Week 14 - Widzinski (Response)

Holly delivered the idea of differentiated instruction in a clear and positive manner. She did not single the child out, and assured the parents that she is changing her teaching methods to support the children in the class that are struggling. She provided examples for what she will be changing in the class and the different resources for the students. One thing I would like to know more of is how to support the student(s) outside of the classroom. I would also like to know how the progress of the students are going to be tracked to ensure that these methods of differentiated instruction are working. Also when you say you will be implementing a number of strategies, what do these include more specifically? What will the more advanced students be doing in the class during these times?

Week 14- McLean (response)

From the eyes of a potential parent, I understand that my child has made improvements from the start of the year.  It is reassuring to know that they have made some positive progress.  I also know that my child is struggling to make connections between the sounds and the letters of the alphabet.  I read that you, the teacher, believes in differentiated instruction and that you want to help my child.  It was helpful that you explained the term differentiated instruction so that I knew exactly what you were talking about.  In addition, I am under the impression that my child is not being singled out or are the only child struggling.  You made it clear that they are not alone and they are going to be provided help.  I also learned that his needs will be met in the classroom.  You made sure to say that he will be put in groups with students who have a similar skill level to him.  You said that this will help him improve his skills and feel less intimidated to gain these skills.  He will also have time to work one-on-one with the teacher and there will be less complex texts used with the students while these skills are being developed.  All these things were clearly communicated, however I still have a few main questions that need to be answered.  These include the following: What will you be doing specifically with my child to help them improve (such as strategies or techniques)?  How can I help them at home?

Week 14 - Harris (Initial)

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Jones,

Over the course of the school year thus far, Michael has shown definite improvement in regards to his literacy abilities. Michael's skills continue to improve, however, he seems to be struggling with recognizing connections between a few particular letters of the alphabet, and the sounds that they represent. The difficulty that he is experiencing poses a challenge for him when it comes to sounding out words when reading, and 'stretching words' in order to write them. Michael is not the only student in our class who is struggling with this. In order to combat this, I plan to engage in differentiating instruction, which involves responding to the variance among learners to ensure effective support for learning occurs in classrooms. This means, I will be implementing a number of different strategies during lessons and activities in order to cater to the different interests, and learning styles and rates of all students.

If I continue to provide generalized instruction to all students, I feel it would prove very counter-productive and overwhelming for students who require a bit more support. I recognize that, in order for Michael and the rest of the students in our class to be successful in regards to the various components of literacy, it is necessary for me to modify my teaching style. In order to best accomplish this, students will be put into groups with other students with a similar skill-set. This way, when students are working in groups, I will be able to provide each group of students with specific instruction that will benefit them the most based on the skills they are working to improve. Hopefully, this will also help to alleviate some of the intimidation that some students are currently experiencing while working in a group with students they are not yet fully compatible with. Also, I would also like to place more emphasis on individualized instruction. While students are working in their groups or pairs, I plan to provide one-on-one assistance to the individual students who I feel could benefit from it. This will allow me to assist students in improving individual skills to help them become more successful in regards to their overall literacy. Also, in order to further support Michael and the other students will similar skill-sets, I think it could be very beneficial to reintroduce less-complex texts until the desired skills are acquired. This way, reading will prove less daunting and overwhelming, and it will enable Michael to more easily recognize and identify the connection between letters and their sounds.

I am excited about implementing differentiated instruction in the classroom, and I am very hopeful that it will greatly benefit Michael, and the rest of the students in our class. If you have any questions or further suggestions, please contact me.

Thank you,

Holly Harris

McLean- Week 13 Writing Video

Video: Conversations Among Writing Peers

This video discussed how teachers allow their students to confer more independently by using a response strategy.  This strategy is called Receiving the Piece, where students are grouped in pairs, listen to each others’ writing, summarize what they’ve learned and comment on the writing.  It is important that the students get their work valued by their peers, not only the teacher’s perspective.

In the video, it was stated that it is important for teachers to create an environment for their students, as writers.  They need to make sure that students are listening to each other intently because every person's voice and writing matters.  In fact, one of the rules of Receiving the Piece is to listen with your whole heart and soul.  This also allows students to recall the information by telling it back to the writer.  The video stated that this step is important and most children actually light up after they hear their story read back to them.  They have learned that their words matter.  This is one method of creating a writing conversation among students/peers.   

Widzinski - Writing Video

Video: Writing Self-Assessment

The criteria the students are looking for: Why we're reading, author's point of view, why this should change, thoughtful consideration and to look at this as writers. The teacher read the story to the class and went through the checklist. Then they looked at it as writers instead of just a reader. She asked how they could tell. The students got sidetracked in thinking about their own homework, and tried asking the teacher for no homework. They then looked at a second example. The teacher went through the checklist again and gave examples, and then asked the students if they gave facts to back up the writers argument.

This was really looking at persuasive writing and to be able to have a checklist. I would have liked it more if the students each had a handout of the writing sample for themselves to look at while the teacher was reading. I also would have like to have seen more of the teacher asking the students for examples for each column of the checklist.

Widzinski Reading Lesson Overview

Reading Lesson Overview:

1.     My two students I am working with are Nate* and Amanda*. My MT and I went over their reading scores in different areas, and I chose them because their scores were the lowest. They struggled with comprehension the most. Because they struggled with comprehension, I wanted to read them a book and focus on the Common Core that related the illustrations to the events that took place in the story. I believe that this will help Nate and Amanda to comprehend the events by tying them into the pictures on the page.

2.     I read Briggs and Forbes article, Orientation to a New Book: More than a Picture Walk. This article provided good examples for questions to ask my target students prior to reading to get them oriented to the book. The examples they gave will help with Nate and Amanda’s overall comprehension of the text.

McLean Reading Lesson Overview

·       Discuss the target areas you have chosen for your lessons, and how you know your target areas are appropriate for these learners’ needs. You will need to access any assessments completed by you or your MT that help you understand the focus students’ learning needs and talk with your MT about appropriate strategies to use to support the focus students’ learning.

o    The target areas that I have chosen for my students are phonemic awareness and phonics.  These are both emergent literacy skills and can be found in Tompkins chapters 4-5.  My head teacher informed me that my focus students need extra help in these two areas.  One student in particular needs extra help here because he came late into Kindergarten and barley knew the names of the letters in the alphabet.  As you can imagine, he needs extra help coming up to speed with the Kindergarten standards.  As a result, he is one of my largest focuses during this lesson.  Other students need help with these areas and would benefit from one-on-one instruction.  I know that these target areas are appropriate for my students needs because my head teacher has done many assessments on my focus group of students.  She has been doing verbal assessments and written work sample assessments that she has shown me.  In specific, she has noticed that these students have trouble sounding out simple words, as well as blending words together.  They also have trouble recognizing the first sound in a word and understanding how changing this sound contributes to the meaning of the word.  For this reason, I am working on phonics and phonemic awareness activities with these children. 

·       Read at least one of the articles listed on our course schedule (March 25) (also listed on the back of this sheet) to assist you in selecting an appropriate focus and instructional strategy for each lesson.

o    There are several instructional strategies that one can use when teaching phonics and phonemic awareness.  However, I wanted to narrow my focus and teach these subjects as a center during literacy centers.  This is the most effective use of time, as my mentor teacher and I discussed.  As a result, I will be teaching a phonics literacy center one day and a phonemic awareness literacy center another day.  In my lesson on phonics, I will be playing a matching game that allows students to engage in discussion about the rhymes or phonic sounds in words.  I read the article, “Orientation to a New Book: More Than a Picture Walk” by Connie Briggs.  Although I am not engaging students in a reading lesson and furthering their comprehension strategies by encouraging students to “read” the pictures, the students engaging in my center activity will be using pictures to have a further understanding of the information.  The children engaging in the phonics activity will have to look at the picture cue to help them sound the word to determine if the words rhyme.  In addition, the children at the phonemic awareness center will be engaging in an activity that requires them to draw a picture referring to the word that they create.  In this way, they are using pictures to take control of their own learning and activate their piror knowledge, and therefore create motivation.  This is the type of strategy that I read about in this article, as well as learned from talking to my head teacher about, that I will be using in my activity center plans.   

Harris Reading Lesson Overview

·       Discuss the target areas you have chosen for your lessons, and how you know your target areas are appropriate for these learners’ needs. You will need to access any assessments completed by you or your MT that help you understand the focus students’ learning needs and talk with your MT about appropriate strategies to use to support the focus students’ learning.

        Before I began planning my two reading lessons, I introduced the assignment to my mentor teacher and we discussed which students could most benefit from small-group instruction, and what aspects of reading they struggle with the most. After reviewing students' literacy assessment scores, it was clear that a select few students really seemed to struggle the most with phonemic awareness and comprehension of text. These particular students tend to struggle with comprehending text due largely in part to the difficulties they experience with concentration and attention.

Reading Lesson 1 (Phonemic Awareness): The activity that I plan to implement with my focus group is a game of Bingo, with which they are all already familiar. However, I plan to customize the game so that each box on the Bingo boards contains a distinct picture of an object, with a clear label directly beneath it. When implementing the activity, I will say a letter sound (e.g., /k/) or a letter-combination sound (e.g., /ch/), and each child will look at their board and determine whether or not any of the pictures/words on their board begin with that particular sound. If so, they will place a marker in the designated box.

Reading Lesson 2 (Comprehension): The second reading lesson that I plan to implement with my focus group is a read-aloud. The book I plan to read to the students is "Just Saving My Money" by Mercer Mayer. The book is about a boy named 'Little Critter' who wants a new skateboard, and has to earn the money on his own. The comprehension questions that I plan to ask the students include: "Who was the main character in the story?" "What other characters do we meet in the story?" "What did the main character want to buy?" "What did the main character have to do in order to get what he wanted?" and "What did the main character learn?" Such questions will allow me to gauge how well the students understood and comprehended the content of the story.

·       Read at least one of the articles listed on our course schedule to assist you in selecting an appropriate focus and instructional strategy for each lesson.

The article that I chose to read was the Briggs and Forbes article "Orientation to a New Book: More than a Picture Walk". This article guided me in selecting an appropriate focus and instructional strategy for each lesson. The article provided several examples of effective questions to pose to focus students before beginning the text, in order to get them interested in the book, and focused. Through implementing these strategies and asking the questions suggested in the text, I am confident this will help my students more easily and thoroughly comprehend the text.

Week 12 - Harris (Response)

The mini-lesson Janine mentioned that could help support students improve their vocabularies involves breaking words down into their parts, and thinking about each individual portion, and where they recall seeing those portions in other contexts. I am not completely convinced that this method can be used consistently to the benefit of all students. It is unclear to me how students make connections and associations between the actual words and their meanings, what they represent, when they focus solely on the different parts of the word itself and their contexts other than in the term being learned. I agree that it is important to introduce primarily tier 2 words in ways that are authentic and meaningful to students, to help them comprehend and retain the associations between words and their meanings. According to the Scott article, "Teaching All the Children", frequent and consist exposure to certain words in context is often more beneficial to improving student vocabulary than rote learning.