Language Arts

Content Specific Standards

Standard 4. Content Knowledge: The Candidate demonstrates understanding of the central

concepts, tools of inquiry, and structures of the discipline(s) he or she teaches and creates

learning experiences that make these aspects of the discipline accessible and meaningful for

learners to assure mastery of the content in the areas below.

Reading, Writing, Comprehension, and Oral Language (speaking/listening)

Candidates demonstrate and apply understandings of the elements of literacy critical for

purposeful oral, print, and digital communication.

There are many elements of literacy that are critical for purposeful oral, print, and digital

communication. Educators, and families alike, must keep in mind that language theories are

continually evolving as more research is conducted. Language theories that were once

predominant are now considered to be ineffective in explaining how we acquire and learn

language. It is critical that educators stay current on the best practices in the field as well as

avoid relying too heavily on one method of teaching language.

Oral Language

Language acquisition is innate and skills begin to develop at birth. Our brains are hard-

wired at birth or primed to acquire and understand language. No matter what language it is or
how it is experienced, all people seem to develop language skills in the same order and on more

or less the same timeline as one another. “Children are not born with knowledge of English or

Japanese or any other human language. Instead they are born with knowledge of those things that

are common to all human languages” (Freeman & Freeman, 2014, p. 38). Each language has its

own set of rules, which children learn implicitly at a young age. “Children must use what they

hear to develop a set of rules that allows them to understand and produce a wide variety of

sentences that fit the social context, including original utterances they have never heard

before” (Freeman & Freeman, 2014, p. 49). We are motivated to learn language by our desire to

interact and communicate with others. “Wells suggests that the best support adults can give

young children is to ‘encourage them to initiate conversation and make it easy and enjoyable for

them to sustain it’” (as cited in Freeman and Freeman, 2014, p. 34). This is a strong case for the

classrooms that include discussion and dialogue throughout the day and across disciplines or

content areas. We crave connectedness with others. Through communicating children are

developing critical thinking skills, perspective taking, active listening skills, the ability to

negotiate meaning, and much more.

One strategy for incorporating discussion during reading is to use what is known as

dialogic reading. This lesson plan, using the mentor text Runaway Mittens by Jean Rogers and

Illustrated by Rie Munoz (1988) demonstrates my ability to implement the dialogic reading

strategy. My intention for this lesson was to teach students how to use illustrations and our own

reflections to process and understand the information in a literary text. “Contemporary picture

books mirror current cultural emphasis on visual communication; their meaning is dependent not

only on the words but also the illustrations” (Lukens, Smith, & Miller Coffel, 2013, p.48).
Through the use of open-ended questions and prompts I invited students to make predictions and

inferences about the story using their observations, connections to previous experiences, and the

collective ideas from their peers. This particular trade book lends itself to the dialogic reading

process very well. I had a particularly chatty host class so they all had ideas to add to the

discussion. Many made accurate predictions and were able to connect aspects of the story to their

own lives. For instance, they were able to relate to losing their mittens or other items and

recalled their own searches. Several of them could recognize and sympathize with the main

character’s emotions. To ensure that all students were engaged, I also incorporated other forms of

formative assessment such as thumbs up or down if they had had similar experiences or if they

agreed or disagreed with a classmate’s prediction. Cummins (2015) suggests that students need

explicit links made to their past learning. “For students to draw on previously learned skills or

information, they frequently need prompting, reminders, and explicit teaching” (as cited in

Echevarria & Graves, 2015, p. 37). Educators and families can support the reader’s

understanding by helping him or her make those connections.

Reading

When I began my case study for ED 615 Literacy in the Intermediate and Middle School

Grades, I first interviewed my case study partner (CSP), a fourth grade student, to learn about her

history with texts, interests, and to begin to understand her reading and writing learning profile. I

was able to identify strengths and areas in need of growth in her responses as well as our early

experiences together. “Too often, when students are in school, they are not looked at in terms of

their strengths; rather, there is a focus on remediating their deficits. This is rarely a source of
inspiration for anyone” (Elias, 2013, p. 1). It is important that we look for and provide

opportunities for students to demonstrate their strengths. In our time together I completed a

miscue analysis, both Form A and Form B of the Silvaroli Informal Reading Inventory (2000),

and the Upper Elementary and Middle School spelling tests. There are three cueing systems that

allow readers to decode and construct meaning from text. A reader may rely more heavily on one

cueing system or he or she may have developed the ability to use all three systems

collaboratively. A miscue analysis will help identify which system(s) readers are relying on to

assist in determining future instructional approaches. Miscue Analysis is a systematic method for

identifying which cueing system(s) and strategies readers are using to decode text and/or

construct meaning. “A major difference between proficient and nonproficient readers lies in the

correction of miscues that are unacceptable with the following syntactic context” (Weaver, 2009,

p. 68). Weaver identifies spontaneous self-correction as an indicator that the reader is using

context to construct meaning of the text.“The goal of reading instruction should not be the

accurate identification of every word, but rather the effective and efficient use of reading

strategies in order to construct meaning” (Weaver, 2009, p. 71). Comprehension is a complex

multi-faceted process that includes many sub processes and thinking strategies, such as making

connections, inferring, predicting, questioning, evaluating, and synthesizing. When assessing the

comprehension of a reader, it is critical that we keep in mind that:

The reader’s comprehension depends on many factors: the conceptual difficulty of the
text for that reader, whether or not the reader is actually reading for meaning while
reading aloud, the nature of the reader’s miscues and strategies, how the reader feels
about making miscues, how the reader feels about reading aloud for assessment, and
more (Weaver, 2009, p. 184).
 When readers are comprehending, they are constructing meaning from the text using the

lens of their prior experiences or knowledge in order to adapt and grow their schemas. I was able

to assess my CSP’s strengths and strategies by examining how the her miscues fit with the

context and the reader’s overall comprehension of what was read. These assessment tools helped

me formulate a reading and writing profile and determine my instructional recommendations for

her. My CSP was simultaneously balancing her graphophonic, syntactic, and semantic cueing

systems while decoding texts and constructing meaning.

Helping students recognize the strategies they (and others) use can build their confidence

in their current abilities and help them develop a growth mindset. We can effectively grow our

students’ confidence and interest in reading by supporting readers in reevaluating themselves. We

must help them see constructing meaning as the goal of reading rather than their accuracy or

speed alone.

Writing

In honor of Dr. Seuss’s birthday, I taught a first grade reading and writing lesson using

his book, If I Ran the Zoo (1950), as my mentor text. After reading the story, we discussed

animals that they have seen at the zoo and contrasted them with animals from the story. We also

looked back at certain pages to identify the author’s use of transition words, which the class had

been learning about with their host teacher. After modeling an example, their task was to write a

narrative story that began with the prompt “If I ran the zoo…” including an illustration for their

story. “Deconstructing the task as well as modeling and guiding students through a few sample

writing activities will also go a long way toward making them feel more confident about their
ability to perform” (Strickland, Ganske, & Monroe, p. 215). The finished products, as show by

student samples in the linked lesson plan, were truly fantastic. The drawings were creative and

unique. The use of transition words in their narrative was evident. Some students even

underlined these words. As students shared their stories with me during the writing process they

inserted missing words as they read and made capitalization and punctuation edits to clarify their

writing. This was an engaging and productive lesson. This spring my host teacher decided to

teach it to her new class and reached out to me to say that she used my example piece again and

that the her class loved it.

English Language Arts is a complex content area at every grade level. Children are

unique individuals who each come to school with their own prior experiences and

understandings of language and literacy. Each child will not reach their full potential if educators

prescribe to only one method of teaching language. For example, the types of text they are

exposed to at home varies and may include newspapers, fiction, informational texts, poems, etc.

Similarly, the focus and purpose of the writing they do and see at home may include grocery or

to-do lists, papers, journaling, or letters. These experiences create the foundation for the way

they interact with text at school. In studies of students from different home lives it was found

that, “Only when teachers understood the home language practices of the different families were

they able to help the children succeed academically in school” (Freeman & Freeman, 2014, p.

35). We must always strive to take a sociocultural view of student strengths.

Understanding the connectedness of oral, reading, and writing skills is paramount in

effective teaching and assessment of learning. Even within one of these areas, students may

demonstrate both areas of strength and areas in need of growth. Being apt at identifying the
strategies that students are using, or not using, is pivotal for targeting specific student needs and

creating a balanced literacy program.

 References

Echevarria & Graves (2015). Sheltered content instruction: Teaching English learners with

diverse abilities. 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Elias, M.J. (2013, January 25). Finding students' hidden strengths and passions. Edutopia.

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/students-strengths-passions-maurice-elias

Freeman, D. & Freeman, Y. (2004). Essential linguistics: What you need to know to teach

reading, ESL, spelling, phonics, grammar. 2nd ed. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Lukens, R.J., Smith, J.J.& Miller Coffel, C. (2013). A critical handbook of children’s literature.

Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Rodgers, J. (1988). Runaway mittens. New York, NY: Harper Collins.

Seuss, D. (1950). If I ran the zoo. Toronto, ON: Random House.

Silvaroli, N. & Wheelock, W. (2000). Classroom reading inventory. New York City, NY:

McGraw-Hill.

Strickland, D.S, Ganske, K., Monroe, J.K. (2002). Supporting struggling readers and writers:

Strategies for classroom intervention 3-6. Portland, ME: Steinhouse Publishers.

Weaver, C. (2009). Reading process. 3rd ed. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.