Burning out?

              Teacher burnout is an often overlooked topic in teacher preparation and advancement programs.  In fact, after 4 years of undergraduate work, 2 years earning a Master’s degree in Early Childhood Education, 3 internships, and 3 years of post graduate work, THIS is the first time that teacher burnout has come up as a discussion focus in an academic setting for me.  While teacher burnout is a relatively large problem, it is interesting how easily we overlook it.  I enjoyed reading Nan Nassef’s personal narrative on teacher burnout and felt connections to many of the points that she made.

                I think the rate of teacher burnout is affected greatly by the level of support that the teacher has.  This may be support at home and support from friends or loved ones, but most importantly the level of support the teacher has at school.  No matter what children a teacher works with (and let’s face it, some students bring about burnouts more than others) if I teacher has support and outlets to deal with the daily stresses of teaching than they might make it without burning out.  For example, the school I currently teach in is tremendously supportive from the administration, to the parents, to the fellow teachers.  There are many teachers working here that have been here 20-30 years!  On the other hand, my first internship was in a school in Boston which was considered “failing” and had virtually no support.  Teachers left there all the time, even in the middle of the school year.  Other teachers who felt they had to stay took out their stresses on the kids. 

                What can we really do to help avoid burnouts?  I agree that sometimes meeting up for a drink with colleagues to get your complaints out or even talk about life outside of school can be VERY therapeutic.  I also think that, whenever possible, you should try to leave school issues at school and spend time outside of school doing other activities.  You need to try to be balanced.  It is impossible to stay emotionally separated from the kids and your class, but you have to learn what is within your control and what is out.  Take the time to make emotional connections with children and colleagues, but don’t make it your entire focus.  I hope that by following these guidelines and staying in a wonderfully supportive school I will be able to avoid a burnout!

Nassef, N.A. (2009). I shouldn’t be telling you this – a story of teacher burnout and attrition.

13 Educational Insights,(4).Retrieved from: http://www.ccfi.educ.ubc.ca/publication/insights/v13n04/articles/nassef/index.html

Digital Readers for Young Readers?

             This week’s article on the use of digital readers in the classroom opened my eyes to a new use of technology in the classroom.  While I have experienced using different types of technology in the classroom I have never really considered the use of Kindles and other digital readers with students.  Based on the article, it sounds like there are many benefits to using these devices with students, particularly increasing student motivation, providing an opportunity for students to respond to the text while reading, and providing reading assistance for developing readers.

  I must admit that I have been a holdout with the whole digital reader trend and find that I am reluctant to trade the feel and familiarity of an actual book with a digital device.  Although I think it is important that students learn to enjoy books, it seems that we may be at the beginning of the phase out of actual paper texts.  Digital readers can be very convenient and useful for students and we might just see their popularity in the classroom increase.  Who knows?  Maybe one day we won’t even assess certain text feature understanding with students such as which way to hold a book or how to turn pages and other reading behaviors. 

At first when reading this article I also thought that digital readers would merely be a substitute for an actual book.  As I read I realized that there are many features available to help developing readers.  I think these would be great to use with students who perhaps have higher comprehension abilities but who my still be developing their fluency.  I worried about the computer reader feature but was delighted to hear that the two students studied did not end up using this feature much.  It seemed like this feature was more useful to the developing reader with lesser skills.  I thought their comments were significant as they showed that the transfer of a book onto a computer screen did not take away the reader enjoyment features in replace of visual/auditory stimulation.  The students still enjoyed telling the story in their head and hearing it from someone else ruined it.  I, like so many others, have often felt the same way after reading a book and then seeing the movie. 

I do not feel that digital readers would be very useful in my classroom of kindergarteners at this point, although depending on the books available and certain applications it could develop into a useful tool for all readers.  Curious, I went onto Amazon to see what children's books are available for the Kindle and was surprised to see many young children's books have been adapted.  I have seen young children using alphabet or phonics games on iphones and ipads, and I suppose that these too will soon be used in classrooms as another practice modality.  I think we do need to be careful just how much screen time we expose our children to, but I am excited to keep up with the potential growth of digital readers in classrooms to see just how great their potential can be.  

Larson, L. C.  (2010).  Digital readers: the next chapter in e-book reading and response.  The Reading Teacher, 64(1).  Retrieved from: http://cte.jhu.edu/ELC3/Uploads/ELC_78/Ebook_readers.pdf

Creating Comprehenders

“Comprehension is the goal of reading” (Tompkins, 2010) whether it’s when choosing an option from a menu, finding out what is happing in your local news, or reading a story for pleasure.  We read to learn something, to be entertained, or to perform a task of some sort.  We must put all of our background knowledge, phonemic awareness, vocabulary understanding, semantic knowledge, etc together in order to read and understand a text.  The fact that comprehension is typically the most challenging aspect of reading to master is dependent on the fact that it is the most involved process.  Tompkins describes that it is most definitely a process of behaviors that happen over some time in order for readers to have a deep understanding. 

            As teachers we are made aware of the many strategies related to comprehension and the many ways we can try to teach these strategies to our students.  I recognize that I perform many of these strategies as I read without even really thinking about them.  The argument between strategy instruction and content instruction lead me to think back on my own reading instruction.  I wish that I could remember more of how I learned to read and to be successful at comprehending what I was reading.  I do not remember being explicitly taught to use different strategies, but I am sure that I was in some way. 

            As I do think back on my own reading development I remember just loving to read.  I remember talking about the books I was reading with my parents or even my grandparents.  I remember sharing books with friends, acting out stories with friends, collecting whole series of books, and even pretending to write small stories based on some of my favorite books.  I think a lot of comprehension development does not necessarily happen in the classroom but through developing a love of reading and learning and sharing that with others.  My parents read to me all the time when I was little, but they also continued to stay involved in my reading as I grew up.  They talked to me not only about what I was reading but what I was doing, or other people were doing, or the news, or just about anything.  They let me ask questions and told me when they didn’t know the answer.  My parents took me places where I could have fun, but also where I could learn something.  This background knowledge and promotion to think about things beyond what is seen on the surface became embedded in me and beyond having a series of fabulous teachers, I don’t think I could have gotten the same experience strictly from school.  Perhaps we should look more towards outreach programs, after school programs, mentoring programs, or parent education programs to help create initiatives for better educating our students and making it fun instead of simply choking more strategies and facts and information into students during the school day. 




Tompkins, G.E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach (5th ed.). Boston, MA:

                  Pearson Education, Inc.

Visual Vocab

            The issues of vocabulary instruction and word recognition are very closely aligned and thus can be addressed together.  During vocabulary instruction teachers should focus not only on providing students an opportunity to develop an understanding of the meaning of the word but also opportunities to recognize the word visually.  As discussed in class, word recognition often comes with repeated exposure and mastery of a word.  This recognition should begin in vocabulary instruction as well as more of a whole language approach to reading instruction. 

            With the younger kids vocabulary instruction happens almost continuously to some degree throughout the day.  They come to the class with different word knowledge and act like sponges picking up new words and meanings all the time.  Although we work quite a bit with phonics, it is also important that teachers take the time to include visual aids in vocabulary instruction.  In my reading groups we spend time looking at and discussing new vocabulary as it comes up in our books, but I often think that I could provide greater visual exposure to the new words as well. 

            One way I do try to build word recognition and familiarity with common words is providing a print rich environment for the students.  I like to put labels all around the room for common things and to change them as things change in our classroom.  The children start to pick up on the words as they see them so repeatedly and then start to recognize the words in reading as well.  They also start to notice aspects about the words as they connect their phonics instruction to these words and build even greater recognition of new words.  Using vocabulary word rings, word walls, flash cards, and including changing words into centers helps to build familiarity with repeated exposures. 

            A final way to provide students with repeated exposure to words in order to cement their vocabulary understanding and build upon their word recognition is through the use of computer games.  There are a number of games out there designed to help build word recognition.  The website Starfall.com helps with these skills including many other developmental skills.  The site Vocabulary.co.il also has a variety of useful games for young students.  There are also a number of picture dictionaries online for children that can help build vocabulary understanding.

They think I can, I think I can!

          The issue of motivation is something that is relevant in all parts of life.  As teacher we have to help find ways to motivate students with the knowledge that motivational strategies that are successful for one child may fail completely with another.  The ultimate goal in motivational strategies has to be to help our students to become intrinsically self motivated academically. 

As an early childhood educator, as was mentioned in class, I find it fairly simple to motivate my students.  Many are motivated simply by the fact that they wish to please their teacher, parents, etc or perhaps to impress their peers.  Others gain motivation through a desire to master more difficult topics.  Although I don’t like to use external motivational sources often (rewards) it can seem somewhat unavoidable with young children.  The goal with these is to phase them out gradually once a skill or behavior has been learned and the motivation is internal. 

I enjoyed reading the Schunk and Zimmerman article this week on modeling, because although seemingly obvious it presented some nice points about the benefits of teacher and peer modeling in relation to motivation.  The students are so connected to each other that they not only gain confidence from one another’s successes but also get inspired by peer work.  I have been working a lot on building a community feeling in the classroom where students feel safe to take a risk and know that they will be supported by their classmates.  I think this is very important when it comes to motivation.  We also spend a fair amount of time commenting on each other work.  This helps to build their confidence, but also gives positive feedback and constructive criticisms so that students know how to improve with effort.  The students are getting so used to this type of dialogue that they are including it in reading groups (“you made such a good voice for the dad!” or “how did you figure out what that word was?”).  When the questions, comments, and explanations come from their peers students seem more willing to listen and buy into it.  They also are becoming more metacognative while reading and writing. 

A final strategy I use in the classroom to build motivation is to save pieces of work and data and showing it to the students as they improve.  Each time they try something again and can see an improvement their motivation to become even better and learn even more grows.  With young children you can see it in their faces! 

I found this page on Reading Rockets which has some easily digestible information on motivation and would be a good resource for parents as well.  

Learning to Spell

I found the discussion this past week related to spelling instruction and the use of spelling inventories very interesting.  I, like others in the class, consider myself a fairly poor natural speller.  However, I don’t see much if any correlation to my ability to spell and my ability to read.  While I have the skills necessary to decode hundreds of thousands of words, I am afraid that it must be a different brain process that is involved in recreating or spelling words.  The discussion in class got me thinking about spelling instruction.

I can honestly say that I don’t remember much about my own spelling instruction as a child.  I think that I remember doing many phonics-based worksheets and I remember having spelling lists, but not much beyond that.  My spelling lists must have been based around spelling rules but I don’t really remember if that was the case.  I don’t think that I spent much time of the spelling rules or exceptions as a child and I think that may have something to do with my spelling today.  Well, that and an almost total reliance on spell check which has made me even lazier when it comes to spelling!

I also got thinking about my spelling instruction as a K teacher.  I am constantly asked by parents if they should correct their child’s spelling or just let it go.  I also am asked how to respond to questions from their children about how to spell something.  I have always encouraged parents to help their children to sound out the words and to let the kindergarteners get their ideas down in any way possible before worrying about spelling.  I don’t want the students to get discouraged when they try something if it doesn’t come out “right” so when they ask me if it is spelled right I help them to make sure they have all the sounds they hear in the word.  As mentioned in class, as sight words are introduced I do begin to make the children accountable for those words and other words taught in class.  I think it is hard to judge exactly when students need to start being held accountable for spelling, but I do think that when a rule has been addressed in class it should be used by students.  There should be some sort of balance and eventually the invented spelling has to obviously be phased out as students master spelling concepts. 

         What can we do as teachers though when students master the concepts at different rates?  I continue to find it difficult in whole group lessons to have somewhat different standards for different children.  While I speak with the children individually, they seem to know that for some students it is ok to get down 1 or 2 sounds in a word while for others I expect more effort because they have mastered more decoding skills.  Since we are not having spelling lists each week and spelling inventories are still a little beyond them, how can I successfully hold some children who are ready accountable for certain spelling rules and allow others the freedom to explore inventive spelling more?

Syllabic Instruction through Music

       
      The groundwork for reading can be formed through all of the visual and auditory input a child receives.  In order to become a fluent reader the child must go through a multitude of steps and it can be nearly impossible for teachers to know what experiences a child has had or what they might be ready to achieve.  As a kindergarten teacher I have found the text very helpful in explicitly breaking down all of the steps of reading development.  I try to connect each activity and interaction with students everyday into helping them develop and solidify the various steps involved to become a fluent reader.
        I found it interesting that, in the text, Tompkins suggests that syllabic instruction happen in the middle grades (198). While I agree that younger children do not perhaps have the foundational skills to gain much from direct syllabic instruction, I do believe that the skills necessary to recognize and break apart syllables can begin with very young children.  I know that we often clap out words, whether in isolation or to a beat as well as singing songs or reading poems that emphasize the syllables of words.  Later in the school year, once the children have a firmer grasp of consonants and vowels, I do some direct instruction of word patterns and very basic syllabic instruction.  I know that the skill is not mastered by all students, but I do know that we are laying the groundwork as early as kindergarten and when they get to the upper grades it is not completely new to them. 
       I understand that young students might not truly get the idea of syllables or even be able to clap out most words, but I do think that they are able to start to hear the rhythm in words.  By making a point to give students experiences with music and the rhythm of language we are not only exposing them to an easily accessible and age appropriate mode of instructing to build phonemic awareness or phonics, but also more complicated concepts such as syllabication.  Check out this website for a variety of songs related to literacy skills! J
Tompkins, G.E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century:  A balanced approach (5th ed.). 
     Boston, MA: Pearson