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?
In regards to your post, Emma, I agree and do not understand what we are supposed to be doing with a novel for this blog. I will just respond from what I think about vocabulary lessons in connection to a novel.
ReplyDeleteI think vocabulary lessons are incredibly important. I have noticed a few vocab lesson in my classroom. As a class, my students follow along with my MT as she reads a novel over a few weeks. As the students are following along, my MT pauses and makes sure students understand the vocabulary in the novel she is reading. For example, the students were reading The Indian in the Cupboard and my MT paused at the word "stout." The other descriptive words around that word helped the students to figure out what the word was. My MT asked the students if they knew what it meant and talked through how they could figure out the meaning of a word based on other descriptive words that may follow or come before the word in their reading. I felt this was an effective way to tie in vocabulary in an activity that does not necessarily focus solely on vocabulary.
Reading through this chapter of Tompkins has inspired me to do a vocab lesson as one of my reading lessons. I think I will pull two students to read a book with me and we can focus on one or two words that may be unfamiliar to them and we can create a word map together, writing the word in the middle, and writing associated words branched out from that word. This can help students to understand vocabulary in an unconventional way and instead of just looking it up in the dictionary.
Overall, I think vocabulary is an incredibly important aspect to reading and can be tied into the classroom in many different ways.
As I am reading through the responses given by the two of you, I find myself a bit confused as well at what the novel is that this blog is connected to.
ReplyDeleteAfter taking TE 301, I think every student walks a way with two things: 1. a feeling of being completely overwhelmed at the many practices to both test and offer to students in order to develop their vocabulary and 2. an understanding of the importance of vocabulary lessons, especially in connection with comprehension and fluency.
In my classroom, there are some vocabulary lessons that take place on a fairly regular basis. My MT gives the students a consonant or vowel blend such as ("oo") and then asks the students what words they know that have the "oo" blend in them. Once the students give these words, my MT then places them on a big piece of paper in which the students are able to reference as needed while completing their worksheets. Unfortunately, this method means that only the words that are on the worksheet are accepted by my teacher and put on the board. I do not particularly like this since I believe it hinders my students from reaching their full potential and utilizing all that they know. Although my students do have a word wall, they do not know many of the words on it, nor do they understand that the word wall can and should be used as a reference when they are writing.
There are little to no read-alouds that take place in my class. For this, I have not been given the opportunity to see any vocabulary instruction from the stand point of an actual book.
Much like Emily, Tompkins has given me a bit of direction in which I can now begin to create ideas for the mini-lessons that are expected to be completed over the remainder of the semester. I have decided that the two lessons will be: 1. Offer a suffix or an ending consonant blend where the students can practice how to rhyme. I have previously noticed that my students do not understand how rhyming works or that rhyming words typically end the same. I would like to take a small group of students aside (possibly 3) and have give them a suffix in which they will need to go through each letter of the alphabet and see if it can create a real word. 2. Focus on alphabetical order. I don't know exactly how I am going to do this, but I do know that my students have no idea or experience with alphabetical order. Although they know the alphabet, they do not know how to put it into practice. I think it would be very important to practice alphabetical order with the students as it is a skill they will use forever.
I believe that both of these lessons address aspects of vocabulary that will ultimately contribute to a greater vocabulary down the road.