Week 5 Post

The Tompkins reading, like Michelle mentioned below, was very similar to TE 301 and what I have been witnessing in the classroom. The main issue I have had is that I see all of these levels of literacy comprehension present in the classroom, but I have not seen how my CT has built up to it. I think the only answer here is that he uses a series of literacy activities in order to familiarize his students more and more until they have mastered certain aspect of literacy comprehension. The students master fluency by reading aloud and independently within the classroom, they read with a purpose when they are prompted with specific questions to take into account while reading, they are motivated to read by being able to explore literacy by exploring their imaginations in creating their own stories to share with the class, and they make inferences by being prompted with questions to encourage them to take their thought process one step further. The only thing I wasn't familiar with or even impressed by was they little mention of English Learners in this chapter. I felt as though EL students were only mentioned a few times and that the chapter did not mention much advice on how to differentiate learning for these students. I feel as though my CT does a great job of encouraging his EL to succeed by giving them a lot of one on one instruction. Even if they don't know the background of a topic he will strengthen other core areas related to comprehension like fluency and motivation.