Week 3 Assignment

Dear Participants,

We are changing topics again. Some of you did not post during Week 2. Remember that I will provide your school district with data regarding participation so that it can be included in the Final Report to the funding agency. Your participation is important for that purpose and also because the materials we are reading and discussing have a wide application. I have tried to cover the gamut from toddler to middle schooler in the reading assignments to give you a feeling of continuity in the developmental process. These are versatile materials and strategies; you should be able to implement them and to find applications for them in your instructional activities.

Contact me if you are having problems.

As a reminder, I have abbreviated the titles of the books for brevity's sake. Y = Youngest Learner and T-A = Think-Alouds. Please, place a Y or a T-A to indicate which prompt you are responding to at the beginning of your post. In addition, when looking for a colleague's post to comment on, make suggestions, propose adaptations for, give both the name of the author of the original post and either Y or T-A for the text on which the comments are based. Remember, your first post for the week should be based on the reading assignment; your later posts should comment on your colleagues' posts.

Online Training 02/11/09 — 02/17/09 Week 2
Texts: Think-Alouds and Youngest Learner

Reading Assignments

Youngest Learner: Chapter 7, "The Book Nook," pp. 121–134.

Think-Alouds: Chapter 2, "\What All Good Readers Do,” pp. 41 – 66.

Prompt: Once again, there is a continuum here. The familiarity with books and the readiness this familiarity contributes to actual reading is followed by the ability to read strategically as children progress from home, to kinder, to higher grades. What a parent or caretaker asks a toddler as a book is read to him/her is usually a prediction as in “What is the big, bad wolf going to do now?” You will notice that when teaching children to be active participants in a think-aloud, predicting is one of the easiest strategies. A child that cannot make predictions in 2nd grade may never have been read to as a toddler.

Look at the process in Think-Alouds and pick 2 to 3 steps or substeps that you could add to your Think-Aloud routine. You may want to make one of those choices a follow-up activity from either the text or of your own creation. Discuss what you expect the additions to accomplish. If you teach a Think-Aloud during the week, let us know in a later post how your addition worked. For example, Step 3 of the General Steps (p.44) is one that I had considered as something I would do. I would define what I wanted to accomplish. It never occurred to me to share this with the students, and yet it makes complete sense. Without clear purposes, the children are reading for enjoyment, perhaps, if a story is involved, but are unaware of any other purpose. In retrospect, that seems to me like setting out on a trip without a clear destination!

I look forward to your responses. Those of you contributing so far are doing a great job!!
One of our groups is lagging a bit; I have heard from some of its members, some are sick, one is still without electricity! We hope to see you soon!