Blog #7

After completing this week's readings, I noticed an interesting pattern from Tompkins Chapters 2, 7, 8 and Gibbons Chapter 5. They all correlated to the reading and writing process. I felt that Gibbons' chapter was somewhat of an umbrella toward Tompkins'. I especially enjoyed Gibbons chapter because he widely spoke of ELL student readers. It was shocking, yet interesting to me to read the first parapgraph in a jibberish language. It is extremely unfortunate for ELL students to initially understand language in that way, however, many first time young readers probably view it the same. In Chapter 8, Tompkins mentioned "graphic organizers," which was what we were assigned to do this week. These organizers highlight big ideas from texts and I see it being used all of the time in my placement. I think this is a good way to summarize text for first-time readers as well as students that have been reading for many years. It was fascinating to read the differenences amongst comprehension and reader factors toward facilitating comprehension. Chapter 7 mentioned many terms that I had remembered from TE 348 bringing the different genres into account. I didn't realize that stories could be more easier or difficult depending on the "factors that inherent them" (Tompkins 254). Every week, I participate in Writer's and Reader's Workshop in my first grade class and observe many different types of readers. I realize that their own funds of knowledge come into factor as they choose stories to read for me or stories to write about. The students tend to pick stories that serve their interest, as I see many of the boys read fantasy books and many of the girls read fictional stories. I feel that it is very important to scaffold these different types of readers and allow them to experiment with whatever type of genre and/or context they would like. These two workshops are essential for first grade development because they create motivation amongst the students (which is also something that Tompkins had mentioned in Chapter 7). Another good form of "created motivation" is through our Book Clubs. The activities we have done for the chapters, thus far, can be a good tool for students to dig deep into the text furthering their levels of comprehension. One of the activities I have completed involve searching for vocabulary terms that the student may not know. I like this activity because the student is given the chance to read the term in it's own sentence structure and decode it's meaning. Overall, creating a community of good readers (and writers) is important for every child to succeed in literacy (and any other subject) as well as communicating with the world! Comprehension and strategies correlating to it are an essential part of achieving this success in reading.