawful marriage in a story that transcends melodrama to portray a woman's passionate search for a wider and richer life than Victorian society traditionally allowed. With a heroine full of yearning, the dangerous secrets she encounters, and the choices she finally makes, Charlotte Bronte's innovative and enduring romantic novel continues to engage and provoke readers.

Parodies

Parody is a type of work designed to comment on, trivialize or mock another work by means of comic imitation. As a form of expression, parody is as old as ancient Greek drama, when Aristophanes used the form to poke fun at the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Characteristics: 1. Imitation 2. Genre Satire 3. Social and Political Commentary 4. Expert Insight

Phonological Retrieval

Phonological retrieval is the ability to recall the phonemes associated with specific graphemes, which can be assessed by rapid naming tasks.

Factors that affect language and literacy development

Physical and clinical factors: cognitive deficiencies, hearing problems, early language impairment, ADD/ADHD, vision problems Family factors: history of reading difficulties, home literacy environment, opportunities for verbal interaction, home language other than English, nonstandard dialect of English in home, socioeconomic status Neighborhood, community, school: environmental risks, low performing schools, low expectations, lack of resources, conflicting values, negative peer pressure

Comprehension Monitoring

Pre-reading: Collecting and defining vocabulary terms from the text will assist students in understanding words that otherwise may interrupt their reading. It will also help them increase their vocabulary in a meaningful, relevant way. Students can record the terms in a notebook or on flash cards. Another strategy involves having students preview comprehension questions so that they can focus on answering those questions as they read. Reading: Teachers can guide students' interaction with the text by asking questions about literary elements, having students present oral summaries of the plot, or asking them to collect details or write observations on post-it notes. If students have previewed comprehension questions, they can answer these questions as they read. Post-reading: Summarizing (see below) is an effective strategy that can take many different forms.

Models of Writing

Provide students with good models of the type of writing they are expected to produce. Teachers should analyze the models with their class, encouraging students to imitate in their own writing the critical and effective elements shown in the models.

Quantitative Features of Text Complexity

Quantitative features of text complexity are the features that can be counted or quantified—sentence length, number of syllables, word length, word frequency and other features that can be calculated on the computer.

Assignments and Activities for Instruction in Language Knowledge

Quick writes, word sorts, journal writing, jigsaw, peer observation

1. Scribbling

Scribbling looks like random assortment of marks on a child's paper. Sometimes the marks are large, circular, and random, and resemble drawing. Although the marks do not resemble print, they are significant because the young writer uses them to show ideas.

Argument Text

Set of claims, one of which is meant to be supported by the others. 1. The premise- evidence and appeal 2. The conclusion 3. Connect 1 & 2 with inference

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (1951)

Since his debut in 1951 as The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield has been synonymous with "cynical adolescent." Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life, just after he's been expelled from prep school, in a slang that sounds edgy even today and keeps this novel on banned book lists. It begins, "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them." His constant wry observations about what he encounters, from teachers to phonies (the two of course are not mutually exclusive) capture the essence of the eternal teenage experience of alienation

Factors that affect Vocabulary Development

Social - 1. Toddlers infer a speaker's communicative intent and use that information to guide their language learning. For example, as early as 24 months, they are able to infer solely from an adult's excited tone of voice and from the physical setting that a new word must refer to an object that has been placed on the table while the adult was away. 2. The verbal environment influences language learning. From ages one to three, children from highly verbal "professional" families heard nearly three times as many words per week as children from low verbal "welfare" families. Longitudinal data show that aspects of this early parental language predict language scores at age nine. Perceptual - 1. Infant perception sets the stage. Auditory perceptual skills at six or 12 months of age can predict vocabulary size and syntactic complexity at 23 months of age. 2. Perceptibility matters. In English, the forms that are challenging for impaired learners are forms with reduced perceptual salience, e.g. those that are unstressed or lie united within a consonant cluster. Cognitive Processes - 1. Frequency affects rate of learning. Children who hear an unusually high proportion of examples of a language form learn that form faster than children who receive ordinary input. 2. "Trade-offs" among the different domains of language can occur when the total targeted sentence requires more mental resources than the child has available. For example, children make more errors on small grammatical forms such as verb endings and prepositions in sentences with complex syntax than in sentences with simple syntax. Conceptual - 1. Relational terms are linked to mental age. Words that express notions of time, causality, location, size and order are correlated with mental age much more than words that simply refer to objects and events.16 Moreover, children learning different languages learn to talk about spatial locations such as in or next to in much the same order, regardless of the grammatical devices of their particular language. 2. Language skills are affected by world knowledge. Children who have difficulty recalling a word also know less about the objects to which the word refers. Linguistic - 1. Verb endings are cues to verb meaning. If a verb ends in -ing, three-year-olds will decide that it refers to an activity, such as swim, rather than to a completed change of state, such as push off. 2. Current vocabulary influences new learning. Toddlers usually decide that a new word refers to the object for which they do not already have a label.

Modeling

Speaking slowly and clearly, modeling the language you want students to use, and providing samples of student work.

Developing Fluent Readers

Strategies: choral reading, cloze reading, read aloud to a partner Choral reading - teacher and students read aloud together, following the teacher's pace. Cloze reading - teacher does most of oral reading. Once or twice every few sentences, the teacher omits an important vocabulary or content word.

Intentional Vocabulary Teaching

Strategies: dictionary use, morphemic analysis, and contextual analysis Dictionary use - teaches students about multiple word meanings as well as the importance of choosing the appropriate definition. Morphemic analysis - deriving a word's meaning by analyzing its meaningful parts. Contextual analysis - inferring the meaning of an unfamiliar word by scrutinizing the text surrounding it.

Features of Informative/Explanatory Text

Structure: clear opening, general information, summarizing conclusion, interesting easy to read layout Features: present tense, first or third person, connectives to make it clear and coherent, mostly facts, rhetorical questions to engage reader, specific examples, and bullet point summaries

Features of Opinion Pieces and Argument

Structure: opening statement giving opinion, series of paragraphs (argument and then counter argument), summary and conclusion Features: 2nd guess opinion, present tense, first person, phrases to give own opinion, rhetorical questions, smilies and metaphors, exclamation points

Features of Narratives

Structure: setting and plot, characters, conflict and resolution, and a beginning, middle, and end. Features: point of view can be first, second, or third person, an implicit message, using ethos over logos (appeal to ethics over appeal to logic)

5. Consonants Represent Words

Students begin to leave spaces between their words and may often mix upper- and lowercase letters in their writing. They begin using punctuation and usually write sentences that tell ideas.

Act it Out

Students can take turns acting out one of the vocabulary words, while the other students guess the word. In order for charades with vocabulary words to work, students need some basis in the vocabulary, so teachers should schedule the game of charades a few days after students first get their vocabulary words.

8. Standard Spelling

Students in this phase can spell most words correctly and are developing an understanding of root words, compound words, and contractions. This understanding helps students spell similar words.

6. Initial, Middle, and Final Sounds

Students in this phase may spell correctly some sight words, siblings' names, and environmental print, but other words are spelled the way they sounds. Children easily hear sounds in words, and their writing is very readable.

Vocabulary

Students recognize the meaning of familiar words and apply word-learning strategies to understand what they're reading.

Synthesizing

Synthesizing is the process of ordering, recalling, retelling, and recreating into a coherent whole the information with which our minds are bombarded everyday. Synthesizing is closely linked to evaluating. Basically, as we identify what's important, we interweave our thoughts to form a comprehensive perspective to make the whole greater than just the sum of the parts.

Phoneme Manipulation Task (Strategy)

Tasks that tap into phonological processing, such as phoneme manipulation tasks (say "cat" without the kuh), have proven to be some of the strongest correlates and predictors of learning to read.

Text Structure

Teach students to use graphic and semantic organizers that differ based on the category of expository text the organizer represents. Students use the various organizers to record and organize important information and concepts from the texts they are reading.

Making Connections

Text-to-Self/Text/World

SLANT

The "S" stands for sitting up straight, the "L" is for lean forward and listen, "A" is for answer, "N" is for nod your head, and "T" is for track the speaker. These are active listening strategies that keep students engaged and promote a classroom environment that values all voices, perhaps the most important 21st-century lesson of them all.

The Adventure of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (1876)

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is the first of Mark Twain's novels to feature one of the best-loved characters in American fiction, with a critical introduction by John Seelye in Penguin Classics. From the famous episodes of the whitewashed fence and the ordeal in the cave to the trial of Injun Joe, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is redolent of life in the Mississippi River towns in which Twain spent his own youth. A sombre undercurrent flows through the high humor and unabashed nostalgia of the novel, however, for beneath the innocence of childhood lie the inequities of adult reality—base emotions and superstitions, murder and revenge, starvation and slavery. In his illuminating introduction, noted Twain scholar John Seelye considers Twain's impact on American letters and discusses the balance between humorous escapades and serious concern that is found in much of Twain's writing.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (1937)

The compelling story of two outsiders striving to find their place in an unforgiving world. Drifters in search of work, George and his simple-minded friend Lennie have nothing in the world except each other and a dream--a dream that one day they will have some land of their own. Eventually they find work on a ranch in California's Salinas Valley, but their hopes are doomed as Lennie, struggling against extreme cruelty, misunderstanding and feelings of jealousy, becomes a victim of his own strength. Tackling universal themes such as the friendship of a shared vision, and giving voice to America's lonely and dispossessed, Of Mice and Men has proved one of Steinbeck's most popular works, achieving success as a novel, a Broadway play and three acclaimed films.

Literature Circles

The concept is simple: students gather in small groups--preferably in a circle--and discuss literature. The first time you do literature circles, you must provide a lot of structure. Make them write a journal entry first or complete an individual assignment that will prepare them for a discussion. These tips will help provide maximum learning: 1. Arrange groups by book, not by ability. 2. Give each individual a specific role--researcher, data finder, character assassin, plot specialist, for example. 3. Literature circles help students apply thinking skills and prepare them for higher level essay writing and exams.

Jigsaw

The cooperative learning strategy known as the "jigsaw" technique helps students create their own learning. Teachers arrange students in groups. Each group member is assigned a different piece of information. Group members then join with members of other groups assigned the same piece of information, and research and/or share ideas about the information. Eventually, students return to their original groups to try to "piece together" a clear picture of the topic at hand.

1. Emerging pre-reader

The emergent pre-reader sits on 'beloved laps,' samples and learns from a full range of multiple sounds, words, concepts, images, stories, exposure to print, literacy materials, and just plain talk during the first five years of life. The major insight in this period is that reading never just happens to anyone. Emerging reading arises out of years of perceptions, increasing conceptual and social development, and cumulative exposures to oral and written language. By the end of this stage, the child "pretends" to read, can - over time - retell a story when looking at pages of book previously read to him/her, can names letters of alphabet; can recognise some signs; can prints own name; and plays with books, pencils and paper. The child acquires skills by being read to by an adult (or older child) who responds to the child's questions and who warmly appreciates the child's interest in books and reading. The child understand thousands of words they hear by age 6 but can read few if any of them.

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852)

The narrative drive of Stowe's classic novel is often overlooked in the heat of the controversies surrounding its anti-slavery sentiments. In fact, it is a compelling adventure story with richly drawn characters and has earned a place in both literary and American history. Stowe's puritanical religious beliefs show up in the novel's final, overarching theme—the exploration of the nature of Christianity and how Christian theology is fundamentally incompatible with slavery.

4. Word Extension

The next stage—the word-extension stage—focuses on syllables within words, as well as prefixes and suffixes. In the upper elementary or intermediate grades, children often struggle with issues such as doubling consonants when changing the endings (pot/potting, but look/looking) and dropping the final e before adding an ending (love/loving, but excite/excitement). Other issues arise with words such as almost. Why isn't it spelled allmost? Often the brightest children become the most confused or exasperated by these inconsistencies, but they eventually learn to master them as they move through this stage of development.

Syntactic Processing

The order and arrangement of words in phrases and sentences; you might depend in part on syntactic processing to know the difference between "The cat is on the mat" and "The mat is on the cat."

Qualitative Features of Text Complexity

The qualitative features of a text are the aspects and nuances of it that can't be measured by a simple formula. They require careful content analysis by thoughtful teachers who scrutinize texts before sharing them with their students. To determine the complexity of a text based on its qualitative features, you need to consider the students who will be reading the text and use criteria keyed to each dimension (text structure, language features, meaning, author's purpose, and knowledge demands) to analyze those areas that may interfere with students' comprehension.

Grapheme-phoneme correspondence

The relationship between sounds and the letters which represent those sounds; also known as 'letter-sound correspondences'. Knowledge of letter-sound relationships means knowing, for example, that the /t/ sound is represented by the letter t. It also means knowing that the sound /s/ can be represented by more than one letter, for example, s as in soft and c as in city. Many adults who are non-readers have trouble with identifying these relationships between sounds and letters.

2. Phonetic

The second developmental stage is auditory. As children are increasingly exposed to language, they develop phonemic awareness—the ability to distinguish the individual sounds that make up spoken words in English. They then relate these sounds to print by understanding that letters represent sounds, letters make up words, and that each word looks different. In the phonetic stage, most instruction involves helping children match individual sounds in words to their corresponding letters, usually starting with their own names. They often use all capital letters and spell words incorrectly. For example, they may spell KAT for cat, MI for my, LUV for love, and U for you. Silent letters in words like bake or lamb may be omitted. Instructors welcome these spellings as an indication that the student is beginning to understand sound-to-letter correspondence. Children arrive at the end of the phonetic stage once they have learned the basic rules of phonics and can actively apply them to both reading and spelling.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic. Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

Phonological Processing

The use of phonemes to process spoken and written language. The broad category of phonological processing includes phonological awareness, phonological working memory, and phonological retrieval.

1984 by George Orwell (1949)

The year 1984 has come and gone, but George Orwell's prophetic, nightmarish vision in 1949 of the world we were becoming is timelier than ever. 1984 is still the great modern classic of "negative utopia" -a startlingly original and haunting novel that creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing, from the first sentence to the last four words. No one can deny the novel's hold on the imaginations of whole generations, or the power of its admonitions -a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted "gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession," it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s. The Great Gatsby is one of the great classics of twentieth-century literature.

5. Derivational Constancy

This final stage explores related words—those with the same derivation or origin— that usually have a consistent pattern despite changes in pronunciation. These words are often predictable if a student is familiar with word roots. Greek and Latin root study is helpful at this stage as mature spellers gain an understanding of how patterns and meaning are related. Students gain the most benefit from this stage if they begin derivational studies after basic vocabulary has been learned and a strong foundation has been built in the previous stages.

The Giver by Lois Lowry (1993)

This haunting story centers on Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he's given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community.

5. Phonemic awareness

This is the student's awareness of the smallest units of sound in a word. It also refers to a student's ability to segment, blend, and manipulate these units. - Identify and match the initial sounds in words, then the final and middle sounds (e.g., "Which picture begins with /m/?"; "Find another picture that ends in /r/"). - Segment and produce the initial sound, then the final and middle sounds (e.g., "What sound does zoo start with?"; "Say the last sound in milk"; "Say the vowel sound in rope"). - Blend sounds into words (e.g., "Listen: /f/ /ē/ /t/. Say it fast"). - Segment the phonemes in two- or three-sound words, moving to four- and five- sound words as the student becomes proficient (e.g., "The word is eyes. Stretch and say the sounds: /ī/ /z/"). - Manipulate phonemes by removing, adding, or substituting sounds (e.g., "Say smoke without the /m/"). Strategy: listening to alliterative passages, blending and segmenting words, and manipulating sounds in words through substitution, deletion, and addition of phonemics. Elkonin boxes are provided for tactile blending and segmenting activities.

Questioning

This strategy involves readers asking themselves questions throughout the reading of text. The ability of readers to ask themselves relevant questions as they read is especially valuable in helping them to integrate information, identify main ideas, and summarize information. Asking the right questions allows good readers to focus on the most important information in a text. Four types of questions: 1. Right There 2. Think and Search - recall of facts 3. Author and You - students must understand text and relate to prior knowledge 4. On Your Own - based on prior knowledge Encourage students to develop their own question about the text. (Provide students with examples that teachers sometimes ask students)

Visualizing

This strategy involves the ability of readers to make mental images of a text as a way to understand processes or events they encounter during reading. This ability can be an indication that a reader understands the text. Some research suggests that readers who visualize as they read are better able to recall what they have read than those who do not visualize.

3. Skill Development

This third developmental stage is the most difficult, the most critical, and the longest for emerging spellers. It usually begins by the end of first grade, once children have cracked the basic phonetic code and are progressing rapidly in reading. As students learn the phonics rules needed to develop reading skill, they are able to apply these rules to their spelling. Problems often arise, however, when children become aware of words that are not spelled phonetically, such as house, there, and said. Phonics rules need to be de-emphasized at this stage because they are no longer needed to help the student learn to read. In fact, over-teaching phonics at this stage can actually create unnecessary confusion in spelling. The overriding neurological principle is that, because of the numerous inconsistencies in our language, new and different spellings must be connected to context in order for the new information to be linked correctly and permanently to long-term memory. As students encounter new vocabulary over several grade levels, spelling skill increases as they apply consistent strategies to master more complex spelling patterns and a greater number of irregularly-spelled words. The critical thing to remember is that this is a stage—a developmental link to the stages that follow. Children are often in the skill-development stage through the late elementary years. It may seem repetitious to practice the same skills over and over again, year after year; however, if students do not master these skills, it is very difficult for them to move ahead in spelling development.

7. Transitional Phases

This writing is readable and approaches conventional spelling. The students' writing is interspersed with words that are in standard form and have standard letter patterns.

Common Sense by Thomas Paine (1776)

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves—and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives—and destroyed them. Published anonymously in 1776, six months before the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Paine's Common Sense was a radical and impassioned call for America to free itself from British rule and set up an independent republican government. Savagely attacking hereditary kingship and aristocratic institutions, Paine urged a new beginning for his adopted country in which personal freedom and social equality would be upheld and economic and cultural progress encouraged. His pamphlet was the first to speak directly to a mass audience—it went through fifty-six editions within a year of publication—and its assertive and often caustic style both embodied the democratic spirit he advocated, and converted thousands of citizens to the cause of American independence.

4. Telegraphic Stage

Toddlers string several words together. i.e. "go bye-bye" or "cookie all gone"

1. Word awareness

Tracking the words in sentences. Knowledge that words have meaning. (less important to teach directly) Strategy: read-aloud, alphabet chants, high-frequency word books

Model the Reading Process

Use the think-aloud strategy. Read the work aloud and tell the students where you are confused, where your reread a section, where you pause to think about the author's language.

Rhetorical features

Use words in a certain way to convey meaning or to persuade. It can also be a technique to evoke an emotion on the part of the reader or audience. Three main categories: logos, ethos, and pathos. Includes word play and figurative language

Walden by Henry David Thoreau (1854)

Walden, or, Life in the Woods, is an American book written by noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for self-reliance. Published in 1854, it details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amid woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts.

Stylistic Features

i.e. alliteration, allusion, anaphora (successive clauses or sentences start with same words), antithesis (contrasting relationship between two ideas), hyperbole, hypophora (raise a question and give answer), metaphor, metonymy, point of view, onomatopoeia, parallelism, parenthesis, personification, repetition, rhetorical question, simile, synecdoche (using a part instead of the whole or vice versa), understatement

Free Verse Poems

i.e. sonnets, odes, ballads, and epics 1. No set line length 2. No set rhythm 3. No rhyming pattern 4. Way of conveying ideas and feelings 5. Carefully crafted word picture Sonnets - all sonnets have the following three features in common: They are 14 lines long, have a regular rhyme scheme and a strict metrical construction, usually iambic pentameter. Iambic pentameter means that each line has 10 syllables in five pairs, and that each pair has stress on the second syllable. Odes - Pindaric, Horatian, and English. Traditional odes often have a predetermined rhyme scheme and a fixed number of sections. Pindaric odes from ancient Greece have three sections: the strophe, the antistrophe and the epode. These sections are made up of stanzas, or groups of lines with the same rhythm (or meter) and rhyme pattern. The English ode is often called an irregular ode because its form abandoned the three sections of the Pindaric ode, which gave writers more freedom. English odes usually have a regular rhyme scheme. Ballads - Simple language, stories, ballad stanzas, repetition, dialogue, third-person objective narration. Epics - 1. The hero is outstanding. They might be important, and historically or legendarily significant. 2. The setting is large. It covers many nations, or the known world. 3. The action is made of deeds of great valour or requiring superhuman courage. 4. Supernatural forces—gods, angels, demons—insert themselves in the action. 5. It is written in a very special style (verse as opposed to prose). 6. The poet tries to remain objective. 7. Epic poems are believed to be supernatural and real by the hero and the villain