“Kidwatching”

Chapter 3
OBSERVATIONS:
- Children recognize shapes and forms, but do not exactly know what they mean
- They interpret words that begin with the same letter as words they already know
to be that word again
- The first letter of their name is a popular letter to know, and everything that
begins with that letter is usually their name
- They use lengths of words to interpret what they think it says
- They begin to realize that sounds and letters have a connection, and the confusion
of identifying letters becomes less and less frequent
- Some ideas to help children learn their letters and words:
o Print from home
o Environmental print walks
o Photo shoots
o Print scrapbooks
o Print displays
o World study centers
o Play

CONNECTIONS:
In my experiences with children of younger ages, I have not really seen the kinds
of things mentioned in this chapter taken into use. I think that teachers should use the
above practices more frequently in their classroom, because hands-on learning will
probably have a greater affect on the students, rather than just reading or writing straight
from workbooks.

WONDERINGS:
- Does anyone have experience using the tactics given, such as the scrapbooking or
print displays?
- If so, how do the children react from these tools?

Chapter 4
OBSERVATIONS:
- Children before they even learn how to read can develop knowledge about:
o The functions of books
o The routines used to share them
o The oral discourses used to discuss them
o The concepts and strategies needed to construct a meaningful text
- Over time children are taught to distinguish the difference between fiction and
nonfiction books by determining its content and style that it is written in
- Register: another language concept that helps children construct a meaningful text
o Children who are read to are able to learn that the language in books,
newspapers, and magazines differ from that language that we speak
 - Children develop a variety of written language registers as they hear adults read a
variety kinds of text
- Children tend to memorize words in books to act as though they know how to
read
- Interaction with children help to stimulate the 4 things we try to accomplish
(listed above)
- Anecdotal notes help with the book-handling knowledge in children, by asking
yourself the following questions:
o What kinds of books appeal to the child? What books does the child
choose to read?
o What functions do books serve for the child at home; at school?
o With whom does the children seem comfortable reading? What is the
nature of the child’s transactions with books when reading with this
person?
o What is the nature of the child’s transactions when reading and listening to
books in whole-class settings; small groups; one-to-one?
o What book-sharing routines seem comfortable to the child?
Etc.

CONNECTIONS:
In the classroom I was watching, I noticed the extensive library that was in the
back of the room. Every day, the children had reading time and were instructed to either
bring a book from home or use the books in the library. With the children reading, this
was quietest time of the day, and probably the most enjoyable for some of them. When
the fifteen minutes was up, the kids were so excited to share about what they just read,
which gave them a sense of freedom because they were not particularly assigned to that
book, which allowed the teacher to see the different interests and reading levels of each
student.

WONDERINGS:

Chapter 5

OBSERVATIONS:
- Children use talk to facilitate their own thinking and learning in all subject areas,
and to jointly construct meaning and knowledge with others
- Oral language is a medium through which children expand their concepts of the
world, including their literacy concepts
- We have to provide a rich environment for learning if we want a child’s language
to come to life in the classroom
- Functions- the reasons or purposes for using language
- Give students an assessment that they can give themselves
- The way that the classroom is managed is how the children will develop their
language
o If the teacher does most of the talking, the students do not get the
opportunity to express themselves
 o If the teacher allows them to talk all the time to themselves and their
classmates, it could promote a negative language development

CONNECTIONS:
After hearing that teachers influence the way children talk, it becomes interesting
to me. I now realize that when I was in earlier grades, such as kindergarten, how much
the teacher talked to us meant that we weren’t talking, which was not good for our
language development. When the teacher allowed us to share our feelings, or ask
questions, that is when we could practice using words that we may never used before, or
we could just talk more, and learn through it.

WONDERINGS:
- How often should you use the chart listed on page 55?
- When does it become appropriate to be worried about the oral development of a
child?

Chapter 6
OBSERVATIONS:
- Miscue: reader’s unexpected responses to written text
o Reveals reader’s capacity
- the more that they understanding miscues, the better, and they are able to support
their students’ reading development
- Materials needed for miscue analysis:
o Complete storybook
o Summary of outline of the storybook
o Typescript of the complete reading material that is formatted to look like
the original and is double spaced
o A tape recorded with a blank tape
- Miscues come in the following ways:
o Substitutions
o Omissions
o Insertions

CONNECTIONS:

WONDERINGS:
- How can you tell a miscue when one is brought up?
- When are appropriate times to correct a miscue?
Chapter 7
OBSERVATIONS:
- Functions of written language that are familiar to students:
o Environmental print- provides information about the world around us
o Occupational print- used to do one’s job
o Informational print- for storing, organizing, and retrieving information
 o Recreational print- used for leisure activities
- Format: refers to the “shape” or configuration, that written language takes when it
is used to serve a specific function
- Graphophonics: refers to the systematic relations between patterns of letters and
patterns of sounds
- Children discover the orthographic system as they experiment with reading and
writing, and as they participate socially in literacy events
- Understanding the letter patterns systematically relate to sound patterns is a major
step toward being able to communicate through reading and writing
- Alphabetic principle: when children begin to invent spellings for words
- Drawings help children rehearse and develop ideas for writing, supply
information about characters, settings, and events, disambiguate text, and they
help others understand what has been written
- Cumulative records should be kept of each child, which includes:
o Self-selected pieces of writing
o Self-evaluations
o Goals for future learning

CONNECTIONS:
In this chapter, it talks about when children just begin to gain alphabetic
knowledge through the alphabetic principle, they sometimes make up sounds for different
letters. I have seen that in observations in a kindergarten class when the students are
beginning to learn sounds and being able to recognize letters. When they didn’t know a
sound that a particular letter made, they would do what they thought was right, making
up a sound. In second grade now I still see this every once a while. Even though they are
pretty good at sounding out words and phrases, they sometimes get stuck, and make it the
best that they can.

WONDERINGS:
- At what age is alphabetic knowledge needed to be accomplished by?
- Are cumulative records a good idea?