How My Masters Courses Impacted My Teaching

           One of the motivating factors when beginning my master program was the newly passed Michigan law requiring kindergarten through third grade students whom are not proficient in reading to have a formal plan in place to help them become proficient (Michigan Department of Education). It became more important to me to further develop my reading and language arts instruction methods to help support my students. Thus, I chose literacy as the focus of my masters. I selected to take the course TE 846 Accommodating Differences in Literacy Learners. I hoped the course would help me to further understand literacy development and how to support my students.

            One of the concepts I learned that stood out the most was how “Vocabulary knowledge is strongly correlated to reading comprehension,” (Stahl, 2003). During the third grade reading intervention time at my current school, I teach a small group of students who have an intervention plan required by the state. Using the new information I learned about the power of vocabulary and comprehension I began to integrate vocabulary instruction into my lessons. I get the eight words from our basal series as each story has focus vocabulary words, which appear in the story. Each classroom introduces the words but I take it a step further and use a template for teaching the words. Together with the students we look at how the words are defined and described in the basal. Then we record a definition for each word and students write a sentence and draw a picture to demonstrate the word. My goal is to increase the students’ vocabulary to improve their comprehension by building upon the words from our weekly story. I learned its important to not forget the influence vocabulary has on comprehension.

            My fellow grade level readers are not the only ones who benefit from vocabulary instruction. During the same reading intervention time, some of my students go to another classroom to word specifically on vocabulary. These students have demonstrated on assessments they are reading above grade level and that an area they need to improve is vocabulary. Thus this group learns about root words, prefixes, suffixes, how to use a dictionary and more. Research as found that “morphology was related to reading comprehension […], and became more important as students grew older. Students with greater understanding of morphology also have higher reading comprehension scores,” (Kieffer, 2007). Although I do not teach this group, the research I learned in TE 846 makes me feel confident these students are further developing their comprehension by learning about words parts.

          Another aspect of vocabulary instruction I had not considered would assist in reading comprehension is the vocabulary lessons from the reading series I teach from. These lesson include skills such as prefixes, how to use a dictionary and synonyms. While I knew these were important skills for students to know it was after this course I concluded these skills help students to read and understand the text. To be able to gain meaning from the text they need skills and strategies to determine the meaning of unknown words. By learning what prefixes such as im- mean, students can form meaning of words. It amazes me how one quote from an article could change my perception on vocabulary and its importance. In conclusion, TE 846 taught me much about vocabulary and how it impacts comprehension and as a result I have implemented and support vocabulary instruction.