End of Semester Reflection

   When thinking about the semester in it's entirety,  I feel as though I have learned a lot about how I should and will teach Language Arts. I have always had a good grasp on L.A. related things but throughout the semester, I have realized there are so many parts to learning about these different things. I have learned more about the importance of scaffolding when teaching Language Arts and how important differentiated instruction is. It is difficult when we, as teachers, already know all of these things and we need to be aware of the fact that our students are still building the foundational knowledge needed to become successful language arts learners.
     I have also learned more about incorporating technology into my classroom in regards to language arts. Through doing the New Literacy Project, I learned about the many different kinds of literacy there are and how to use different technologies to teach about those literacies. In doing this project, I learned more about how easy it can be to incorporate these different things into language arts instruction and how it can be beneficial to students.
    Overall, I am really pleased with what I have learned in this course about teaching language arts. I feel more prepared, especially after having written multiple lesson plans. I obviously have much more to learn, but I am pleased with the progress I have made this semester!

Letter to Parents

April 13, 2013

Augustus & Marlene Breckenshaw

5555 Tree Lane

West Lansing MI 00000

Mr. & Mrs. Augustus Breckenshaw,

                I have had the pleasure of working with your son Martin for the past year and have learned a great deal about what he values, his hobbies, and what he wants to be when he grows up. Martin excels in generating ideas as well as spending time with literature that supports adventure and animals. I am grateful for such a fun student to have in my class!

                I will be finishing up my teaching internship this May, whereby I will no longer be attending the classroom, and Martin’s teacher, Mrs. Coledemere will take over instruction once again. Until we reach that point and into the summer, I encourage you to actively pursue the integration of reading activities into your daily lives. Although Martin has made tremendous strides in learning the many blends of the alphabet, recognizing sight words, and understanding the use of vowels in words, extra practice is always helpful. Martin struggles to recognize new, and more difficult words, as well as incorporating these words into the text he is reading. Martin can comprehend what he needs to, but when a word stumps him, he is stuck and spends a great deal of time focusing on the word instead of remembering all that he has previously read. Your child is reading at grade level, but I encourage you to challenge him this summer as simple literary practice techniques can make a world of difference/.

There are many ways you can go about challenging Martin’s current literary standing. As I stated above, Martin enjoys reading books that pertain to his interests. In pedagogical terms, we call this library, where Martin delves into an assortment of books while also venturing deeper into the classics he loves the most. Martin would be a prime candidate for reading clubs that the local library offers, as it exposes him to a wide variety of books. In addition, I would utilize the index cards I will attach to this, which have letters and blends on them, to make words. If you are able to make an affix and then have Martin build off of it, this challenges him to make the word instead of reading a pre-created one. This reverses the role of what Martin is responsible for, which allows for some differentiation in activities, hopefully keeping him interested.

The final and most important thing I can ask you to do is to read with Martin. Rely heavily on asking Martin to do the reading even if it is a long and daunting text. Remind him to take each line as its own and before he knows it the page will be done! The more text Martin is exposed to, the more equipped he will be with sorting through hard and challenging words. When you do encounter challenging words in a text, bring them out in your everyday life or in the making words activity in order to foster the opportunity for a difficult word to become a sight word.

You have a good boy on your hands and I am sad to see him head up to second grade without me. He does well and you should be proud. Challenge him now as he is young and with time, you will see the fruits of your labor. Enjoy your summer!

Thank you,

Miss Cramer

Reading Lesson Overview

For my reading lessons, I am planning on focusing on some skills I know my students will understand how to use, but may not be fully developed yet. The students I plan to work with are of varying levels of reading proficiency. I would like to work with one student (student 1) that I know struggles with reading but enjoys it and the other student (student 2) is a great reader but is not the most confident. Student 1 is a confident young man who does decently well in school but does all that he can to avoid schoolwork. I have noticed that he sometimes spends all of math time in the bathroom. When it comes to reading, he knows his sight words well, but has a really hard time with larger words with strange sounds in them. He will attempt a word and then while not looking at the word itself, he will make random guesses as to what the word is. Student 2 is a good student but is pretty constantly distracted and doesn’t focus well. This has affected her reading because she does not focus well when she is reading and she tends to have pretty poor fluency, although she does know the words she is reading.

            Because these students are different, it is hard to figure out what lessons would be beneficial to both of them. From what I have seen, my students do not spend a lot of time working with vocabulary besides the use of dictionaries. For this reason, I would like to do more of a vocab lesson using a strategy similar to that used in Winters article with word frames. I would read a short book with my students and choose one word from that book to analyze. I think choosing a word that my students are unfamiliar with and conducting the word frame as well as doing some word associations with a bubble map would be helpful to them to think of new words in a different way. This is something I think both of my students are capable of and would help with their fluency. We can also break down the phonemes of that specific word to help Student 1 learn more about how to break down a word.

            For my other reading lesson, I am thinking of working on reading factors with my students. Because they both enjoy reading, but it may not be the easiest thing for them, I think working on things like predicting, connecting, questioning, visualizing, etc, will continue to excite them about reading and help them develop some reading strategies that will help them in the future. So, for this lesson, I will choose either another book or the same book used for the vocabulary lesson and work through the book, pausing to make predications, connections, visualizations, etc to encourage them to do this while reading on their own. I will try to explain the importance of all of these strategies to their learning as well.  Again, I think this would be beneficial to both of my students because these are things they can both work on even though they are at different reading levels.

April 1 Post

               In my field placement I rarely see assessments taking place.  Although a few of the students with IEP's are pulled for testing outside of the classroom, the children that are at grade level or above do not seem (to me) to have their progress tracked. The one assessment I have seen (one time) was a running record assessment.  The student had one minute to complete a sample reading and the classroom aid made note of any errors.  This allowed for both reading speed and accuracy to be assessed.  I thought it was a bit strange that this took place in the back of the classroom with all the other students present.  The student seemed very nervous and uncomfortable, and I feel like it was not a very accurate assessment given the situation.  

               Over the past semester I feel like the students at grade level or above have made a lot of positive progress when it comes to  word identification and fluency, however, I feel like those you are behind have not made very much progress.  I feel like a lot of this has to do with the attitude of many of the students who are struggling.  They do not care to put in the work, and they are rather negative.  It is hard to watch because I know many of the students are more than capable of completing the work put in front of them, but if someone is not there walking them through it, they will not finish it.  On a more positive note,  every week my students have spelling tests as well as "amazing words" that are posted in the classroom and talked about.  They do vocabulary practice on the SmartBoard and my mentor teacher calls up individual students to  complete the interactive quizzes that are often fill in the blanks.  

               As far as my mini lessons go I am still a bit confused.  The details are a bit vague, so I am interested to hear what you guys are planning on doing.  I would also like to know what our "book club novel" is.  Is it just the book that we did our original lesson on, or is it something completely different?        

Hi all,
I don't see anyone's posts for the March 18 class. Please make sure you post them on your blog! Review the NL website for directions. The posts were due no later than 5PM March 18.

Week 10--Reflecting on Learning

As I began this project, I found myself in a state of confusion as to exactly what I was supposed to be doing. Are the directions to teach my fellow peers about different forms of literacy or to create a lesson that encompasses my selected form of literacy as well as generating a lesson from a topic that mixes the two. After asking many questions and understanding exactly what the task at hand was, I was finally able to wrap my head around exactly what I would be doing in order to convey the importance of social literacy through the computer-based program known as Jing.
           Jing is a useful tool that allows for users to take a screen capture or video of their computer screen. From a pedagogical perspective this allows for me, as a teacher, to post in-class lectures that include exactly what I have on my computer screen, the additional information I offer via a voice recorder, and the ability for students to look back at these sessions as needed in the future. I once heard about Jing through my CEP 416 class that offered the idea of approaching education through a "Flipped Classroom" approach. This strategy for learning requires that teacher's flip from the traditional classroom setting of teaching students during lecture and allowing them to work on homework at home. In the Flipped Classroom, the teaching/lecture portion of education is done at home through online lectures and homework is done in the classroom. The hopes in using this approach is to offer students the opportunity to ask questions while working on their work as opposed to teaching students and then asking them to go do their homework at home without assistance.
             Although I do not have the ability to decide this approach is best for my students, as most school districts make this choice. I do on the other hand have the ability to record my everyday lectures so my students are able to refer to them at any and all times when they are in need of assistance on their homework or studying for a test. Moreover, using Jing to record a lecture allows for parents/guardians to have the resource of referring to in-class lectures as opposed to being in a state of confusion while aiding their children in their homework.
             I have learned the importance of allowing both parents and students the opportunity to access resources in order to get the most amount of work/comprehension in a short time. In addition, I have also learned that social literacy is used in a variety of venues that are used in everyday life as well as in the classroom. Due to this I realized that Jing is a valuable tool that I believe should be used in the classroom as much as possible. Social literacy is something that our students are accustomed with and instead of fighting against them, we should work with them.
    

Week 9-March 11th

      The literacy I chose for my New Literacies project is cultural literacy. I chose this literacy because I feel that it is one of the most important literacies and should be included in the classroom as much as possible. 

       Cultural literacy can be defined as " knowledge of history, contributions, and perspectives of different cultural groups, including one's own group, necessary for understanding of reading, writing, and other media." Because of it's connection to overall literacy, cultural literacy is incredibly important to keep in mind when trying to teach students about language arts. By teaching students about different cultures, it helps them to better understand the world around them as well as helping them to understand the stories they are reading much better, especially if they are about a culture other than their own.

      From the readings for this week, I learned that cultural literacy is even more important for ESL students. These students may not be familiar with the dominant culture that is seen in many books they will come in contact with. Creating more opportunities to learn about a culture and gain cultural literacy also help ESL students to learn the language. Because of this, it is incredibly important to not leave out books with aspects of different cultures when teaching ESL students. According to Gibbons, "rather than avoiding books that carry any unfamiliar cultural material...the challenge for the teacher is to build up the knowledge and understandings that are relevant to the text the children will read, so that by the time the reader interacts with the text, the text will not be so unfamiliar," (p. 83). Again, this shows how important cultural literacy can be in the classroom for not only students familiar with the culture, but those who are not, like ESL students.

     Through my research on this topic, I have also come to realize that cultural literacy is incredibly important outside the classroom as well. Cultural literacy not only helps students gain more literacy skills in the classroom, but it also helps them in their daily lives. Students must be aware of the dominant western culture in order to understand many of the things they come in contact with. Even knowing that a red octagon sign means stop is a part of cultural literacy. Exposing children to other forms of cultural literacy of different cultures also helps students to be more well rounded citizens and people as they leave our classrooms.

      The new technology I am working with is iMovie. I have begun to do a little searching on how to make the video more interactive and I hope to continue to learn more about how to use iMovie in the most effective way. 

    Overall, I have enjoyed doing research on this topic and learning more about cultural literacy, and I am sure that I will find even more as I continue my research.