Ward-Thommes,+Devon+Reading+Comprehension

Welcome to my Wiki Page!



• B.A.s in Psychology and French from Willamette University with a minor in Creative Writing - 2003
 * Education: **

• M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction Writing from George Mason University - 2008

During my junior year at Ashland High School, I took AP U.S. History with Bill Gabriel. I remember a poster taped to the wall of his classroom. A collage of faces with various expressions illustrated its proclamation: “Attitude is Everything!” As a graduate teaching assistant at GMU, I thought of this poster and how my favorite teachers exemplified its message. The attitude I bring into the classroom every day not only affects my own teaching experience, it also translates into how my students learn, express themselves, and mature.

In order to ensure continuous growth in students, I believe that teachers must foster their own passions. When I think about my most fundamental values, they’re pretty simple: I believe in community, in the ability to see things clearly; I believe in awareness and responsibility and kindness and tolerance of difference. I also value creativity, language, and self-expression. Teaching writing and literature provides a rich venue for addressing these issues, for cultivating tolerance and understanding in young people who are still forming their own belief systems.

Last year, I traveled in India, Bhutan, and Nepal. While there, my partner and I studied Tibetan philosophy, language, and art. We also taught English in Buddhist monasteries. Upon my return, I was hired at SOU to teach a freshman University Seminar class on college writing. I also work at Ashland High School as a member of their English Department. I teach one section of sophomore English Literature and student teach two sections of Advanced Placement English Composition.

I am a registered yoga instructor and have taught in Virginia, Colorado, Washington, Nepal, and Ashland. I look forward to sharing my passion for contemplative practices such as yoga and meditation with my students.

From 2008-2010, I lived in a one-room cabin at a Buddhist meditation and yoga retreat center with no running water and one small fire place.I learned how to make a wood fire as my only heat source, chant in Tibetan with my monk and nun friends, teach yoga to Bhutanese monks, and manage retreats for over 100 people around the world. Although community life was very difficult at times, I will use these leadership and public speaking skills as a teacher of young people. I look forward to learning more about how to include those with different skills and challenges in my diverse classrooms.

// I live my life in widening circles // // that reach out across the world. // // I may not complete this last one //// but I give myself to it. //

// I circle around God, around the primordial tower. //// I've been circling for thousands of years //// and I still don't know: am I a falcon, //// a storm, or a great song? // // ~ Ranier Maria Rilke ~ //

===**To access my Community Based Learning Project, click here: ** ===

=__**Final Wiki Assignment:** __= =__**Reading Comprehension** __=

Introduction .  I chose this topic because I teach Language Arts, and in the English classroom, Reading Comprehension is paramount. I often wonder how much my students are actually retaining from the texts we read. Traditional forms of assessments such as quizzes and discussions feel incomplete to me, since I have a wide variety of students with different learning strengths. At the same time, I understand the importance of assessing my students' comprehension and retention. I believe that certain strategies can help students with disabilities comprehend complex reading material, as well as provide useful assessment tools. This assignment helped me learn a number of new strategies, and I look forward to utilizing them in my classes!

**What I Learned: ****Top Five ** 1. Teaching excellent reading comprehension can include the following elements: drawing on prior knowledge, making connections, questioning, visualizing, inferring, summarizing, evaluating, and synthesizing. I found it interesting that these skills parallel Bloom's Taxonomy. Various lessons can be built around these elements of reading. 2. Reading comprehension is tied directly to vocabulary acquisition. Vocabulary can be taught in two major ways: in context (through inference) or directly (by giving lists to students). Both strategies are effective, and using a combination of these is the best method. Words are easiest to remember when they are made relevant and used frequently by students. 3. Graphic organizers can be useful means for assessing reading comprehension. T-charts, 3-column journals, and rubrics are some examples that asses students' ability to do the following: make effective use of cueing systems, bring in background information, and move from a word by word system to a fluent reading for meaning system.

4. Reading comprehension is based on a child's acquisition of phonics, or learning the sounds of letters. Fluent readers process individual letters and their sounds; the only difference is that they perform this process rapidly and seamlessly, whereas learning readers need to sound out letters in a stepwise process.

5. Children learn best when they read often and in a variety of contexts: out loud, silently, in groups, listen to audio books, etc. Various strategies for teaching reading comprehension can be fun and artistic. Example games and lessons include: **Resources **
 * Make a picture of the 2-3 characters in the story. Cut them out, on the back list the traits, students can them play a character guessing game.
 * Make a time-line of events either in pictorial or in written form.
 * Pretend you're a news reporter and provide an oral broadcast of the story.
 * Make a trivia game about the story.
 * Make a jeopardy game about the story.
 * Use puppets to help you re-tell the story.
 * Make a comic strip of the story.

**Favorite Resource: (5 out of 5) **

1.) Into the Book: Strategies for Learning @http://reading.ecb.org/teacher/strategies.html  This website offers a plethora of information for teachers interested in boosting their students' reading comprehension. By organizing reading traits around Bloom's Taxonomy, the website authors offer various videos, activities, discussion questions, and interactive lessons to encourage students to draw on prior knowledge, make connections, question, visualize, infer, summarize, evaluate, and synthesize information about the texts they are reading. The videos are a bit cheesy at times, but are useful in illustrating how these skills are demonstrated in the classroom.

**Other Resources: **

 2.) Special Education Advisor: Strategies for Reading @http://www.specialeducationadvisor.com/reading-comprehension/  This website deserves a **5 out of 5 rating** for its lessons and strategies for special educators teaching reading comprehension. Teachers list their favorite lesson strategies, and also provide graphic organizers and rubrics for assessing how well students are comprehending reading material.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Webdings,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: left;"> 3.) Reading Comprehension in English, by JamesESL @http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMIQv7yPlkI  I rate this youtube video as a **4 out of 5**, since it's a short clip for readers struggling with vocabulary acquisition. The lesson is aimed toward ESL students, but it would be useful for all kinds of students wanting to understand advanced writing that includes words they do not understand. It outlines a three-step process for inferring vocabulary definitions by reading around difficult words instead of using the dictionary.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Webdings,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: left;"> 4.) Vocabulary Instruction and Reading Comprehension. ERIC Digest. @http://www.ericdigests.org/1998-1/vocabulary.htm  This short Digest deserves a **5 out of 5** in my book, because it focuses on vocabulary, which is a main interest of mine. It reviews various studies done on how students acquire vocabulary in the most efficient ways. The authors encourage teaching vocabulary both incidentally and directly, that is, using contextual pieces to make vocab lists, and also drawing from previously made lists, or better yet, involving students in making their own lists and definitions.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Webdings,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: left;"> 5.) Teaching Reading Comprehension @http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGhWytI_UUA  This 45 minute youtube lesson rates a **4 out of 5**. The information is incredibly helpful, but it is quite long and wordy. The two Indian school teachers illuminate the importance of teaching critical reading, and they demonstrate how to ask critical questions such as, "Do you agree with what is written? Should something be taken away, or added to the text?" I also appreciate their discussion of how we shouldn't aim for complete comprehension, because as long as students get the main gist, they will be able to analyze texts and infer other meanings.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Webdings,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: left;"> 6.) Reading Rockets: ABCs of Teaching Reading @http://www.readingrockets.org/teaching/  This website deserves a **5 out of 5**. Many pages assist new teachers with maximizing student reading comprehension. There is a page which describes how to identify students who may struggle with reading, as well as strategies for how to help them. These strategies include:  phonemic awareness, knowledge of sounds for letters and letter patterns, word decoding, language comprehension, and vocabulary. The site also offers activities and lessons for reading comprehension.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Webdings,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: left;"> 7.) Reading Comprehension Strategies: Tips on Reading Comprehension @http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyb4K6TQE9E&feature=relmfu  John Conlin gives a short talk on reading comprehension tips during this youtube video. I rate it a **3 out of 5**, since he's addressing a mature audience (perhaps high school or college-level students). I do appreciate his suggestions of watching for organization of the text and checking comprehension as one goes along. I try to encourage this kind of active reading in my high school classroom.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Webdings,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: left;"> 8.) Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=P_Hk7-n8i1AC&dq=Beginning+to+Read:+Thinking+and+Learning+about+Print&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=mNsDTPfSC4z84AbQ59zLDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false  This google book rates a **4 out of 5**. The entire text is online, which makes it easily accessible, and it gives a thorough history and explanation of phonetics and how they affect reading comprehension. The authors argue for prioritizing the teaching of phonetics early on, which makes sense to me. In Ashland, the teaching model is based on reading and spelling phonetically (I learned to read this way), and I believe it is an effective and less stressful way to learn to read.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Webdings,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: left;"> 9.) About.com: Support LD Children with Reading @http://specialed.about.com/cs/literacy/a/read.htm  This website deserves a **4 out of 5**, mostly because it doesn't use person-first language ;) The tips for helping children read were very helpful, however, in that they suggest a variety of reading techniques and encourage using them daily. I also appreciated the list of activities for helping children learn characters and plotline (see item #5 in my list of what I learned).

**<span style="color: #670767; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 160%;">And one more random video: ** @http://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius_of_babies.html While not directly linked to the subject of reading comprehension, this Ted Talk by Patricia Kuhl addresses the fascinating topic of language acquisition. She shows studies done on babies learning to speak a variety of languages, and shows how our ability to learn new languages decreases exponentially with age. An engaging and inspiring lecture!

**<span style="color: #670767; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 160%;">And another thing: ** @http://www.resourceroom.net/comprehension/index.asp This is a great website with lots of resources for someone with dysnomia. The author lists word banks, word parts (learning Latin roots), categorizing words by concepts, using visuals, and more.