Lesson Overview: Students and Plan

I have selected 3 students, one who is reading below grade level, one who is reading at grade level, and one who is reading above grade level. The students selected are not English language learners and do not qualify for special services such as speech. However, the students I have selected have varying abilities which makes our classroom so diverse and special. Each student has their "just right" leveled book. The students chosen range from "F" (High proficiency), C, and AA (Low proficiency). The topics selected are prediction and word recognition. The rationales for each are listen below along with a brief overview of each lesson.

Word Recognition
Rationale: Students often go to the library to select books. I have noticed that

many of them are coming back with books they need help reading. Thus,

when they have time to look at their library books they are often off

task. When approached about the situation, they explain that it is

because they cannot read it. Therefore, it is crucial the students

learn how to take a picture walk through the book so they can better

develop their reading and predicting skills.

Lesson Overview: Students will be able to predict what is going to happen in a story by

taking a picture walk and vocally expressing what comes next during the

reading.

Prediction: 

Rationale: One of the ongoing themes in the classroom is word recognition. Words

are introduced by using a letter, sound, blend technique. These skills

need to be reinforced because they will be entering first grade in a

few short months where reading strategies are crucial to keep them up

to speed and assist in comprehension.

Lesson Overview: Students will be able to recognize high frequency words by sight during

a group reading by highlighting it in their personal copy.

Letter to Parent

Dear Parent/ Grandparent/ Guardian, 
 
My name is Ms. Buckner, and I have been working in _________'s classroom as a student teaching intern for the 2012-2013 school year. I have been working closely with your student in reading and language arts to help prepare them for their future first grade classroom. Your student has shown progress in the areas of _________, _________, and ____________. I have also observed your students progress in a variety of social situations and your child is doing excellent. 

One area where I believe your child could use extra supports, based on my observations and assessment,is the area of phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is a term used to describe a child's understanding of the sounds a letter in a word makes. This area is extremely important for future reading skills and in preparation for more difficult words. Although your child does an excellent job identifying letter sounds, your child does have difficulty "blending" these sounds together to form words (ex: C-A-T says cat).

I have provided you with some ideas and tools to help you understand this difficulty and some suggestions for helping your child informally by doing everyday tasks. 

• Anytime Tasks: when you are walking/ driving with your student point out a word they see often (such as a stop sign)
•  ask child to say the word.
• ask child what is the last sound you hear? /p/
• what is the first sound you hear? /s/ /t/
• what letters do you think make those sounds?

•  Reading Tasks: when you are reading with your child emphasize letter sounds in simple three letter words. Provide your child with an opportunity to sound these words out. 

If you have questions and concerns about your student's progress or questions about different tools and ideas you can use at home. Feel free to email or call at any time. 


Thank you for your continued support. I will continue to aid in your child's learning  and do the best I can to foster the best learning environment I possibly can! 


Best 
Ms. Buckner

Lesson Activity Overview Buckner

The focus of my reading lessons will be phonics and decoding strategy based. My students currently struggle with blending letter sounds and decoding words. Many of my students become disinterested or frustrated when struggling to decode a word, and many often give up.


 Both of my activities will have a focus using Elkonin Boxes to help students identify letter sounds/ phonemes.
One reason I am using Elkonin Boxes is that I hope this strategy will act as a reverse blending activity. Because my students have difficulty blending letter sounds to decode words, an activity that focuses on stretching out words, giving students an opportunity to listen to individual letter sounds, will help students better hear the letter sounds and how they contribute to each word. I think the Elkonin Boxes strategy and activity is really powerful when teaching students about letter sounds and blending because it uses a skill they are already masters of; in this case, speaking the full word. Students already know how to pronounce words, so they can use this skill to help them stretch words to identify letter sounds and the sounds that correspond to each letter.

Noelle Reardon - Students

One of the students I am working with for my reading lesson is Molly. Molly is an ELL who just recently started attending the school. She is able to communicate in English verbally, but struggles when it comes to writing and reading. One day Molly asked me to help her spell a word, so I worked with her to sound out the word. When I asked her, “what letter makes that sound” she was unable to choose the letter correctly. For the letter sound “f” she picked the letter “d”. If Molly is unable to identify the sounds of particular letters there is no way she can be successful at reading words or writing words. I think by giving Molly more individualized help it will allow me to address the underlying challenges she is having. The other student I will be working with is Susie. Susie moved to the school not long after Molly did. Susie faces many of the same challenges that Molly faces. Molly however stays on task even if she has no idea what do, whereas Susie starts to do other things or disturbs her classmates. I think having Susie work in a small group will help her stay on task and will allow her to get the help she needs.

Lesson Plan - Noelle Reardon

One of the small lessons I am doing is focused on alphabet phonemic awareness. The students I will be working with are struggling with letter sounds and I hope this will help them. I hope that the lesson will encourage them to practice their letter sounds so they can become confident readers. My other lesson will be working with students on sight words. Many of the students are struggling with remember them and I think a fun lesson would help.

Winters Article - Noelle Reardon

I really liked the instructional strategy that was used to teach vocabulary words in the Winters article. The students were instructed to figure out the meaning of multisyllable words by identifying the morphemes. In school I was told to memorize the definition of a word and once the test was over the word was no longer incorporated into the classroom. After the test was over I very rarely remembered the word. The strategy used in the reading is great because the students have the ability to bread down a word on their own to figure out the meaning of it. When students are not taught this strategy they either skip over the word or they have to look it up. When you are talking to someone you can’t look up every word someone uses and knowing how to break up a word will allow you to figure out the meaning or general meaning of a word. This teaching strategy will much more likely help students later on, where a lot of other strategies teach students how to use words in sentences.

New Literacy Project - Noelle Reardon

Taylor Peel and I decided to explore visual literacy. • Review the definitions of literacy (see sidebar) that you and your colleagues posted. How does becoming 'literate' in the area you are investigating compare and contrast with these definitions? Ours focuses on interpreting meaning from what we see and others incorporate multiple things to interpret meaning. • What part, if any, do the traditional literacies play (reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing) in becoming literate in the area you are investigating? It makes a difference in how students interpret what is occurring in books, understanding how to effectively communicate and understand others and how we write with expression and body language to describe things. • What new content are you learning as you become more familiar with this literacy? The power of images and how images have so much meaning. • What new skills and strategies are you learning as you become more familiar with this literacy? That there are many ways the I can incorporate it into my lessons and everyday instruction. • What surprises have you experienced during your exploration? How beneficial it is to use images with everything you teach. • Think about the students in your field placement. If they were exploring this new literacy, what support would they need in order to become literate in this area? Is this type of literacy already present in the curriculum at that grade level, or would this be a new learning area for the students? The students are mostly learning with images since they don’t know how to read everything. They connect letter sounds to the beginning sounds of the names of animals. • What else are you learning about your new literacy? That is present in our everyday lives. My review of Emma's Literacy Project: · Was the project easy to navigate or understand? Why or why not? The project was really easy to navigate. You can click on what you want to know and it will take you directly to that information. · To what extent was the project appealing, accessible, interesting? Did your colleagues provide ways for you to become involved with the content? How? It used colors and pictures. It was interesting to see and learn about all of the information. The page showed how we could become involved with activities to help our students. · Did the choice and use of the options available with this technology (e.g., use of images, sound, video, options to comment) seem appropriate or effective? Why or why not? They used pictures that were relevant to the topic, but they didn?t take away from the site. · What did you learn about the targeted new literacy? I learned how social literacy is important to teach how to use it and safety instruction as well. I never thought about teaching safety concerns when teaching how to use different technology. · What did you learn about the targeted technology? That social media networks can help connect students with their peers and help them connect with their future careers. · What ideas did this project give you about literacy, technology, and/or teaching Language Arts How I can add technology to my classroom that is safe, fun and educational. I can have students create fake Facebook pages where the page is all about someone important in history.