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.

     

Feb. 25, 2013 Post

After I completed this weeks assigned reading I found myself thinking back to the process of how I personally learned to read.  Like we discussed in the math section of class this past week, I feel like both the beginning stages of learning about mathematics and to read are forgotten over time once you have far surpassed them.  I personally remember that once I learned how to read I had no trouble with comprehension, however, decoding and sounding out words was far from easy for me to pick up.  In hind sight it would appear to me that as soon as I learned how to read on my own, I was passed to most basic level of comprehension, literal comprehension, and on to inferential comprehension.  I remember immediately using my own knowledge when reading along with the information presented in the text.  If I were to guess, I would have to contribute this to my parents constantly reading to me as a child, asking me questions about the books they read to me and relating different aspects of the books we read to my life somehow.

Interestingly enough, when in my placement classroom I see students with the almost the exact opposite problem of mine.  Some of the students can read a paragraph out of the book at a good pace and with no errors, but, when you ask them what they just read they have no idea.  Occasionally they can recall a main idea or some events that occurred, but I feel like my mentor teacher is constantly working with all of the students (high and low achieving) one sequencing details. 

One article we read, “Profiles in Comprehension” talks a lot about the importance of not having your students answer recitation questions, and instead using higher level thinking questions such as asking them to predict what they think may happen next in the book and having class discussions.  Although my MT asks my students to predict what they think may happen next when she is reading out loud to them, I see them answer recitation questions on work sheets all the time during individual reading time.  This I think, as the reading also explains, is leading to the students not enjoying reading nearly as much as they could.  Furthermore, I remember filling out many, many packets that were filled with recall/recitation questions though out grade school, and back then I hated reading.  As teachers we need to get away from giving students busy work with questions that are simply testing to see if our students did the assigned reading and often leads to our students to disliking reading.  We must allow our students to explore a book as they read it.             

Week 7

                 As one can imagine, Mrs. Potter’s room seems daunting for even the best teacher. Every year it is a struggle to understand how each individual child is thinking, how they process information, and what they can produce on paper. It is even more difficult to accomplish this task when there are special needs children or students with learning disabilities. Regardless, Mrs. Potter is still accountable for her classroom, much like Carlisle points out in their article. In order for learning to be accomplished successfully in Mrs. Potter’s class, there are many changes she needs to make.

                First off, Mrs. Potter needs to take a step back and realize what her job title is. She is a teacher, one who teaches. Her job is not to conquer the world or to make every child a genius. Her job is to offer unto her students the proper foundational skills in order to learn for the rest of their lives. In order to do this, it is pertinent that Mrs. Potter understands that each and every child is one that should receive some amount of her attention as in the case of Lupita. Secondly, Mrs. Potter needs to understand that if she doesn’t take the time now to address the learning disabilities her students have, then who will later on down the road? Finally, Mrs. Potter must understand that every child does not learn in the same manner. I understand these ideas seem very specific and appear as though they will work, but it is important to remember that teaching is all trial and error, and even though I believe this will help Mrs. Potter’s classroom, it may take even more work than this.

                In the case of Lupita, Mrs. Potter has the opportunity to make a true impact on this child. Lupita does not have any learning disabilities, she has a learning disadvantage. As the writing state, Lupita was raised in a different country and has not had the same level of exposure to learning manipulatives as the other students. Regardless, she can learn just as well as the other students, but this requires taking time to catch up on what she has missed. I think the most important thing Mrs. Potter can do in this case is to offer Lupita some of her attention. Even more, if Lupita is successful at putting together puzzles, then she should receive the praise she deserves. Lupita’s migration is not an ample excuse for ignoring her in the classroom or giving her any less recognition. She is not only as deserving as the other students, but as an ESL student, she needs the encouragement to succeed later on in her education.

                In the case of Jonathan, I believe that Mrs. Potter has the opportunity to work alongside of his parents, as Carlisle suggested, to truly understand if Jonathan is displaying some difficulties with reading at home. The classroom does not fully demonstrate how a student learns or what they struggle with. Therefore, I believe that it is pertinent that Mrs. Potter keep a close eye on Jonathan and see exactly where he is struggling with reading, as well as asking his parents. If his parents tell Mrs. Potter that he only wants them to read aloud at home, right there is an indicator that he does not feel comfortable and confident with something. Parents may be the most valuable resource in this case.

                In the case of Eddie, well he sounds like every other little boy. Unfortunately, Eddie may struggle with some attention issues, but that does not necessarily mean that he is deserving of an ADHD medication. Instead, as a teacher, I believe that it is most efficient to mix up the day slightly; get your students out of the everyday routine and allow them to be explorers. Obviously movement triggered something in Eddie’s brain, therefore as a teacher Mrs. Potter needs to take that knowledge and figure out how she can use it in the classroom. If she is introducing motion, have Eddie be the one throwing the ball. In the case of Eddie, if you don’t engage him, you will probably lose his attention wholly. Therefore, let Eddie be in on the action and spur his creative mind toward using his strengths to the best benefit of the classroom.

                While all these ideas may seem overwhelming, they are not something that can be done quickly, they take time and creative thinking to attempt to bring all your students to one place in the classroom. Giving up is not an option…they are worth so much more! That is why the only option then is work hard to help them in any way possible.  

Week 6

    Generally, my students are great writers. Most are very inventive and enjoy writing stories or writing about previous experiences they may have had. After collecting my writing samples, I still see this passion for writing. Their spelling however, leaves me wanting a little more. My third grade students are definitely in stage three of the stages of spelling development. They show Within-Word Pattern Spelling. The description of this stage includes that many students make small spelling mistakes such as form for from. This is something that I often see in my students writing. They often confuse their "theres" (using the wrong there/their/they're in different contexts) and frequently forget the 'e' in -ed ending words. They commonly miss just small things in their spelling, such as one student writing 'ower' instead of 'owner' or 'drumer' for 'drummer.'

    Despite common mistakes like these, I know my students are in the process of learning more about correct spelling and are in the right stage for their spelling development for their age and grade. However, I do think they could use more help in this department. By using a literacy center, my students can continue to work on spelling. My students are very used to centers, as they participate in literacy centers every morning. None of them have ever really been about spelling though. Having a center devoted solely to spelling might be helpful to my third graders.

    Because differentiating the different "theres" is something that is difficult for my students, I would consider putting together a sort of game in which the students would be given a picture and a sentence that ties to the picture with a missing there/their/they're. An example would be a picture of a family by their house. The sentence could read "The Smith family loves ______ new house." Student would have to work together or on their own to decide which there/their/they're is the correct one to put in the sentence. I would be sure to have dictionaries for the students to use so that they could look of the definitions of the different "theres" in order to place the correct one on the blank.

    Obviously, this is just one idea that could work as a spelling literacy center. So many different things could be done to help my students with their spelling and I think utilizing the centers to help them do that is a great idea that I plan to share with my mentor teacher.

Week 5

    
     To be completely honest, there are very little discussions that take place in my third grade classroom that I would consider to be "rich." Given that there are 32 third graders with a lot of energy that enjoy talking out of turn as it is, I feel that my mentor teacher has kind of given up on the idea of having meaningful, educational, rich classroom discussions about a reading. Although she often asks questions after "Read Aloud" and has the students predict what they believe may occur next in the reading, the conversation always comes back to her. I rarely see the students build off of what each other say (this is where I feel it would be helpful for my MT so say "agree, disagree or add on"). Additionally, when my MT asks a question and calls on more than one student to answer, they often just repeat what the first person who answers the question said in another way.  This I feel is not helping anyone because it is almost discouraging students from having opinions/thoughts out their own because they are fearful to disagree and/or answer incorrectly.

     Another interesting thing that I have observed during reading time is that the amount of time and discussions the students have with in their reading groups and with my MT is contingent on   students’ level of proficiency.  Although I understand that the lower functioning children require more attention when it comes to learning how to read, I find it interesting that the students who are high achieving never even have group discussions with one another about what they are reading.  Given all that I have seen, I am under the impressions that the students who are not considered “behind” have a week to read a book that is at his or her level of proficiency and as they read that must complete a packet with various questions about the reading.  Although they get practice both reading and writing and their comprehension is tested with the packet, there is never a single discussion between peers and or students and teacher. 

            As for the learning resources available to the students in my classroom I am happy to report that they have a classroom library that has many books in it that are labeled given the books reading level.  There are many different types of genres for the students to choose from and each student has a dictionary in their desk to use as an additional resource when they are unaware of a word’s definition (however- this does somewhat discourages students from having meaningful conversations with a neighbor about what a word may mean).  However, I am still yet to see the 5 classroom computers utilized as an additional resource, and I also feel like the classroom’s Smart Board is not being used to its fullest potential.  I have never once seen the computers on, and the Smart Board is only used when there is an interactive video that goes with the specific chapter from the book that the students use.        

Week 4 Blog Post

As I sit here and think about the literacy curriculum that is included within my classroom, I am a bit shocked at the lack of utilization of materials and resources . Although my MT does have a few computers, reading textbooks, and printed assessments, there is still no classroom library. Therefore, when I assess what materials our classroom holds, I feel as though we are missing the most vital one, being the classroom library. As discussed above, my students have reading textbooks which simply includes a book full of short stories that are made for first graders. Although these books are nice in that they speak to the abilities of my students reading, they fail to challenge them in that they are strictly designed to go in an order as a class instead of individually. Furthermore, these books are the only books that my students can read out of when they finish their work throughout the day; you can only re-read a book so many times before it becomes boring and uninteresting. The computers that we have in class are programmed with a slew of websites that are supposed to be for working on reading and literacy. Unfortunately, when I was in the classroom the other day, they were playing coloring games online and the one reading website they had was seriously the most boring website I have ever seen! There is not an alphabet posted anywhere in the room so it is quite common that my students ask what a letter looks like or how you write a letter. This not only frustrates me, but also makes me feel unprepared in the classroom as I don't want to step on my MT's feet in order to improve this scenario. My students are able to visit the library once a week, but they are not permitted access to these books during the day so their opportunity to read is greatly reduced.
          In addition to all of this, I feel as though my classroom does have the materials, but they are not utilized to their fullest potential. While it is great to have computers to use, they are only beneficial if they are used appropriately. Furthermore, I think it is of the utmost importance to provide students with selection that goes beyond what they are comfortable with and sets them up for a challenge as they learn new words. When I sit and read with my students at their desks, it brings me great joy to see the improvement they have made since I first met them this year. Unfortunately, this improvement is short lived when I hear how far behind we are in reading as well as how many of the students are behind. I know that the resources we have can be used better, but it takes change for this to happen. Without question, the need for classroom books is beyond important as I see that classroom money would be well spent if we decided to travel down the road to have a classroom library.
         As described in the reading by Dawnene D. Hassett and Jen Scott Curwood, titled "Theories and Processes of Multimodal Education: The Instructional Dynamics of Picture Books and Primary Classrooms", they state that multimodal texts are texts that "Include various pathways to follow, parallel displays of information, extensive cross-referencing elements, evocative graphics and images that extend, often replace, the printed word as the primary carrier of meaning" (271/2). Although this description can be simplified down to the idea that multimodal texts include the transfer of information through technological venues, the idea of multimodal texts are only beneficial if they are used correctly. There may be many computers in my classroom, but if the students are not using websites correctly or ones that include a great deal of literary development they are going to waste. Therefore in order to make this situation better, I would go through and eliminate any additional websites or programs from the computer that do not deal directly with learning. I want to take away anything that distracts the teachers and students from using the computers as busy work.
           In addition to all of this, I would also only use the textbook/reading books for supplemental help not the only resource for reading on part of the students. Having students all reading the same book in the same order keeps some of the students confused, the other part on track, and fails to challenge the rest. This is not the model of effective learning that adheres to the many needs of our students, especially the ones in my classroom.

Emily Hoag-Goals for this course!

Week 2:
After reading through the syllabus and the readings for this week, I have developed some new goals for this course. I really want to learn about the development of language arts skills and how to work with students at varying levels of abilities in reading and writing. I have learned about language arts concepts in other courses, but I know that this course will teach me more concepts, as well as strategies, to help me better teach language arts in a diverse classroom.
I plan to teach in an urban school district in an urban community. I am aware of the challenges that I will face, which I felt were outlined well in the Jigsaw article I read (Fleming, et al). I do, however, wish that the article had not been so negative and also reflected upon some of the rewarding aspects of teaching in an urban school. I know that I will have a classroom most likely filled with students with varying reading and writing levels and I hope this class can teach me some strategies to address those varying levels and still allow the students who are excelling to continue on their paths as well as help those students that are struggling to begin to make sense of things for themselves.
I am very aware that I do not know much about literacy instruction. I know that I am a great reader and love to read books aloud, but I am not sure how to teach other language arts concepts in a way that is effective when teaching the 8 year old children I work with on a weekly basis.  I am hoping to gain more skills in this arena throughout this class. I am passionate about language arts, so I look forward to learning strategies for effective instruction for my future classroom!

First Day