EDRD 6641  Foundations of Reading Instruction

Wednesdays 4:30 – 7:095 p.m., Bertona 4

Autumn Quarter 2005

 

 

Text Box: Academic Vision of SPU Seattle Pacific University seeks to educate students to make a difference in the world. Goals include graduating People of Competence People of Character People of Wisdom People of Grace School of Education Mission Statement To prepare educators for service and leadership in schools and communities by developing their professional competence and character within a framework of Christian faith and values. Graduate Student Goals The School of Education seeks to graduate educators who demonstrate Effective Leadership Clear Communication Analytical and Problem Solving Skills Foundational Knowledge and Skills A Positive Impact on Student Learning Professionalism

 

PROFESSOR:

 

William E. Nagy

Office:  Peterson 409

Hours:  By appointment

Phone: 206 281-2253

Fax: 206 281-2756

Email:  wnagy@spu.edu

 

 

SNOW HOTLINE: 206 281-2800:

 

An attempt is made to provide word on the snow hotline of a campus closure for evening classes by 2:00 pm.  Your safety is of primary importance.  If you believe it is unsafe to you to travel to SPU, don’t come.  If possible, also notify me at wnagy@spu.edu or 206 281-2253.

 

 

EMERGENCY PROCEDURES:

 

If it is necessary to evacuate the classroom, we are to re-assemble in the Ross Parking Lot, that is, the parking lot immediately west of our classroom,  bounded by Cremona and Bertona streets.  If this area is inaccessible, the secondary assembly point is Wallace Athletic Field, across W. Nickerson Street and next to Royal Brougham Pavilion.

 

 

DISABILITY SUPPORT SERVICES:

 

Students with disabilities need to contact Disability Support Services in the Center for learning to request academic accommodations.  Disability Support Services sends Disability Verification Letters out to all your professors indicating the appropriate accommodations for the classroom based on your disability.

 

 

 

 

 

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

 

This course examines the theoretical and empirical bases of effective reading instruction, surveying research on key aspects of literacy including phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension.  Students will gain an understanding of the process of reading development, the nature and causes of reading difficulties, and principles and strategies for effective literacy instruction.  This course is required of all students in the Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction program, and provides a foundation for students in the Reading specialization of this program.  It is also available as an elective for students in other programs.

 

Course objectives:

 

All course objectives are for the purpose of helping students address the four commitments of the School of Education’s Conceptual Framework - competence, character, service, and leadership – and the skills and attributes outlined in the Graduate Student Goals.  In the following description of specific course objectives, Graduate Student Goals are italicized.

 

 The primary focus of this course is to build competence through developing students’ foundational knowledge and skills in the area of literacy. 

 

Literacy is essential to education at every level.  Understanding the processes that support proficient reading and how they develop is therefore an important key to having a positive impact on student learning.   The electronic and face-to-face discussion of the readings and the written assignments are intended to foster analysis and problem solving and clear communication about literacy development and instruction that will enable students to exercise effective leadership among their colleagues in this area.  Finally, an important aspect of professionalism is recognition that all teachers are responsible for developing their students’ reading ability; this course provides teachers a foundation for the knowledge base that will enable them to undertake this responsibility.

 

Course requirements:

 

Required texts

 

Farstrup, A. E. & Samuels, S. J. (Eds.) What research has to say about reading instruction (third edition).  Newark, DE:  International Reading Association.

 

A course packet of additional assigned readings selected from recent journals is also available in the bookstore. 

 

Attendance and participation.  The success of this class, both for you and for your fellow students, depends on your active participation in class discussion, informed by having studied the assigned readings for each class meeting.

 

Written responses to readings.  Each week you are to post a written response to the assigned readings for that week in the Blackboard discussion board for this class.  To receive full credit for a week’s response, it must be submitted no later than 24 hours before the start of class, that is, by 4:30 pm on Tuesday.  The responses may be brief (i.e., 1-2 paragraphs), and can take a variety of forms, for example, a question, an insight, a disagreement with a point made in the assigned readings, a possible application in your classroom, or a way you have already applied something in the readings and found it successful (or unsuccessful).  In any case the response should reflect your attempt to process the reading, and should identify as precisely as possible what it was in the reading (and where it was) that prompted this response.  Several readings may be assigned for a given class session, but you are only required to address one of them in a response.  You are also encouraged to respond to the postings of other students.

 

Short papers.  Three short (4-6 page) papers will be due at intervals during the quarter. The papers will be written in response to specific prompts or questions to be developed during the course.  The general purpose of the papers is to synthesize and apply the content of the assigned readings.

 

 

Evaluation:

 

Grades are determined by the following criteria:

 

            Participation in class discussions                        14%

            Written responses to readings                           20%

            Short Papers                                                    66%

 

 

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY:

 

Students at Seattle Pacific University are expected to demonstrate academic integrity in their work.  Both the students and the instructor have obligations to report and to prevent cheating, plagiarism or other academic misconduct.  Guidelines for how academic dishonesty will be handled are printed in the Graduate Catalog (pp. 25-26).  In this class, no credit will be given for an assignment or exam in which it is determined that the student has copied other students’ work, represented someone else’s work as one’s own without properly citing the author,  or any similar infraction.  If such an occurrence is repeated, no credit will be given for the course. 

 

 

RESPECT FOR DIVERSITY:

 

Intellectual integrity requires that even though it may at times be necessary to be ruthless with ideas, we must always be not just civil in our discourse, but respectful and gentle with all persons.  This respect is especially important when we communicate about, or across, differences of race, ethnicity, gender, and class.

 

 

 

PROPOSED COURSE SCHEDULE:

 

Session

/Date

Topic

Chapters/articles to be read before this class session

1

Sept 28

Foundations for Effective Reading Instruction

National Reading Panel (2000).  Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction.   National Institutes of Health Publication No. 00-4754.

2

Oct 5

Emergent literacy at home and school

 

Paratore, J. (2002).  Home and school together:  helping beginning readers succeed.  In A. E.  Farstrup & S. J. Samuels (Eds.) What research has to say about reading instruction (third edition) (pp. 48-68).  Newark, DE:  International Reading Association (Chapter 3).

Beck, I., & McKeown, M. (2001).  Text Talk:  Capturing the benefits of read-aloud experiences for young children.  The Reading Teacher, 55(1), 10-20.

3

Oct 12

Phonemic awareness

Ehri, L. & Nunes, S. (2002).  The role of phonemic awareness in learning to read.  In A. E.  Farstrup & S. J. Samuels (Eds.) What research has to say about reading instruction (third edition) (pp. 110-139).  Newark, DE:  International Reading Association (Chapter 6).

Dickinson, D., McCabe, A., Anastasopoulos, L., Peisner-Feinberg, E., & Poe, M. (2003).  The comprehensive language approach to early literacy:  The interrelationships among vocabulary, phonological sensitivity, and print knowledge among preschool-aged children.  Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(3), 465-481.

4

Oct 19

Phonics instruction

Cunningham, P., & Cunningham, J. (2002).  What we know about how to teach phonics.  In A. E.  Farstrup & S. J. Samuels (Eds.) What research has to say about reading instruction (third edition) (pp. 87-109).  Newark, DE:  International Reading Association (Chapter 5).

Matthes P., Denton, C., Fletcher, J., Anthony, J., Francis, D., & Schatschneider, C. (2005).  The effects of theoretically different instruction and student characteristics on the skills of struggling readers.  Reading Research Quarterly, 40(2), 148-182.

5

Oct 26

Phonics instruction – decoding by analogy

Gaskins, I., Ehri, L., Cress, C.,  O’Hara, C., & Donnelly, K. (1996/1997).  Procedures for word learning:  Making discoveries about words.  The Reading Teacher, 50(4), 312-327.

Lovett, M., Lacerenza, L., Borden, S., Frijters, J., Steinbach, K., & de Palma, M. (2000).  Components of effective remediation for developmental reading disabilities:  Combining phonological and strategy-based instruction to improve outcomes.  Journal of Educational Psychology, 92(2), 263-283.

6

Nov 2

Fluency

Samuels, S. J. (2002).  Reading fluency: Its development and assessment.  In A. E.  Farstrup & S. J. Samuels (Eds.) What research has to say about reading instruction (third edition) (pp. 166-183).  Newark, DE:  International Reading Association (Chapter 8)

Kuhn, M., & Stahl, S. (2003).  Fluency:  a review of developmental and remedial practices.  Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(1), 3-21.

7

Nov 9

Vocabulary instruction and reading comprehension

Graves, M., & Watts-Taffe, S. (2002). The place of word consciousness in a research-based vocabulary program.  In A. E.  Farstrup & S. J. Samuels (Eds.) What research has to say about reading instruction (third edition) (pp. 140-165).  Newark, DE:  International Reading Association (Chapter 7).

Carlo, M., August, D., McLaughlin, B., Snow, C., Dressler, C., Lippman, D., Lively, T.,  White, C. (2004).  Closing the gap:  Addressing the vocabulary needs of English-language learners in bilingual and mainstream classrooms.  Reading Research Quarterly, 39(2), 188-215.

8

Nov 16

Comprehension processes & instruction

Duke, N. & Pearson, P. D. (2002).  Effective practices for developing reading comprehension.  In A. E.  Farstrup & S. J. Samuels (Eds.) What research has to say about reading instruction (third edition) (pp. 205-242).  Newark, DE:  International Reading Association (Chapter 10).

Pressley, M. (2002).  Metacognition and self-regulated comprehension.  In A. E.  Farstrup & S. J. Samuels (Eds.) What research has to say about reading instruction (third edition) (pp. 291-309).  Newark, DE:  International Reading Association (Chapter 13).

9

Nov 23

Motivation

Gaskins, I. (1998).  There’s more to teaching at-risk and delayed readers than good reading instruction.  The Reading Teacher, 57(1), 534-547.

Guthrie, J., Wigfield, A., Barbosa, P., Perencevich, K, Taboada, A., Davis, M., Scafiddi, N., & Tonks, S. (2004).  Increasing reading comprehension and engagement through concept-oriented reading instruction.  Journal of Educational Psychology, 36(3), 405-423.

10

Dec 7

Literacy instruction for linguistically and culturally diverse learners

Au, K. (2002).  Multicultural factors and the effective instruction of students of diverse backgrounds.  In A. E.  Farstrup & S. J. Samuels (Eds.) What research has to say about reading instruction (third edition) (pp. 392-413).  Newark, DE:  International Reading Association (Chapter 17).

Valencia, S.,, & Buly, M. (2004).  Behind test scores:  What struggling readers really need.  The Reading Teacher, 57(6), 520-531.

Harper, C., & de Jong, E. (2004).  Misconceptions about teaching English-language learners.  Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 48(2), 152-162.