Reading Lesson Overview

For my two mini-lessons, I decided to use four students who struggle with fluency and reading comprehension.  Throughout the year, my MT has had me conduct assessments with all of the students, which allowed me to get an understanding of where each student’s reading level was.  From each assessment I was able to narrow my decision for which students to teach in my lessons.  I decided to pick four students from the second grade classroom, whose names were Andrew, Jane, Cale, and Joe. 

The Students!

           

            Andrew is a second grade student who loves to share his opinion on everything!  He has innovative ideas, but sometimes strays from reality.  When I have observed his comprehension instruction, I notice that he “tip toes” around questions being asked about the text and compares the questions to his life or the world around him.  When I observe Andrew reading, I notice when he struggles with words, he just skips them and moves on to the next word he knows.  I have noticed this multiple times when Andrew attempts to read something or complete a homework task.  Not only do I see this in reading, but I have also noticed this type of behavior in other subjects.  If Andrew finds something to be difficult or he does not understand something, he moves onto something new.  I think Andrew will benefit greatly from the lessons I have planned.  In a smaller setting, the pace of the lesson can be set at each student’s individual need, which will benefit Andrew’s learning style.

            The second student I used for my lessons was Jane.  Jane is one of the spunkiest second graders I have ever met!  One struggle I have had with Jane the entire year is getting her to work on her assignments.  My MT struggles in the classroom management department, leaving her and Jane to an up and down relationship.  However, throughout the year, Jane has grown accustom to the routines set in the classroom and is starting to respect my MT more and more.  As far as comprehension is concerned, I have noticed that Jane struggles with reading and writing.  She can read some sight words, but reading a sentence takes her awhile depending on what words compose the sentence.  After she makes a few mistakes, she usually gives up and says she “can’t” do it.  I think she needs the motivation and “push” to read and work with her other classmates.  Like Andrew, Jane seems to misunderstand comprehension questions.  Having a smaller lesson based on comprehension can give me time to work with Jane on a one-one-on-one basis.

            Cale is a “newer” student who started attending Elliott Elementary School in January.  He is in the “weaker” group of readers and has been ever since he has been placed in the second grade classroom.  When I observe Cale in the classroom, I notice that he talks out of turn many times throughout the day.  However, I have not had many interactions with this student except one time when I was working on a worksheet about comprehension.  When I talked to him about the worksheet, he seemed to know what he was talking about and seemed to answer all of the questions correctly.  To better understand Cale’s ability, I wanted to include him in my lesson and see if his ability is truly represented by his place in the classroom.

            The last student included in my lesson is Joe, who is the popular student in the classroom.  Joe is usually involved in classroom disputes and always tells my MT, “I didn’t do nothing.”  I have observed my MT constantly telling Joe to stop behaving in a particular way and to get back to work.  Joe’s participation in discussions about texts can be closely related to Andrew’s participation.  He usually avoids comprehensions questions about text by coming up with answers related to his life.  I think Joe will benefit a great amount from the comprehension and fluency lessons.  He has struggle reading and takes many attempts to read certain words correctly.  He will benefit from the lessons a great amount.

            In this classroom, one of the assessments I was able to proctor was the running record with high frequency words for second graders.  As I was assessing these students, I noticed that they had trouble moving on from the first three words.  After I had assessed them, I was able to conclude that these particular students were below grade level regarding fluency.  As the year progressed, I was able to pay close attention to the student’s comprehension skills and really hone in on what the students needed work on.   Throughout my MT’s comprehension lessons, I noticed that Andrew, Jane, Cale, and Joe were not participating in the discussions as much as other students.  When these students did participate, their answers seemed unrelated to the question being asked.    After observing these students in the classroom environment, I decided to see how they were involved with my discussion lesson.  I noticed that of these students, Andrew participated the most, but gave answers that were unrelated to the questions being asked.  He seems to answer questions about the text with questions about real life or his life.  After analyzing the video a little bit more, I decided to create a lesson around comprehension and I thought these students would be great for the lessons.

Blog #6- Writing a Letter to Parents

Note:  All of the below mentioned activities have been derived from chapter eleven of Literacy for the 21^st Century, by Gail Tompkins.  There were some really great activities I could not help but use in my letter!  I hope this letter is detailed enough for the parents of a second grade reader who struggles with comprehending strategies. Billy has made great strides in the academic year, yet still struggles with comprehending stories.  This letter is designed to let Billy’s parents know of a few group and individual activities provided for Billy to be as successful in the classroom as possible.

Dear Parents,

            As we wind down the school year, I want to make you are aware of a few activities our classroom will be engaging in for the remainder of the year.  Billy’s reading and writing skills have come a far way since the beginning of the year, and I am very proud of all the improvement he has made!  There are a few more skills he will master in the classroom before the end of the year, and I plan on outlining these skills in this letter.  I want to make sure Billy is ready for third grade, and by completing these tasks; I believe he will be more than ready.  The following skills will be accomplished in the following way:

            The first skill I want Billy to try and master is his comprehension strategies.  I have noticed that Billy struggles with answering questions following a reading of a story.  I plan on trying to enhance Billy’s understanding of the stories given to him.  For the remainder of the year, I plan on using guided reading strategies throughout some of classroom time.  Guided reading allows small groups of students to work together and read at various levels.  Students, who are at about the same reading level, will read with other students at similar levels.  This allows students to read at their desired pace and learn from their other peers.  I think Billy will really benefit from learning from his peers, because he will be able to share ideas and experiences with them.  I think this would be a great way for Billy to not only work on comprehending the story, but also with his word fluency!  He will be reading out loud with his group, and answering discussion questions along the way.

            After reading a story, which incorporates guided reading, I plan on having Billy and his group work on writing skills using interactive writing activities.  The writing activity will be completed within each reading group and will be related to the story that was read during the guided reading activity.  Students will take turns answering questions and filling out a chart related to the story.  The questions will involve comprehensive questions where the students will have to go back and search for the answers in the book.  Each student will have to fill out their own chart and recall knowledge from the story they just read.  Students will be allowed to work together and create answers from each other’s thoughts.  Billy will really benefit from this activity, because he will not only work on his comprehending skills, but also his writing.  I think Billy will have a great time learning from his peers and sharing knowledge as well. 

            As the intern of the classroom, I plan on working with Billy’s group and will help lead the group’s activities.  I want to make sure students understand what they need to complete in order to participate to their best of abilities.  I am excited to see what Billy and his group can accomplish as a team, and I hope his skills improve as he furthers in the year.  Again, I want to stress that Billy is doing great in the classroom and I am so proud of the work he has shown throughout the year.  

Thanks for your time,

            Lindsay 

Blog #5- Reading Fluency

           There are many approaches that are effective in assessing the three components of fluency, which are accuracy, reading speed, and prosody.  In assessing fluency, I think testing high frequency words is very important.  There are many ways to assess students’ awareness of high frequency words. Giving students a list of words to read off as efficiently as possible is an important assessment to use within in the classroom, because often, high-frequency words are known as sight words.  This means that students will see these words often in different activities they do throughout their lives.  “Through repeated reading and writing experiences, students develop automaticity, the ability to quickly to quickly recognize words they read…” (Tompkins, pg. 189)  This is a great description explained by Tompkins in the text when talking about high frequency words.

            Another effective approach for assessing fluency would be improving reader’s reading speed.  If students are able to read the same excerpt or reading selection multiple times through at a fast pace, then they may be able to recognize words used in other texts.  Tompkins also mentions the ability to chunk sentences into meaningful units, guided reading, and choral reading as a few ways to help students with reading fluency.  There are many ways to enhance students’ reading fluency.  As teachers, we need to be aware of these many methods, so we can try and improve each and every student’s fluency.

            In my field placement, I have noticed my teacher uses a high frequency word assessment.  She has the students read to her a list of high frequency words, and either checks if the students know the word in a quick fashion or a slash if the students had to sound out the word/did not read the word right away/skips the word.  My teacher said this assessment gives her an idea of who happens to be on track with the curriculum and who may need more reading instruction.  From the beginning of the year until now, I have seen a big change in my student’s ability to recognize high frequency words.  In order to scaffold students to get to this certain point, my teacher has used different techniques in the classroom.  Many of the techniques come from scripted units called Reading Street.  My teacher reads from a script and creates lessons based on what the book calls for.  Some of the activities included in the book are guided reading, read out loud, spelling tests, etc.  Some of these activities seem to be working to get students to recognize a variety of words in text.

            A mini-lesson that could be used to teach fluency regarding The Bread Winner would be having the students create their own glossary of words that are not normally read in everyday reading.  Students will have sustained silent reading for approximately 20-30 minutes, and will compile a list of words they do not understand.  Students will include the page number from the word they did not understand and the passage the word was found from.  The teacher will bring the students back together and talk about what words they had trouble decoding and reading in context.  Words, such as: militia, burqas, chador, and looters, could be words students found in the first two chapters to discuss further.  Students would write the word down and what they think the word might mean.  They will use contextual clues in order to try and find out a definition.  As students read off the words they had trouble reading and understanding, the teacher will have them read the passage included with the word.  Students will have a discussion related to what the word might mean, then will research the words and find out the actual definitions.  The teacher will post the definitions in the classroom somewhere, so while students are reading the rest of the book, they will be able to continually be as fluent as possible.  This type of mini-lesson can happen throughout the entire book to make sure students understand what they are reading!

^^ This would be a good place for children to do their reading, so they can be as comfy as possible :)  

Blog #4- New Literacies Noteblog

Part One: CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING

            Creating this new literacy project revolving around emotional literacy has showed me that there are different ways people can be literate in our society.  Prior to conducting this project, I had no idea there were different literacies involving a variety of topics.  I thought the only to way to become literate was to read and write.  After looking at everyone’s literacy projects, I was able to get an understanding of what each literacy was about.  Everyone had very creative methods for presenting their information and material, which allowed me to gather information about a variety of digital literacies as well.  I learned a great deal from this project, and I think exploring ALL of the literacies would give me interesting topics to cover when I become a teacher.  After creating my web site using Weebly, I feel I was able to divide my work up into sections and topics that would divide my research in a great way.  Creating subtopics/web pages allows the reader to know exactly what they are going to read about.  Users can pick an outlet and know exactly what they are going to read.  This made researching a lot easier to do and complete.

            From the very beginning of the semester, I did not include digital literacy into my literacy map.  Nor did I include emotional, social, cultural, social, etc.  These are VERY important literacies that I think I overlooked as a student/future teacher.  I feel that I will use technology the best way I can possible in order to convey meaningful lessons to my students.  Technology can give students new ways to display ideas or materials they have learned, which is so fantastic.  Letting children be creative is so important and can create such an interesting classroom.

 Part Two: EFFECTIVE LITERACY INSTRUCTION

            To provide “effective literacy instruction” to diverse students is allowing students to explore the world of literature in a variety of ways.  There are so many different ideas and thoughts that make up each individual student, and as a future teacher; I need to be aware of these differences.  Giving students more options to learn and grow as literacy learners is something teachers cannot take for granted.  Creating a website about emotional literacy let me research the topic through many different websites.  I was able to narrow my search focus and really find out many details about emotional literacy.  As I stated earlier, I was able to come up with certain subtopics I wanted to discuss in relation to emotional literacy.

            I think elementary school students would have had a great time using a web site tool as their digital literacy to explore other types of literacies, such as emotional literacy.  Students would be able to research on emotional literacy and create a website using the information they found.  Students could also learn a great deal from each other while learning through tools regarding technology.  I know that I learned a great amount from my classmates, and I feel that my students would be able to come to the same conclusion as me.  However, I believe students would need to learn how to manipulate the website tool they would like to use.  The teacher would have to model for the students multiple times in order for students to fully understand the tools.  Students would need to understand certain design and editing tools that create a web site and also how to conduct research on the Internet.  Being able to effectively browse the Internet is a task many students would need modeling before completing on their own.  Students need to know what a good research source looks like, and I think the teacher could do a lot of modeling to show students what is and is not appropriate.

           
Part Three: LESSON PLAN

            In creating a lesson plan using a website to demonstrate knowledge learned from emotional literacy, I think if the whole class participated as an entire class, then there could be a lot of learning from each other happening.  This lesson would take place after many lessons involving emotional literacy.  We would have covered what emotional literacy was and different knowledge learned from the students.

    Target Area/Rationale:  Students need to be aware of the usage of technology in literature in order to discover new information regarding new literacies.  There is a great amount of information on the Internet that can be useful to students as they learn about emotional literacy.  Specifically speaking, researching about emotional literacy and creating a website about findings is a great opportunity for students to understand a new literacy they may no understand.

    Objectives:  My objectives would be to have my students create a website about emotional literacy after many classes of scaffolding the students on how to edit a web page.  Students will work together in groups to create certain pages of the website.  This way, students are able to work together and engage in the activity together.  Another very important objective that is going to be included on this website is allowing students to post what they learn about emotional literacy whenever possible.  This allows students to not only learn about emotional literacy, but will scaffold their learning of the digital literacy as well.

    Materials/Supplies:  Computers, examples of what emotional literacy might look like in the classroom (picture books)

    Key Events:

o   To start off the lesson, teacher will pass out examples of emotional literature.   These examples will be picture books about some type of emotional situation.

o   The teacher will ask students to summarize the book and write a little summary about the key events.

o   After, students will get in groups and talk about what happened in their book and what their books are about.

o   After about 10 minutes, the teacher will step in and ask students to share what they learned from their books.

o   After sharing time, the teacher will introduce to the class that they will be making a web site to show all of the information learned from their picture books.

o   Students will have turns brainstorming what goes on the site and how it should look.

o   This may take a few lessons, but I think this will effectively show students how to make a website about a new literacy while working as a classroom community.

o   There will be a webpage for “student findings”, which will allow students to add new knowledge about emotional literacy whenever they think of it or get a chance to type it up.

    Closing Summary:  Emotional literacy is an important literacy that can affect show students behave in the classroom.  I feel emotional literacy is looked over a great amount, and doing a lesson like the one stated above can give students an opportunity to learn about two literacies at one.  Students need to have technology as a part of their learning world; it’s very important and can help students learn new ideas in a different format.

    Ongoing Assessment:  The website will allow me to keep checking in on what students are adding about emotional literacy.  Whenever a student learns something new about emotional literacy, they are to put that information on the website.  This allows me to see my students growth from the beginning of the project until the end of the year.

Blog #3- New Literacies Project

            My new literacy project is creating a website using Weebly about emotional literacy with Cristyn.  As I began working with my partner on our Weebly website, I discover that we needed to go through many different layouts and designs before we could move on to the actual content.  Finding a layout to fit the topics we wanted to cover took some time, but we were able to find a format where the information was easily accessible.  As soon as we found a fitting lay out, we needed to do research and find out exactly what we wanted to talk about in our website.  We went and read in-depth the various readings given to us on the wiki about emotional literacy.  We found a great amount of information that would aid us in to finding the definitions of literacy and emotional literacy.  When dealing with emotional literacy, I found many definitions that had many components. 

            From what I read on many websites, I found that in the simplest terms possible, emotional literacy is being able to recognize, monitor, and express one’s emotions while being able to empathize with other’s emotions.  As I began reading deeper, I kept thinking of different issues I could talk about in the website.  Questions kept popping in my head through the various readings, such as:

            

            How do children deal with literature that is emotional?

            When do children get exposed to emotional literacy?

            As teachers, what should we include in the classroom to get students to understand the concept of emotional literacy?

           

            We decided to split these types of questions into more general subjects, so we could include as much information about each topic as possible.  Our subjects (tabs) that we have included on our website are the definitions and different aspects of emotional literacy and literacy, how emotional literacy can be used in the classroom, the importance of emotional literacy, emotional intelligence, resources, and a pop quiz for people who have read our web site and want to test what they know about emotional literacy.  We briefly began looking for material for each topic and discovered that we were going to need to be really detailed in each section on our website.  In order to do so, we have planned to use scholarly articles, YouTube videos, websites, and other sources in order to be as successful as we possibly can be on this website.

            Thus far, reading and writing have been our main sources of ways we have explored this kind of new technology.  Figuring out what types of information and topics to include on our web site is going to be a challenge, because we do not want people to get lost in the information nor do we want people not to have enough to read about.  Watching movies for information has been a new skill that I have not really used and appreciated in the past.  While watching videos online, I noticed that I have been paying more attention to exactly what the speaker may be saying in order to be as accurate as possible with this project as possible.  I really enjoy discovering a new technology and being able to research a new topic.  While learning about both of these different topics, I thought including this kind of activity in the classroom would be very beneficial to students.   If we worked on a web site as a class, I think students would be able to learn how to use an online tool, while also discover methods for researching a certain topic.  Both of these topics are very important to the growth of students and each student could benefit to a great extent through this type of activity.   

Blog #2- Technology, Emergent Literacy Learners & ELLs

According to the “Digital Denizen” (http://www.stockton.edu/~intech/spotlight-digital-denizens.htm), I would classify myself as a digital native.  I have grown up using technology, and am able to manipulate certain technology in order to complete certain tasks.  Growing up, I helped my parents figure out and understand how to use some technologies, for example: the computer, cell phones, games, etc.  However, in today’s world, I would consider myself to be a digital immigrant.  There are so many new devices coming out that I have yet had a chance to interact with.  These devices include: iPad, iPhone, iTouch, etc.  I am not able to use these devices to my fullest ability as I was able to with other technologies in the past. Technology is always growing and expanding, and as teachers, I believe we need to be up-to-date with each change, being significant or insignificant. 

            

If a teacher is willing to use technology in the classroom, then I believe students will have a greater opportunity of using technology in their daily lives outside of school.  Technology can give students a variety of experiences that would be far different from experiences without technology. At a young age, I learned basic skills on the computer, such as writing word documents.  I was not able to move onto more complicated tasks, such as power point and excel until I was fairly competent in working with word documents.  After reflecting on my own technology usage throughout my life, I decided to analyze the types of technology used within my field placement.  As I observed the classroom technology more in-depth, I discovered that the only technology used on a day-to-day basis was the Elmo and computer found in the front of the room.  The teacher uses the Elmo to go over worksheets completed by students during classroom time.  In addition to the Elmo, the computer is used to watch movies by connecting the computer to the projector in the front of the room.  Students are able to see what’s on the computer in a bigger format.  However, I believe there could be more technology used throughout the classroom to enhance the students’ learning.  Certain reading and writing activities could be helpful to students who need more help, such as audio books, Wikki Stix, speaking devices, etc.

           ^^The Elmo used in my classroom 

http://www.wikkistix.com/educational_language_arts.php

^^^This is Wiki Stix- Awesome resource for readers

http://readingat.weebly.com/index.html

^^^Also, this is a website my peer and I created that includes reading and writing programs for students to access if they need resources in language arts.

As I was reading Tompkins’s chapter about emergent literacy learners, I noticed these learners focus on book-handling skills, basic writing exercises (letters, spaces between words, few sentences, etc.), and basic reading activities (identifying most letters, letter sounds, etc.).  These are only a few of activities students participate in as emergent literacy learners.  Before emergent learners move onto more advanced tasks of language arts, they need to understand and master the basics.  This can related back to technology, because people must know the basics of technology in order to understand more complicated and difficult technologies.  Finding a sturdy foundation for students to stem from is very important to their learning.

             

When looking at my digital learning path, I think I can compare closely to ELLs.  As technology becomes more and more advanced, I feel as if I am not able to keep up with the changes, which makes me feel less competent in technology.  As I observed a high school ELL classroom, I could see some students were having difficulties in English.  They were trying to complete many advanced tasks without knowing the basics of the language.  There was a great amount of struggle, and the teacher had to go back and teach students the grammar basics of English.  As I said earlier, I think it is very important to make sure students have a strong foundation of language in order to learn higher skills. 

Blog #1

After reading the assigned readings for week one and reflecting on last week’s class, I have created goals I hope to achieve as I participate and learn throughout the literacy section of TE 402.  One primary goal I have throughout this course is to incorporate each of the learning principles presented in the textbook, Literacy for the 21^st Century, into my teaching.  Each student learns differently, and finding out the unique ways in which students learn to their optimum potential is very important to a teacher.  In addition, using different types of teaching styles can keep students inspired and motivated throughout the year.  Understanding my students’ styles of learning will be a very important aspect to my teaching, and I hope this course can give me pointers to help guide me to each student’s success. 

Another goal that I want to accomplish throughout this course is to learn several literacy-teaching methods to effectively teach and help ELLs (English language learners).  I am getting a minor in TESOL, so I have studied a few methods on teaching ELLs and have been a part of an ESL classroom, but I want to learn more in-depth methods that can help me reach every learner.  Not only do I want to effectively teach these learners, but I also want to make sure that I am keeping focus on students who are not considered ELLs.  Finding these types of strategies in the classroom will be difficult, but I am ready to explore these types of methods. 

The last goal I have for this course is to study practical uses of technology in the classroom.  I am still thinking about this concept from our first class session, and I want to familiarize myself with this aspect of learning.  I had a course last semester, which focused on technology used within the special education classroom, and I was very interested and ready to implement these strategies into my teaching.  However, when creating my concept map about ELA, I failed to incorporate this important detail into my literacy instruction.  I want to be able to see myself using technology in the future through this course.  This is very important to me and I hope I can accomplish this task.

            In regards to the type of community I want to teach in, I would love to see myself teaching in any type of special education classroom.  My ideal setting would be an elementary school special education classroom, because I feel I would love to teach children and begin their learning experiences.  However, whichever type of classroom I teach, I’m sure I will enjoy!  I just want the opportunity to instill knowledge I have learned on my students.  The literacy methods I learn in TE 402 will help me create authentic lessons for students to engage in.

I think this course can help supply me with authentic teaching methods and practices that can influence students to want to learn and become motivated.  If I take anything away from this course, I want to be able to apply what I learn in this class to my own classroom.  I want to be a unique teacher and make students WANT to learn and strive to be the best they can.  This semester is going to be great, and I cannot wait to see what is in store for this course!