Over all GLT reflection

     Over all my GTL experience was okay. It had its highs and lows. There were days where I thought my lessons went really well and others where I thought my kids were not listening to a word I was saying. One of my biggest struggles through these couple weeks was getting my student to see me as a teacher and not a high school student. My students do not act out when my mentor is in the room but as soon as she walks out for a second the students think it is a free for all. I had to have a couple talks with the class and remind them that I am also a teacher and they need to respect me like they do Theresa. Eventually I started being sterner with them, making them flip cards or miss recess when they disrespected me.

     Another low point was any time I asked the students to write. I would model how they should write and explain my thinking. I would go through the whole lesson and many students would have no clue what to write even though my example was still on the board. It got to the point where any time I asked them to take out their writing journal I got a bunch of moans and groans. They lost motivation to write because these stories were too difficult for them. My class has very low reading levels and they are attempting to read something that is far above it. It was a struggle but adding a few days to my GLT time really helped.  They did so much better when they had more time to work with the story. We were able to read it more and go over more of the vocabulary they didn’t understand.

     One of the highs was during my formal observation. My kids were on their best behavior and they loved the activity I had planned. It was a review for their test and I thought for sure I was going to get a bunch of moans and groans but they loved it. It was rough at first trying to get kids to participate but after the first few students went and they started to get a hang of it they really enjoyed it. This is definitely something I will use in the future as a review. 

Reflection 11/4-11/8

This past week my class was working on writing how to stories.  All of the students could tell me what they know how to do, but then when it came to writing it down, they seemed to struggle a bit to communicate the same focus and direction in their writing.  Some of my students were able to write great stories.  My main focus this week was the ordering of information.  However next week adding details will be the main focus.  My students always try to tell me that they are done, so adding more detail will allow them to see that they are not done so quickly.  Additionally, I still need to reiterate the "rules for writing time" with the students in a different way because my students still do not do so and challenge me.

Additionally, the main thing on my mind after this week is conferences.  It was interesting to just sit and listen to the conferences.  It was great to see my MT discuss the report card, and respond to questions.  I did not say to much during the conferences, I mainly just smiled and nodded.  If however a parent was concerned with their students writing or mathematics abilities I chimed in just mentioned what we have been doing and what we are panning to do.  It was interesting to sees one of my students come in alone or with their siblings and interact; some of the quite, well behaved students were bouncing off of the wall and some of the louder rambunctious students were calm and settled.

This week was a huge learning experience and eye opener to my future career.  After this week I am really looking forward to making more connections with my students and for my future career.

Week 3 Reflection

               This is my final week of guided lead teaching, though I will be keeping writing instruction and adding reading instruction to my workload after this week. A lot of the same things are happening this week as last week. I’m continually frustrated with the multiple schedule changes (half days, holidays, etc) and am trying to learn ways to plan and implement around those unavoidable changes so as to disrupt the learning process as little as possible.

           This week all my students were making how-to stories. Due to the nature of this assignment, I didn’t have as much trouble with the students being at different spots, or all wanting my attention. This was a project my students were able to complete with more independence, and I also always had prompts available for those who finished early which decreased the clamor for my attention.

            Something I am frustrated with this week, is the lack of direction with the writing curriculum at my school—mainly is that there really isn’t one. I’m supposed to be taking over the writing for the remainder of the school year, and besides a few CCSS I have no real idea what the students should be learning, how they should be learning it, and how to teach it. I’ve gone to my mentor for help but honestly, they are as lost as we are with the whole curriculum thing.  This week I ‘m hoping to really scour the internet and teacher stores for some good, interactive writing projects that my kids can complete.

         As far as my unit as a whole went—I’m still doing it!! Due to the half day schedules and election day, I lost three days of writing last week so our project is still on-going. My hope is that my students will finish on Monday and share on Tuesday.

        As far as my core practice went—I think that I learned some good ways to conference with students (through trial and error) and still have the class function smoothly. I also think that I need to work on exactly how to conference with students this age and what is developmentally appropriate for them. Along the same lines, I think that editing/revision strategies may have been to high of a goal for students of this developmental level—it is something we set a foundation for, but ultimately something I think they would be more ready to handle in the spring.

I’ll update after my unit actually ends!  I’m really looking forward to the kids being able to share their work with the class. 

Week Two reflections

The eighth was supposed to mark the end of week 2 for our guided lead teaching. After talking with my mentor, other third grade inters, and their mentors it was decided that we needed to extend our unit to last another three days. When we started this unit we noticed many students were struggling. The text that we were reading was above most of their reading levels and they did just not comprehend. On top of that we had one day of no school and three half days. We couldn’t teach all that we wanted in a way that they could understand in that shortened amount of time. After much adjustment to our lesson plans we finally worked out a plan and a time frame.  

                On the 1^st of November I decided that the students would write a constructive response. After I modeled how to write one most kids did very well. They were able to take the ideas that we came up with in class and put them in their own words to answer the question. Some also did a great job taking details from the text to support their answer. There were a few students who struggled. They would find anything they wanted in the book and add it to their writing even though it had nothing to do with the question that I asked. After this lesson I was a little nervous to teach them how to write a summary.

On Monday we did a review for the test that we would have on Monday. I decided to switch my plans around and have them write a summary of the beginning, middle, and end. I figured this would be a good way for them to remember important details from the text and it was a great way to model how to write a summary. Some students did very well with this. They knew they had to put the main points of the story in their summary and leave out the juicy details. Other students really struggled. They kept putting detail after detail and their writing was getting too long. It was not until after they started writing that I realized that I should have told them they had to pretend they were telling their friend about this book. They do not need to tell them every bit of the story they just need to give the basics.

On Tuesday the students did not have school so on Wednesday they took the reading test. A few did very well. Most of the class scored a 70% or above. This was a real tough story for them and I am proud of how well they did with a story that is way above their reading level. The main thing they had trouble with was the vocabulary. Reflecting back on it now that should have been something that was included in the review but we just did not have time for it. I would rather have them comprehend the story than memorize a few vocabulary words.

We started our new lesson on Thursday which was a half day so I had to cut parts out of the original lesson. We started a new story and the kids were very excited to finally be done with the previous story. I started reading part of the story with them and drawing upon their background knowledge. We also went over the new vocabulary words. Afterwards, when we were playing the vocab game, I could really see that the kids were struggling with these words. Again this story was way above most of their reading levels. The kids loved the game but I think it would be better if I used it a couple days after learning the words. After one read and review of the words they were not ready for this game.

On Friday we had a half day so I had to cut my lessons down to fit the new time frame. We read through the story and I had the kids answer some comprehension questions. I felt a little more confident with this story. They seem to understand this story way more than the previous. I actually had kids raising their hands to answer questions which was a rarity before.

Week 2 Reflection

• • What students learned and which students struggled with the lesson.  
• • What are alternate interpretations of your students’ performance or products? 
• • What did you learn about your students’ literacy practices that extend beyond your objectives?
• • When and how will you re-teach the material to students who need additional support? 
• • If you were to teach this same lesson again, what would you do differently and how do you think the changes would improve students’ learning?

What did you learn so far about implementing your ‘core practice’ and what do you need to do to continue your professional learning? 

My unit plan required my students to work with their partners a lot.  So, I chose to focus on shared writing as my core practice. However, I felt that the more we started to work with the same partner, the worse the workshops went. All of my students started with great small moment stories, once we began to introduce their blue writing pens, and the red editing pens, their stories began to take a turn for the worst. Students began crossing off every part of their story, adding in words, punctuation, and random things that did not go along with their story. 

The first unit of Writer's Workshop has students writing small moment stories, and then towards the end (the lessons I taught) had the students editing their pieces. We have been editing everything from spelling, punctuation, readability, capital and lower case letters, spaces, etc. However, many students who really didn't have problems with their stories ended up assuming they needed to be fixing something in their story and ended up ruining it.  There were very few students who did not completely destroy their stories. I think many of them got excited about the blue pens and red editing pens that they wanted a chance to use them any way they could. 

After looking back at the last few lessons as a whole, I am starting to think that the students should have only been given one story booklet to write on and edit. I think having multiple stories distracted them, and didn't give them the opportunity to focus on perfecting one. They almost seemed to race each other to see who had the most stories written. 

I was very frustrated because I felt that my teaching was the problem. However, my MT kept reminding me that they wont always get the concept the first time around. They are very young and very immature. 

Another thing I would like to change if I were to re-teach this lesson again, is to change partners every day. I know that they want students to get comfortable working with the same partner, but many students complained every day saying "I've already read their story so many times" or "I don't like hearing their story anymore." The students began to get too comfortable with one another and instead of giving compliments and positive suggestions they were giving rude comments. It was very upsetting and it was difficult to keep everyone positive. However, I asked my MT about switching partners and she didn't seem to agree with me. 

My lessons weren't ALL bad. I had a few students who wrote very detailed stories and seemed to understand the objective everyday. These students worked well with the blue pens and red editing pens because they have worked with them before. However, I think we should introduce the pens before the students even begin writing. I think this will allow them to grow comfortable with them and not be so distracted by them by the time editing comes around. 

I would like to look more into mini lessons for editing. I don't really like the writer's workshop lessons very much and would like to research different ideas for implementing these concepts into younger classrooms. 

Week 2 Reflection

This past week was interesting, with Halloween and half days school work and calm kids were harder to find.  I have had some difficulty trying to finish our SCARED STORIES since everyone writes at different paces, as well as having different strengths and weaknesses.  Some students finished with time to spare while others are still working on them.  We have started a new type of writing now, How To.  We are using the words first, next, then and last to guide our stories.  We were able to practice together by writing how to get ready for recess and how to go trick-or-treating.  The kids were engaged and interested in writing these how to stories because they were things they love to do!  This coming week each student will write a how to story about doing something.  In the end of this lesson we compile their story into a book and each student will have the opportunity to share their story to the class.

During writing there is still a LOT of chatter and unfocused students.  Before writing everyday I reiterate the "rules for writing time"  but they never seem to oxide by them, this is becoming frustrating for me.  This week I will be implementing 2 maybe even 3 differ ideas for classroom management:
Making writing rules with the class, they will come up with the rules, I will write them down and I'll have everyone sign it.
A tattle box where students can write or draw a picture of something that happened that they really want/"need" to tell me about
Classroom dojo
I think with these new ideas the students will see me as a teacher more, challenge me less and focus more during work time.  I see improvement in my students writing and in my ability to wander around the room and check in with more students.  I am very happy since in the beginning I would get stuck with one student or one table during the whole writing time, but now I can conference with more in the same amount of time.

2nd Reflection (Week of Oct. 28)

This week we finished our “spooky stories.” Overall, I think my kids really liked the idea of the story, and I got some really creative and interesting stories out of them.  My fear from last week did happen—I had a handful of students finish their stories at the beginning of the week and the rest finished at different a different pace. I still have 2 students who need to finish because of the interruption of Halloween, a half day, and a fireman visit earlier this week. The first time I conference with my students, I sat at one table and had them come to me. BIG MISTAKE. This made the kids think that they had to come to me for every spelling question, conference question, and every thought that popped into their mind. I found them to be distracted, constantly coming up to me, distracting others while waiting in line, and generally unproductive this day. So, the next day I said that I would go from table to table and they were to stay in their seats and keep writing until I came to them.  I also reminded them that I wanted them to sound out their words for these first few days—we wouldn’t worry about spelling until the final paper. This worked much better. There were still a few that would come up to me, but a quick few reminders is all it took to get them seated and working again.

Overall I think writing went well this week. I think editing their own work is something that is still a bit beyond them. They were very frustrated by it, and right now correct spelling just isn’t something they are ready for developmentally nor is it an expectation in my classroom. I would like to revisit this in the spring and work on it then once they have become more comfortable with sustained writing.

Weekly reflection

When I was planning my lesson I didn’t feel nervous at all I knew what I wanted to do and what I would say to my student. As I watched my mentor finish the final story in the Basal Reader (a couple days before I started teaching) that when I started to worry. The students were really struggling with these stories. The stories in these books are far too complicated for our third graders. Many of them are at a first grade reading level and trying to read something that is far above their reading level is frustrating them. So before started to teach my lessons I had to change them up a bit so my students would have an easier time comprehending them. I would have to scaffold their learning more than I had intended.

                I started my first lesson on October 28th. It started off on a bad note and continued to go downhill from there. The students were not able to go to special that day because the music teacher was out. This made the students irritable; they had been in the classroom all morning and were very antsy about it. So when I sat them down to do a literacy lesson they wanted nothing to do with it. It took me ten minutes just to settle them down. After I finished reading the first page I asked my student what had happened so far and not one hand when up. From there on out I had to scaffold their learning by stopping every so often and explain what was going on. After we finished the first section we worked on a few of the vocabulary words that were used in the book and that really seemed to help them. I could tell they felt a little more confident.

The next day the kids were timid to read it and I even got a few moans and groans. Again they struggled through the reading although this time when I stopped to see if they were comprehending what was going on they seemed to be catching on. They could see some of the patterns that were occurring. When we completed the character chart the students really succeeded with this.  Many of them knew where to find the right answer and could prove it to me by reading a sentence. I was planning on doing the comprehension questions on this day as well but I could see that my student could take much more and I did not want to over load them so I decided to leave the questions until the next day.

Wednesday went much better. I decided to play the CD version of the book and the kids loved it. They were really into it and I had all of their attention instantly. After it was finished I passed out the worksheet and walked through the comprehension questions with them. My higher level readers caught on and were able to answer these questions easily. As for my lower level readers I had to walk around and re-explain what the question was asking. I worded it in a way as to scaffold their learning and lead them to the correct answer.

I did not get to teach my lesson today because of all the Halloween festivities. 

Week 1 Reflection

This week I began to teach my lesson on writing.  We started with a reminder of how to write, using capitalization, punctuation and spacing between words.  The students know all of these rules, but only think about them when prompted and questioned.  Day one was supposed to be an easy review for my class, but since I thought my students knew what to do I did not give as much explanation as I could and should have.  This was a learning experience for me to gain experience noticing when students need more help or when they are ready to be on their own.  My mentor teacher mentioned that I had a great lesson plan, but the key to a successful lesson is the classroom management and presentation.  I am hoping that throughout this unit plan I will be more comfortable making these types of judgement calls.

Since day one my students have been working on a writing prompt, “A Time I Was Scared.”  These “scared” stories are the first prompted writing my students have written. These stories have proven to be a bit challenging for a couple of reasons.  The first challenge has been the limitations of a prompt that my students are not used to.  Secondly, they have never revisited a piece of writing before, let alone revisiting it for editing, conferencing and creating a final draft.  Additionally, this lesson and writing lessons in general have proven to be difficult as a teacher to reach all of students in order to read, discuss and conference with them.  Since I have a wide variety of abilities in my classroom, all of my students have been at different stages in their writing since day two of my lesson.  Some students are still brainstorming while others are preparing to write their final copy.  Since students are on different levels, I thought it would be easier to conference if others were not there yet, but those that are behind tend to be the students that need more help and one on one attention.  I am very thankful to have a mentor teacher in the classroom as another person to help talk with the students.  She is not teaching the lesson, but during “work time” we both monitor and conference with students.  My goal is to be able to maintain a working classroom while editing and conferencing with only myself.  As of right now I think it is fine and I appreciate my MT for being in the classroom and supporting my lesson, but eventually I need to be able to do it without the training wheels.

Additionally, my mentor teacher has given me the suggestion to type the rough draft of each student, print it off and give it to them to edit.  This provides students with print, other than their handwriting to read and correct using the editing tools from day one.  This allows students the opportunity to reread their work individually before reading it to the teacher as well as practicing a necessary writing skill, editing.  This system has been working fairly well, and I am now excited to see the final products within the next few days!

Unit Plan Week 1 Reflection

I started teaching my unit on Monday. I was nervous because our unit changed somewhat late, and instead of reading comprehension I am doing writing. I was most nervous about the time frame I had to work with. Typically my students, while they write every day, only write for 20 minutes. I am worried about fitting my lessons into that time while still giving my students time to write.  On Monday, I discussed with my teacher and we agreed that centers were given a bit too much time so we extended writing by 5 minutes which helps some. 

My students are working to improve their foundational skills, work on editing their own writing, and conferencing with teachers to improve their writing. I was surprising pleased with the work my students were able to accomplish this week. They were excited about their skill books that we worked in on Monday (practicing both editing an incorrect sentence and also practicing capitalization, punctuation, and finger spacing) and asked to work on them more throughout the week. I was happy to see them interested and excited about writing. I hadn’t planned to use those books throughout my entire unit, but I may change that.

My students are working on one piece of writing throughout the week. We will prewrite using a story web, write a rough draft in the journals, conference with a teacher and edit what is in the journals, and then finalize on “spooky” paper for our scary Halloween stories. The students were excited about writing a spooky story, and they really liked the paper I had for them to write their final drafts on. In the beginning stages, I did have some students want to write the same story that I had modeled for them (I had a LOT of students suddenly afraid of heights) so it took some time to find a story/thing that was scary for THEM.

Overall, I think something I am the most concerned with, or worried about, is how to effectively reach all of my students. After the first day of writing, my students progressed at different rates and are currently all in different stages in their writing. I have some ready to finalize while I still have some working on prewriting and the rest everhwehere in between. I’m worried I won’t be able to get to conference with all of them, or that some will finish “too” early, or that I may have to pull kids from centers, recess, or special to finish theirs before Halloween and Parent Teacher Conferences.  Some things I’m going to work on next week is figuring out a way to effectively conference with my students, give them strategies to find other resources (MT, peers, journals, classroom resources, etc.) to help them BEFORE they come to me so they don’t feel stuck when I’m working with another student and cannot help them immediately.

Lauren Ghelfi- Lesson 1 Reflection

 I was extremely nervous going into the lesson today, because I not only taught writer's workshop, but I also stepped in to teach everything due to the fact that we had a substitute. Overall, I feel that the majority of my students understood the purpose of this lesson. Not only was I trying to get students to understand what the Good Qualities of a Small Moment story are, but I was trying to focus on my core practice which was shared writing. Today's lesson was all about sharing your writing with your partner and celebrating what you did well. When I first dismissed the students they seemed confused on what I was asking them. Many of them thought they were going to be writing today, and I should have been more specific that we were just reading our writing today. 

As I walked around in groups I noticed that many students needed to be directed in following the steps of the partnership procedure. Many of them did not understand that first they were either listening or sharing, and then they switched roles. This is something I could have done differently by asking a student to state what I said in their own words. Making sure they knew exactly what they were doing before we broke off into partner groups. 

One of the things that I feel hindered the partnerships today was the lack of completed small moment stories by the students. Students who have not completed small moment stories could not really share a completed piece. Their partner then seemed unsure of what to compliment on. I should have been more clear on complimenting on what they have completed, not just IF something was completed. 

I learned that a the ones who did have completed stories had multiple completed stories. I was actually very excited to see that partners were able to share multiple stories and give compliments on more than one. They were also able to compare the stories and say what they liked that someone may have done in both stories. One thing that I thought was especially great that extended beyond my objectives was one of the students complimented his partner on her use of thought bubbles in pictures. We actually have not gone over thought bubbles only speech bubbles. I thought it was interesting to see that this student had picked up on these from another story and included them in her own story to create a good small moment story. 

One thing that I will continue to work on is explaining the steps to partnerships. A few groups were not taking turns and were not paying close enough attention to their partners stories. So when it came time to compliment their partner, they forgot what the story was about completely. For the few students that this happened to, unfortunately I was not surprised. They tend to need more guidance than others when it comes to stretching their thinking further. 

If I were to re-teach this lesson again, I would ask my MT, or in this case the substitute to pretend to be my partner when modeling the activity. I felt that students were distracted by the Moose puppet. Although I thought it would be fun for the kids, it was too distracting for them and I do not think I was able to implement the partnership procedures as well as I would have liked. 

Alyssa Rubrich Initial Blog post #4

About a week ago I decided that I would teach visualization for my unit plan. I have been trying to think of different lessons that I could do to have the kids work on visualization. I came up with a few ideas but I didn't have enough to supply two weeks worth of lessons. After reading chapter nine it gave me some insight of what I should include in my lessons.
My questions to my group members are.... Have you taught visualization to your students? If so, what did you do? What makes you think it worked well/ did not work well? Were there any reading strategies/ sample units in chapter 9 that you would like to incorporate into your literacy lesson? Explain why you think they are worthy of being in your lesson.

I really enjoyed reading the section about, "Creating Mental Images That Go Beyond Visualizing." I love the idea of not only getting the students to see what they are reading but to imagine the sound, taste, touch, and smell too. I think it is great to get them to really imagine these details. Being able to imagine all of these things will truly allow the reader to reflect on what they read and remember it. They will have created a distinguished mental image and feeling that will be hard to forget. I also love how you can incorporate descriptive writing into this lesson. You could split the class into small groups and have each group get a different picture.  Have the students individually write a paragraph about what they would see, hear, smell, taste, and feel if they were in that picture. After they are finished they could talk within their group about the details they included. Eventually they could share their paragraph with the whole class and they could compare what they wrote to the original picture.

Inquiry 2 PartA

1.     Describe your target area for guided lead teaching.

During the guided lead teaching I will be teaching Comprehension. I will be using texts from the Houghton Mifflin book and will be focusing on visualizing.

2.     Approximately how much time per day is allotted for your instruction in this area?

30-45minutes

3.     Which Common Core State Standard(s) will you work toward?

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.1 Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.7 Explain how specific aspects of a text’s illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a character or setting)

4.     How will teaching in this target area provide opportunities for students to learn important content and/or skills that relate to their lives?  In what ways does this learning include learning literacy, learning about literacy, and/or learning through literacy?

Teaching students how to visualize a story will allow them to work on comprehension. When a student is able to visualize what is happening they are better able to remember the story later. They create pictures in their minds as they read and can later remember these pictures to help them recall what the story was about.

5.     What types of classroom talk take place within this target area? To what extent is the talk teacher-led, student-led, or focused on higher-level thinking? What norms for interaction would you like to build within your classroom as you teach in this target area (e.g., see ideas in Chapter 6 of Strategies that Work, the Berne & Clark 2008 article, or draw from some of the readings done in TE 402 on classroom talk)?

For the most part my students have not worked in pairs or groups and I would really like to start getting them into the routine of it. At first a lot of it will be teacher-led but eventually I would like to move into more pair work. There are many teacher generated questions and the students will work together in pairs and discuss them and then share their ideas with the whole class. The questions that are asked during the stories allow students to demonstrate understanding of the text. I would like to see my student continue to work on partner work. I want them to be able to talk to their “elbow buddy” about what we are reading and not about what they are going to do on the playground. If I can get them to start this new routine and do it effectively that would be a huge success.

6.     Which ‘core practice’ do you want to work on developing/improving as you teach in this target area (refer to document “Resources for Developing Core Practices”)? How will focusing on this core practice contribute to your own professional learning?

The core practice that I want to work on developing is reading comprehension/strategy instruction. Comprehension means everything to reading. It is the primary focus before any other aspect of reading. If a child is able to read fluently and with great diction but they cannot understand what they are reading then there is still a huge issue. Many of my students are low reader and comprehension is still something they need to conquer. Teaching my students many of the strategies for comprehension will allow me to develop as a teacher. I will see what strategies work best for certain students and I will learn how to help a student who is struggling to comprehend.

7.     What resources within the community, neighborhood, school district, school or classroom do you have to work with in this target area?

My mentor teacher uses readings from the Houghton Mifflin  to work on our student comprehension so I will also have that to base my lessons off of. I have a plethora of reading material at my disposal; between the books my teacher owns and the books that are out in the pod we have plenty of grade appropriate books to read. My mentor also has a wide variety of leveled books that the students can use during independent reading. She also has posters that I can write on and use to help the students understand what happened in the beginning, middle, and end. Also, when we are able to see which students are struggling to comprehend we can have the support staff take them out and work with them in a program called ILL.

8.     What additional resources do you need to obtain?

I will need to create note cards so I can take antidotal records of what the students are learning. I need to create or find the “reading together chart” and “what good readers do” chart.

9.     How will you pre-assess your students in your target area?

The day before I start this lesson I will have them read a text selection that has no pictures. As they read it I will ask them to draw the pictures in their heads about what the words say. They will pretend like they are the director for a movie and visualize what they think the pictures should look like. I will hold a brief discussion after the book and have the students talk about what they pictured in their heads as I read. I will then have them return to their seats and draw a few pictures about the story and see if they comprehend the text.

10.    What else will you need to find out about all students in your class to help you develop lesson plans for your Guided Lead Teaching?

I will have to pay close attention to how well students pick up key detail of the stories they read. I also need to take a look at what reading level each student is at. This should help me to determine what kids need more work with different comprehension strategies.

11.    What else do you need/want to learn about the ‘core practice’ to support your planning and teaching?

I would like to learn more about how I can create a lesson that doesn't direct follow the curriculum but still includes the main ideas. I would like to also find ways to connect what they are learning to real life. I want to make this learning process as real as possible so they can see how to use this information in their everyday life.

12.    What concerns, if any, do you have about planning and teaching your unit?

Most of my concerns are about how closely I can follow the guided curriculum. What is considered too much?

Inquiry 2 Part A

1.     For my target area for guided lead teaching, I plan to focus on Writing Instruction.

2.     I will need approximately 30-40 minutes per day for instruction in this area.

3.     I will work towards the following Common Core Standards:

·      W.1.3- Write narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event, and provide some sense of closure.

·      W.1.5- With guidance and support from adults, focus on a topic, respond to questions and suggestions from peers, and ad details to strengthen writing as needed.

4.     Teaching this target area will allow my students to focus on a given topic in order to strengthen their stories. I think it is important to keep these topics relevant to their lives. In order for me to do this, I plan to have the students write about “small moment” stories, where they recall a small moment in their life. I plan to use books from our classroom library to introduce the lessons with a short read aloud. This will help them to recall what it means to be a small moment story. I will choose books with events that are relevant to their lives and could be possible moments that they want to write about. I will model a sample of my own small moment story in order to help students build onto their skills. I will open up the floor to them and ask them if they can tell me what it means to be a good writer. I want them to talk about my writing and tell me what they think I did wrong or right. I will purposely make mistakes in my writing so they can check it.

5.     The introduction to this lesson will be teacher led. I will explain to my students what is required of them. During that time I will leave it open for them to ask questions. I want them to have a chance to also reflect with a partner what they think it means to be a “small moment” story. I will also give them a chance to talk to a partner and discuss the types of stories they want to write about. I think this will be a good opportunity for the students who are unable to recall events. Hopefully this will spark memories.

6.     The core practices I will focus on during the writing instruction is shared writing. Since I will be sharing a piece of my own writing this will allow the students to understand what I expect from them during shared writing with a peer. We will discuss being a good listener and making sure you are offering suggestions for improvement and telling the author what they did well and what you liked about the story. I have always found it difficult to share my writing, especially when it is something personal, and I think it is important for them to start this process early on. Sometimes hearing feedback from a peer can be more helpful than from a teacher. Students are sometimes intimidated to meet with the teachers and become hesitant about their writing and unsure of what they wrote.

7.     I will need to obtain small moment stories from our classroom library.

8.     The pre-assessment for this lesson will be during our group discussion. I will be taking notes on their answers to the questions and making sure they understand what it means to be a good writer and writing a small moment story.

9.     I will not need any additional resources. I have already begun taking notes on students interests and I think that information will help me choose books and topics appropriate for their age.

10.  I will need to analyze their writing for the upcoming weeks. I want to see how long students are able to write for in order to determine a proper length of time for this lesson. I want to get the most out of it and I don’t want them to be writing just to get words down on the page. I want their stories to be clear.

11.  I need to learn more about the productive ways to do shared reading. I don’t want them talking off topic during this time and I need to make sure they get the most out of their conversations. I think I will have to observe each of their writings more carefully in order to determine how or if I want to pair my students myself or have them choose a random partner.

12.  I am nervous to teach the lesson in general. I want to make sure I am benefitting my students and they are actually taking something out of my lesson. I hope that the shared time isn’t just a waste of time and that they actually benefit from it. 

Rachael Boglarsky Unit Planning Questions

1.       Describe your target area for guided lead teaching.

For my Guided Lead Teaching, I would like to use Reading Comprehension/Strategy Instruction for my Target Area. Within this target area, I will be teaching primarily our read aloud and discussion part of the day.

2. Approximately how much time per day is allotted for your instruction in this area?

Around 40 minutes is allotted for my instruction.

2.       Which Common Core State Standard(s) will you work toward?

I plan to work toward the standards following standards within the entire unit: SL.1.1 SL.1.2  SL.1.3  SL.1.4  SL.1.5  SL.1.6  RL.1.1  RL.1.2  RL.1.3  RL.1.5  RL.1.6  RL.1.7  RL.1.9.

4. How will teaching in this target area provide opportunities for students to learn important content and/or skills that relate to their lives?  In what ways does this learning include learning literacy, learning about literacy, and/or learning through literacy?

This target area will allow me to read a variety of different books to the children, exposing them to a variety of topics, ideas, and thoughts. This area will also allow for a multitude of discussions with the children which will give them the opportunity to make several text to self connections. Finally, comprehension is a skill that the children will continue to use and further develop for the rest of their lives. Comprehension is necessary for them to lead a successful life in the United States (i.e. to read and understand signs, directions, recipes, etc.)

5. What types of classroom talk take place within this target area? To what extent is the talk teacher-led, student-led, or focused on higher-level thinking? What norms for interaction would you like to build within your classroom as you teach in this target area (e.g., see ideas in Chapter 6 of Strategies that Work, the Berne & Clark 2008 article, or draw from some of the readings done in TE 402 on classroom talk such as Almasi, 2006)?

This area will allow forlarge group, small group, and partner discussions. At the 1^st grade level, the discussions begin by being largely teacher led, however this provides the teacher with the opportunity to teach the children how to talk directly to each other and facilitate a more student led discussion. The open-endedness of this topic allows for high level thinking and connections continually throughout the unit.

6. Which ‘core practice’ do you want to work on developing/improving as you teach in this target area (refer to document “Resources for Developing Core Practices”)? How will focusing on this core practice contribute to your own professional learning?

I want to primarily focus on interactive read alouds and corresponding guided interactive discussions. First, read alouds are a huge part of the 1^st grade curriculum and instruction. As they are not yet at a level where they can read independently for an extended period of time, read alouds are the primary way to expose the students to the types of text that will help support them in making connections and higher order thinking. I would also like to try some interactive discussions because I think they are a great way to truly and deeply comprehend a topic, and I think that it would be a great skill for my students to have.

7. What resources within the community, neighborhood, school district, school or classroom do you have to work with in this target area?

I have the curriculum provided by the school (Making Meaning) and the teacher books and mentor texts that come along with that. I also have the classroom, school, and pod library books to choose from if I wish. Lastly, I have my mentor teacher’s personal library and my own, as well as the public library, for any texts that I want to use that aren’t available through the school.

8. What additional resources do you need to obtain?

As of right now, the school and my mentor teacher have provided me with all the materials I think I need. 

9. How will you pre-assess your students in your target area?

To pre assess I will read a story to the class and hold a large group discussion. I will lead the discussion and observe the children’s behavior and make notes to see what kinds of questions they answered, who they directed their answers too, etc. I will assess reading comprehension based of their answers and also a short and simple writing/drawing prompt describing an event that happened in the story.

10. What else will you need to find out about all students in your class to help you develop lesson plans for your Guided Lead Teaching?

I need to find out all of their DRA reading levels, their writing capabilities, and their ability to hold on-task large and small group conversations.

11. What else do you need/want to learn about the ‘core practice’ to support your planning and teaching?

I want to learn more ways to facilitate student led discussions at a first grade level.

12. What concerns, if any, do you have about planning and teaching your unit?

I am concerned about the general method of classroom management—it is always scary the first time leading an entire group. I’m mostly worried about our curriculum at the moment though. The staff and interns in my school attended a professional development session today about possibly changing the entirety of our ELA curriculum. If this happens, I’m worried about how that will affect my planning, my lessons, and ultimately my ability to teach effectively.

Rachael Boglarsky Week 3 Initial Blog Post

                First, I was really excited to read about anecdotal records this week in the Boyd-Batstone text. Anecdotal records we a large part of my preschool internships and placements at the MSU Child Development Labs and I have been looking for ways to use their authentic assessment method and adapt it for older children and a structured classroom setting. I noticed some differences than what I have don’t in the past. At preschool, we wrote our anecdotes on index cards (each teacher had a ring of index cards they kept in a packet or apron and would write on them occasionally throughout the day).  I liked the ideas of the stickers that the author mentioned, though I think the space might be too limiting, at least for me. However, the basic idea is the same—and I like that this method of assessment allows the teacher to capture a moment in the day clearly and in a way that can be communicated to parents.

                Not only does this kind of assessment support teachers, but I have also seen areas where this can help the students as well. I had a few students with what we called “stage fright,” but instead of being anxious on a stage or in front of a room, they were anxious when they were one-on-one with a teacher being asked academic questions (aka being formally assessed). I had one student in particular that could, or would, not count using one-to-one correspondence or identify any numbers one through ten when asked directly by a teacher, but when he was observed playing a number game, he was observed identifying the numbers one through 7 and counting one to one up to 10. In this way, I think that these types of authentic assessment give the teacher a clear idea of what the student is really able to do versus what they can regurgitate in a set amount of time usually in a stressful or distracting environment.

                I was also interested to read the chapter in Writing Essentials about Writer’s Workshop. I don’t know about Lauren, but I know Alyssa, Brieanna, and I all went to a MESA Professional Development meeting before school started as they are switching to Writing Workshop this year as their writing curriculum. I think this chapter gave some interesting ideas for my teacher and I to try in the classroom. For example, teaching students worthwhile topics—that is something my teacher and I have discussed already and something the students seem to struggle with.  Sometimes, even as an adult, the hardest part of writing is getting started and I’m still looking for ways to help support my students in that way as well.  Also my teacher and I have discussed the importance of maintaining a predictable schedule. I think, especially for such young students, a predictable schedule and routine is important.  Not only does this support them, but it also supports the teachers in making sure writing is never left out of the day. I’m still not sure how we are going to finesse or hybridize our curriculum from the previous years. What do you do in your classrooms? Are your teachers struggling with the new things as well?

                

Lauren Ghelfi- Effective Approaches to Comprehension Instruction

While reading this weeks assigned reading, I began to resonate a lot with the first four chapters of Strategies That Work. Although I have not even spent two full days in my classroom, I have already been able to practice some of the teaching strategies for comprehension without even knowing I was doing it. On Friday, my MT left early, and I was left in charge with an AIDE. During this time my MT told me I can read two books to the students. One was called "First Day Jitters" and the other was just a chapter from "Junie. B. Jones." I love read-alouds so I was very grateful to be given this opportunity. While reading, I began to notice myself stopping frequently and asking the students to make inferences about the story. I began to model my own thinking and share with the students the inferences I was making as I read aloud to them. I noticed that many of the same students raised their hands during this time. However, once I got to the end of the story (a story I had never read before) the students and I discovered that it wasn't a story about a student having the first day jitters, but it was about their teacher! I think we all enjoyed this story because every student was excited to share their first day jitters experience with the class. We all related to the story in one way or another, which is a note of importance in the Harvey and Goudvis book. 

One of the problems with the reading that I constantly faced was, how can you implement all of these strategies with first graders? I understand the concept of differentiated instruction and that not everything works for certain students. However, I felt that many of the strategy assessments required students to write down their thoughts, questions, etc. Although I have only seen my class write their name, I have trouble imagining them able to write much more. Then I thought, well we can always assess the students verbally. Of course, with this, you run into the problem of how much time can you spend with each student individually. Although I have seen some of these practices used in the classroom, I wonder how effective they are when you have to adapt them so much for younger students. 

When I read the Kersten and Pardo article, I immediately began thinking not only about how I would be able to 'finesse' my lessons as a future teacher, but how my MT and I were going to have to work together on our new Math Expressions Curriculum. Last year the other first grade teacher piloted the new math curriculum. This is the first time my teacher has been exposed to it, and already in the first week, we avoided looking at it. At the end of the week we prepared our transparencies for the week ahead and knew we would have to look over our manipulatives in order to begin using the new curriculum. I think this will be a very good experience for me because not only will my MT be trying to work this new curriculum into her old curriculum, but I will get to help judge what seems to work best for our class and what does not. I am very nervous because I have never had this type of responsibility in the classroom. I strongly believe that it will help make me as a future teacher when it comes time for the DIBELS testing at our school.