Reinink, Reflection #2

Just as I mentioned in the first lesson reflection, this lesson went super great as well! My MT and I have been so surprised how well these two students have done with me throughout these past two lessons. I really think that they need to do more hands-on, interactive game-like lessons in order to stimulate their brains. Throughout this lesson they were catching on, a little slower than the first lesson but by the end they were telling me the amount of sounds in the tougher words like ‘Jesus’. I was super proud of them and felt very accomplished. At first they were both struggling with the fact that not all words had the same amount of sounds per the amount of letters in the word. I can see why this would be confusing. By the end they were doing it completely by themselves and really liked the words with more sounds because that meant they got more bean bags and more throws for more points.

A strength in this lesson was that the children were learning how to identify sounds in words they learned in the previous week or already knew. I used the same set of words I used in my previous lesson. This allowed familiarity to help them  at first learn how to hear the different sounds. Again like the first lesson, I only focused on the 24 words. However, this lesson could allow me in the future use as many or as little amount of words as possible. Like the first lesson, this lesson also did not allow the students to see the words in a sentence, which may have been more beneficial, and a limitation to the students. However, the students seemed to learn a lot from this lesson from the way it was set up!

As a teacher again I noticed that I was quick to correct them. After the first few times I caught myself and stopped correcting them. I also caught myself getting frustrated with them when I KNEW they knew the answer but for some reason wasn’t saying the right word or correct amount of sounds. They had showed me before they knew those sounds and words but seemed to act like they did not at times, and it made me annoyed and felt like we were going backwards. What do I do in that situation?

Reading Lesson Plan #2

Reading Lesson Plan # _2__ Rationale: After speaking with my MT she told me that Caleigh and Zee needed more help in the area of phonemic awareness. I haven’t really seen this need in action in the classroom, but told her my idea for my lesson and my MT said they would benefit a lot from the lesson. Objective for this lesson: o   Performance: The students will be expected to tell me the word and the amount of sounds they hear in a word I show them. Then they are allowed to toss that amount in bean bags into the box o   Conditions: Students will do this in the gym after I show them a word on a card. o   Criterion: The students will need to attempt and try sounding the word out in order to be acceptable. However, they will need to answer the amount of sounds correctly in order to fulfill that word on the checklist. Materials & supplies needed: 6 bean bags, a box, 2 lists for the students (‘how many sounds’ at the top of one column and ‘points’ at the top of the other column), word list, my checklist and 3 pencils. (Lesson adapted from: http://www.readingresource.net/phonemicawarenessactivities.html)

Procedures and approximate time allocated for each event  • Introduction to the lesson  (What will you say to help children understand the purpose of the lesson?  How will you help them make connections to prior lessons or experiences?  How will you motivate them to become engaged in the lesson?) “Today we are going to be learning how to identify sounds in a word and be able to count how many sounds are in words we learned last week. We will need to learn the sounds of these words so that they can help us learn new words in future lessons. In this game there are bean bags to be played with if you attempt to tell me the amount of sounds in a word”.  (_2__ minutes)  • OUTLINE of key events during the lesson (Include specific details about how you will begin and end activities; how you will teach students what the strategy is, how to use the strategy, and when to use it; what questions you will use; how you will help children understand behavior expectations during the lesson; when/how you will distribute supplies and materials) I will hand out the materials and then say, “To start we need you will begin by reading the word I show you on a card. Then you will tell me how many sounds you hear. For example in the word ‘fish’ I hear 3 sounds (sound out fish for them and then have them do it with the same word). You can use this strategy for all of the words. You then write that number in the column under ‘how many sounds’. For the amount of sounds in the word you get that amount in bean bags. Since fish had 3 sounds, I get three bean bags to throw in the box”. (Then actually throw the bean bags in the box from the line). “However amount of bean bags successfully make it into the box is the amount of points you get. Since I got 2 bean bags in the box I get two points and I mark that number in the points column on my sheet. Then we go onto the next word. We are doing this alone, don’t tell  your friend the answer okay? Any questions?” Now I would start the game.  (__25_ minutes) • Closing summary for the lesson I will end this lesson by saying, “Today we learned how many sounds were in specific words and how to figure it out. We learned how to identify those sounds too. What word was the hardest word to identify the amount of sounds in it? What was the easiest? Did you like the game? You are going to have to figure out sounds in words when reading in the future, even today when you read your books too me. It is important to remember how to do this. Remember how we figured it out, so that you can figure it out in the future”. (_4__ minutes) Ongoing-Assessment: For my assessment I made a checklist (attached). The first column has words, the next column has a spot where I will write if the child read the word correctly or not and the last column is a spot to write if the children gave the correct number of sounds. This gives me a clear idea of what the child knows or learned through this lesson and what they still need to work on.

Adaptations: Based on what you know about your focus students, what Academic, Social and/or Linguistic Support will be needed during the lesson? I will keep repeating the directions throughout the lesson. These students struggle with remembering the directions in class when working on different lessons. It will be important for me to keep repeating the directions till they get the hang of it (I am thinking halfway through my lesson).

Assessment:
Word:	Did the child read the Word Correctly?	Did the child give the correct number of sounds?

Reinink, Reflection 1

Reinink, Reflection 1

I was really surprised in the way the students reacted to my lesson. Usually when these two students are pulled out for anything, they do not like to participate, even in games, they just want to be back in the classroom. However, right when we started the game the children were not shy and caught on really fast to the objectives and rules of the game. They both tried hard to read the word in their head and make a sentence. Neither one of them tried to define the word. I really encouraged sounding the word aloud but the students did not seem interested in doing it that way. After awhile I sounded it out with them aloud, so that I could hear what they were struggling with. I would ask, “What sound does this letter make,” and go through the whole word and then tell them to put all the sounds together. They both did a lot better and they both went through all the words. Once they got a hang of the game, they both tried harder and were a lot more successful at recognizing the words and identifying them by the end of the game.

Thinking back through the lesson, I can see how it was a helpful way for the students to learn these words. Too many times they are stuck reading books the do not enjoy or doing worksheets that are not stimulating, in order to learn words. This gave the students a chance to learn words and show what they know through a fun game, that they showed me they really enjoyed. A limitation to my lesson was that it only focused on the 24 words on the mat. I really could not expand upon it and students could not recognize it in a sentence. This made the words just words and not useful. If they had been in sentences, they would have been more useful for the students since they normally see these words in sentences and not by themselves.

As a teacher I noticed that I sometimes get impatient when children are sounding out words. I just wanted to jump in and tell them the word or that they were saying the wrong sound for the word. What is the best way to help a new reader learn to read? I am super nervous for this for next year since I will be in a classroom full of ELL’s and this is something I am still struggling with.

Reading Lesson Plan #1

Reading Lesson Plan # _1__ Rationale: After speaking with my MT she told me that Caleigh and Zee needed more help in the area of word identification and recognition. I had seen this in class when they read to me(they read me their books weekly). Objective for this lesson: o   Performance: The students will be expected to say the word and use the word in a sentence. o   Conditions: The students will do this when they choose what dot to put that body part on when I spin the board (it will give a color and the body part). They will say the word and say the sentence after they choose and look at the word. o   Criterion: The student needs to attempt to read the word and use it in a sentence to be acceptable. However, in order to fulfill that word on the checklist, the child needs to read it correctly and use it correctly. Materials & supplies needed: Twister mat with words on each dot, spinner and checklist (Lesson adapted from: http://www.momto2poshlildivas.com/2011/11/learning-through-play-sight-word.html)

Procedures and approximate time allocated for each event  • Introduction to the lesson   “Today we are going to play a game to help us recognize and identify words. These words you will be reading, hearing and learning about in future lessons in school. (_3__ minutes)  • OUTLINE of key events during the lesson Have you ever played the game Twister? It is a game where one person, who will be me, spins a spinner and the spinner will land on a color and a body part. The other people, you two, will put their body part on that color dot. In this game when you put your body part on the dot you will tell recognize a word by reading me the word and will identify the word by using it in a sentence or defining it. When we are finished with that, I will spin again and you will keep that body part on that dot till I spin that body part again. I will next call out the next body part and color I land on, you will read the word and define it/use it in a sentence and repeat till we all have used all the words or someone falls down. You may get your body all tangled up! I am wondering who is going to stay up the longest on the mat! Make sure you are reading the words right and using them correctly! Let’s begin. Caleigh start on one side and Zee on the other”. I will continue to let them play this game for about 20 minutes or until they use all of the words.  (_25__ minutes) • Closing summary for the lesson  I will end the lesson by saying, “We learned how to recognize and identify words today through the game Twister. What new words did you learn to recognize and identify? How did you learn to say them if you did not know how to? You will see these words in books you read and Bible lesson Mrs. M teaches you. What was the hardest part of this game? Later today when you are reading to me you will need to recognize words like you did during the game, remember the strategies we used”. (_4__ minutes) Ongoing-Assessment: For my assessment I made a checklist (attached). The first column has words, the next column has a spot where I will write if the child read the word correctly or not and the last column is a spot to write if the children used the word correctly in a sentence or define it correctly. This gives me a clear idea of what the child knows or learned through this lesson and what they still need to work on.

Adaptations: Based on what you know about your focus students, what Academic, Social and/or Linguistic Support will be needed during the lesson? I will keep repeating the directions throughout the lesson. These students struggle with remembering the directions in class when working on different lessons. It will be important for me to keep repeating the directions till they get the hang of it (I am thinking halfway through my lesson).

Assessment:
Word	Did he/she say the word correctly?	Did he/she use the word in a correct sentence/define it correctly?

Reading Lesson Overview

In my classroom there are two students who are a few steps behind the other students in the classroom. My teacher chose them for my Reading Lessons. She told me that she has noticed that they are still struggling with phonemic awareness, word recognition and word identification. Those three areas are the areas she wants me to focus on for my Reading lessons. My teacher does not really know why these two students struggle in these areas, but I do know that they are the youngest kindergarteners in the classroom.

According to my teacher, Caleb* seems like he is babied at home. So when it comes to school work, his parents help him out a little too much. My MT makes the children do a lot of their work alone in school because she needs to assess what they know. She finds that when Caleb is in groups he messes around.

Caleigh* is WAY younger than all of the students. My teacher wonders if that is why she is so behind the other students. She is also a lot less mature. She works at a more slower pace than the rest of the class but gets her work done eventually. She is on the borderline of being held back.

My MT really did not say how to go about these lessons. However, she hardly teaches AT them, rather does a lot of games, worksheets, group work, etc. For the word identification and word recognition lesson, she gave me words to use and said since these go hand-in-hand to just do these two together. The readings assigned for this assignment really did not help me because a lot of them were about comprehension and connections. I used Pinterest and found ideas on there for my lessons.

*Names changed

Expanding Children's Vocabulary

This week we have been reading about expanding children’s vocabulary. In Tompkins’ book we read about the 3 tiers of words. I had never known these existed but now they make total sense. The first tier are basic words that children who are native English speakers do not really need to be taught. The second tier is the academic tiers and are taught to students because they are used in writing more than speaking like in tier 1. Tier 3 are more abstract words called specialized words that are only taught if there is a theme that goes along with it. Tier 2 words seem most important to focus on in my lesson because those words are the core of the lesson and you need to know and understand those words before you can understand tier 3 words. Tier 1 words should already be known or the students can learn them while we are orally saying them.

I am reading the book “Bud, Not Buddy”. I would focus on the first two chapters for words to focus on. I have seen my teacher do this before. I would read the first two chapters and then have the students go back and pick out words they do not know about. Words in this first two chapters are important words for the children to understand as they read the rest of the book (from what I have noticed reading through the book myself). The words the children pick out will most likely be Tier 2 and Tier 3 words. I will make a word wall of these words and go through the words of Tier 2 and explain them. Then I will see if the students can explain Tier 3 words based on what they know from Tier 2 words. If they cannot figure them out I will let them use books (social studies books in particular and dictionaries) to figure out the words and rephrase them. After I let them find definitions, we will come up with a class definition for all the tier 3 words on the word wall.

I could see this turning into a social studies lesson because I see my students picking out words like “depression” from the book. I would make note of that so that I could build off of that in my social studies lesson so they get a better understanding of what these words mean and where this book falls in American History. I will also let the student ask questions about the book. I foresee my students ask about why Bud lives at school and now is going to live with a new family and not his own. This will introduce the word orphan to the children, since Bud’s mother died and Bud’s dad was never in the picture (up until the end). For a mixture of tier 1 and 2 I see my students asking what grown folks are. They will know what grown ups are, so they know the word grown but folks would be a tier 2 or 3 word for them. They do not necessarily need to use the word folks in writing but it is not really a specialized word either. I can see children asking what a lavatory is and I would consider that to be a tier 3 word, since we do not really use that word anymore.

Overall, this would be a difficult lesson to teach but helpful. Difficult because I do not know which words children will ask about and what words they will not ask about. It will be helpful because a lot of the words in these first two chapters are used throughout the book. For the next day, I will have a vocabulary sheet for the students that will have our definitions for the words we talked about and leave a blank spot for the students to write new words they do not know and need to look up.

New Literacy Lesson Plan

This project has been so much fun! I really have enjoyed it! Before this project, when I heard the word “literacy” I always thought it meant reading, writing and referred to language arts. While this can be true, I learned through this project that, which is not even close to everything that literacy holds. It has been interesting learning about all the different literacies through people’s projects and learning more in depth about the literacy I chose (emotional literacy). I can see the importance of all of literacies and how they build on each other. I am now aware of ways I can incorporate all of the literacies in the classroom. Jenny’s literacy informed me how to incorporate numeracy in the classroom. Her project was super helpful because numeracy is something I struggle with teaching. Researching emotional literacy has taught me how important it is to teach it in the classroom. Being emotionally literate is important to function in the classroom and in life. Children need to know how to deal with their emotions and how to read other people’s emotions. A lot of other people in the class did emotional literacy and it was fun seeing how we found similar and different information. I like how Lindsay included the quiz on emotional literacy on her website. I really enjoyed learning about and using Voicethread. It was a lot easier to use than I thought. After finishing it, I think I would use it in my classroom. All the children have to do is hit the next button and do not even have to know how to read. They can just listen to the presentation and then comment on it by speaking. This can help ELL students become more involved in the classroom as well! If they know how to write better than speaking they can write on it to make comments or vice-versa. I also really liked the prezi’s people did. It is really simple and to the point. It was easy to navigate as well. All of the literacies I learned about in this project were really interesting and important. It was fun to learn new things to teach children and the importance of them. It was interesting to see how all of these literacies tie into language arts and how they are all important for the children to know in order for them to read and write. It was also fun to see new ways to teach them. I liked doing these projects as readings for this week. It gave us a new way to learn about things that can build our foundation of LA.

To provide effective literacy instruction to diverse learners means to have literacy instruction that will reach all learners in the classroom so that they all learn from it. In the classroom teachers will have ELL, special education students, typcal students, and other learners. Throughout my research I have found it to be very important to for teachers to be teaching in an effective way so that all their students are learning. For example, I chose Voicethread for my technology. All children can use this technology as long as they know how to click a button. They also need to know how to either speak, listen, read or write in order to participate. This is a broad spectrum and can almost reach all children in the classroom, if not all. My students in my classroom could also use prezi if the words were simple enough to read. It was pretty much straightforward and easy but the students have to know how to read. Both of these are effective literacy instruction for students in my placement classroom.

Lesson Plan: By making a short movie to tell about their culture

Target area/rationale: Most recently my students have been working on (more diligently) summarizing key events and important information in a text. Doing this through a movie and about their own culture would help reinforce learning this newer concept and help them apply it in other ways. My students struggle with picking out the VERY BEST events and information and tend to just tell the whole story. Focusing on this area will make them pick out the important information and key events because there may be a lot to tell about their culture.

Objectives: Students will make a short movie telling about their own culture.

Materials: Some sort of computer that has a moviemaker on it, a camera (or a camera on the computer), paper and pencils.

Outline of Key events:

- Teacher will tell students what the definition of culture is.

- Students will start by watching a movie I made about my culture

- Students will watch me show them how to get to the moviemaker.

- Students will explore moviemaker.

- Students will have a letter sent home explaining the new project and have their parents explain to them and help them find good websites about their culture or help tell them about their culture

- Students will come back and record their movie

- Students will edit their movie

Closing summary: Students will have the next day set-aside during class to watch other students videos. They will learn about many different cultures

Ongoing assessment: Students have just begun journaling in my class. So I will have them journal about at least one other culture they learned about through this experience.

New Literacies Project

For our New Literacies Project, Marie and I are investigating the Voicethread technology and Emotional Literacy. At first I was really not looking forward to learning about Emotional Literacy. It did not sound very interesting to me and did not sound very important. However, Marie and I both did not know very much about it and as future teachers thought it would be important to learn more about it. As we have done research on it I have seen how it is VERY important to teach emotional literacy in the classroom. Today children have become obsessed with technology. Technology IS useful but hinders children from learning about their emotions and other’s emotions. When talking to others they are behind a computer screen or cell phone a lot and not face-to-face. This does not allow the child to show their emotions and work through them or read other people’s emotions. We have learned that not knowing about emotional literacy can be very dangerous to the student and has caused a lot of children to go into depression because they do not know how to deal with their emotions in a proper way. I have learned that emotional literacy is important to all of the other literacies children us on a daily basis. For example, understanding a cultural literacy is to grasp the social cues, literal cues of one’s culture that apply to reading and writing. Reading, writing, listening, viewing and speaking all play a vital role in becoming emotionally literate. Although, speaking, viewing and listening are especially important in order to effectively display your emotions, while understanding and cooperating with their emotions. Reading and writing are important when teaching this literacy through Voice Thread, but we see it as a potential problem when students are learning social and cultural cues, which play a huge role in being emotionally literate. I think that emotional literacy is important to teach starting right off in pre-school because children need to know their emotions all throughout school.

Voicethread has been very interesting to learn about as well. I see that it can be very useful and gets children away from worksheets and their daily routine and let’s them explore a new way of learning. I do not think that this is a technology that would be useful in my kindergarten classroom unless they were guided through the steps of how to use it. My kindergartners are not very tech-savvy yet. This program was easy to figure out once you searched around a bit but I am a lot more tech-savvy than my kindergarteners. The students must have some concepts of print that are not only applied to traditional writings and literature mediums(i.e. reading left to right, top to bottom, starting with a capital letter and ending with a period), but they must be able to understand the different concepts of print associated with Internet, technology, etc. (See Tompkins). Internet and computer use is a vital key that should be integrated into student learning. We live in a time where the use of technology is exponential and it seems that more and more young children have a greater understanding of how to use technology. As a teacher, it is important for us to point out the different concepts of print so students have a better understanding of the variety in text fonts, colors, orientation, etc. In Voicethread children are using reading, writing, viewing, listening and speaking all in different ways. They are watching videos or voice overs and then can comment by writing, speaking, texting or calling in. Overall I have really enjoyed learning about both Emotional Literacy and Voicethread and can see the importance of both in a classroom

Week 7 scenarios

Lupita: From past readings I have learned that it is important to call on all students in the classroom. One of the readings I read for this class a few weeks ago ( I think) talked about the importance of allowing students to think their thoughts aloud. Lupita has ideas and they may not be the same ideas as the rest of her classmates but they also might be the same. If they are different, then it is important to hear her points of view. If they are the same as others, then it is just as important for her to voice her ideas. Mrs. Potter won’t know where Lupita truly stands in academics until she begins calling on her. Lupita is clearly doing well in puzzles and seems to be a bright student in that area but may just be shy and does not raise her hand in class. We have learned in class that some students learn best through talking and if she is not doing well, it may be because she is not sharing her thoughts aloud. Do more group work in the classroom.

Jonathon: We learned in this week’s reading we about figuring out what the student likes. This is important in this scenario because if you find out what the student likes, he will be more interested in reading the material. I would structure more fun reading time into the daily schedule and give him books he would like and be interested in. I would also send books home he would like and have him read with his parents or guardian. Also, I could structure more teacher involvement in reading and have him read to me once a week or ask for parent volunteers to come in and have all the students read to one of us adults once a week so I do not single him out.

Eddie: From the reading we read this week about Marcus, I think it would be helpful to give Eddie something to fiddle with and squeeze when he is expected to sit and pay attention. This gives him something to do with his hands while sitting and participating in group time. Mrs. Potter found that Eddie is interested in frogs but maybe did not catch the part about the frog eggs. Ask him what he learned from the lesson instead of a specific question. The tadpoles would have helped him focus and be more interested in the subject because he needs visual aids (said in this week’s reading).

Week 3

Literacy is everywhere in my classroom. My teacher does not have a specific “literacy time” because she believes in integrating subjects. She thinks that her kindergarteners learn better from integrated subjects rather than specific time focusing on each individual subject. My teacher loves books and she reads a lot of them daily. She has them predict what the book is about, what the characters are like and what will happen next throughout the book. One thing I think she could also focus on, is talking about the pictures. She has all sorts of books with different modes in the classroom and has talked about what it means by the text colors, when the font gets bigger, etc., but hardly ever talks about the pictures and the meaning behind some of them. Based on the reading by Hassett and Curwood, this is important to have the students recognize and so when they are reading on their own it will help them understand the story better. She also uses a lot of the different strategies talked about in Langer’s reading about being out and stepping into the text and relating to them and the other strategies the author talked about in that article.

Her literature she does incorporate into the literacy portions of class are of all different types of modes talked about in the reading by Hassett and Curwood. She has all different types of books too. One thing I think she could expand in her collection, is more difficult topic books, like talked about in the Leland article. Some examples could be divorce, homelessness and other tough and awkward topics that most teachers want to avoid. I think she may not have these in her classroom currently because she does have young children and it is a catholic school. When we talked before about books, she said she had to be careful of the book selection because it is a catholic school. She does include literature in all subjects and the kindergarteners seem to learn really well through this way of teaching.