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.

New Literacies- Elizabeth Buckner

I chose to explore visual literacy for the New Literacies project by creating a virtual poster through Glogster. Before deeply researching this topic, I had assumed that visual literacy had more to do with the aesthetic appeal of the picture or graphic and what it looked like, rather than what it communicated. Through exploration of the new literacies project I now understand that visual literacy is the communication and comprehension of a message through the use of graphics, symbols, and pictures, and that the aesthetic qualities of these have matter little without some type of the understanding of why it is aesthetically pleasing.

Through this project, Chi Wan, Emily, and I, were able to explore visual literacy as well as it's usefulness in the classroom. We focused on how visual literacy is used in education, such as using sign language, PECs, picture supported reading, utilization of visual literacies in picture books, as well as tips for helping teachers understand how visual literacy can aid students in learning and understanding curriculum.

We defined visual literacy as comprehending, communicating, and creatively producing graphics, pictures, and symbols that communicate some type of meaning, and looked for examples of visual literacy in the classroom. We thought that Glogster would be a good way to explain the literacy because it is such a visual website, and visual literacy is all about visual graphic representation. We were able to add pictures, draw arrows from one idea to the other, use visual examples and more!


As you evaluate and respond to your peer’s project, address the following ideas,  but also feel free to comment on other aspects that you noticed:

• Was the project easy to navigate or understand? Why or why not?

Angela, Tessa, and Miranda's project was extremely easy to navigate. Because Book Builder is so linear, there is only one direction for readers to see text. Because there was so few words per page, readers are able to pay extra attention to each page of the book.

• To what extent was the project appealing, accessible, interesting? Did your colleagues provide ways for you to become involved with the content? How?

I think the project was appealing because of the technology that was used. Angela, Tessa, and Miranda provided a means of interactive manipulative with the ability to flip through the book.

• 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?

The project included videos, visual diagrams, and examples. I think the use of these examples inserted into the book were very effective, and is apart of this technology that is so appealing to students. Because this project was a  virtual book, Angela, Tessa, and Miranda had the option of adding manipulatives that would not be possible with a conventional book.

• What did you learn about the targeted new literacy?

From Angela, Tessa, and Miranda's project I learned about the facets of emotional literacy and about many related texts that help teachers express this literacy in the classroom in a way that children can relate. Emotional literacy is not just recognizing emotions, but it is also gaining the ability to recognize and respond the emotions of others in an effective and healthy way.

• What did you learn about the targeted technology?

Because I have used UDL Book Builder before, I understood how to navigate the site, the accessibility of the book, and how to create and edit books. From this project, I saw the UDL Book Builder used for an informational text, which I really liked.

• What ideas did this project give you about literacy, technology, and/or teaching Language Arts

UDL Book Builder is an excellent tool not just for educators to learn about new literacies and technologies, but also can be utilized to help students understand technologies and literacies. Building a book about emotional literacy geared toward students rather than teachers, could be a tool that can be utilized in the classroom.

New Literacy Project

For my literacy project, I chose to find out more information regarding emotional literacy by creating a website using Weebly. After completing the project, I realize my conceptual understanding has completely changed. I originally walked in to the class knowing nothing about emotional literacy, I began by thinking emotional literacy was being able to identify emotions; however, after exploring a bit, I realize that it is much deeper. It involves being able to recognize emotions and respond to them in a healthy way that will help develop a better, lifestyle.

I learned that emotional literacy can be incorporated into the classroom by using more than just books as well. Emotional literacy can be carried about by having counselors and better emotional diagnosis. It can also be carried out through the use of technology. While creating my website, I realized Weebly would be great for informing people about emotional literacy. The website allows you to add links within your webpage to take users elsewhere. I knew this was a feature I would want to incorporate, so I did a little exploring on the internet. I found that PBS Kids had three online interactive games children could play that would help them identify emotions. By exploring many sites, and having the opportunity to create one of my own, I am now aware of the multiple strategies listed about that will help introduce individuals to the idea of emotional literacy. This information will also help individuals see the difference and similarities between traditional literacy and emotional literacy. One site talked about literacy being able to navigate through text. It soon compared it to emotional literacy by saying that emotional literacy is when we navigate our feelings and are able to read and decipher them. By becoming aware of the differences and similarities, we can better provide literacy instruction.

Providing effective literary instruction to diverse learners is extremely important, especially within the context of emotional literacy. Not every child feels the same way about certain situations. In addition, not every child is faced with certain situations. These factors will affect how students learn. Therefore, when I say it is important to provide effective literacy instruction, I mean it is important to take into consideration these differences and make sure students are aware of these differences. By making students aware of their own emotions, they can be more aware of others emotions and be able to understand how someone may be affected by words or phrases that were said. I think sometimes the words we used are overlooked, but this project and creation of a webpage really helped stress the importance of careful planning and forced me to recognize the impact some words could have.

Words and emotions have an impact no matter what age, but I believe that the younger one is, the bigger impression they leave. As a teacher, implementing emotional literacy is extremely important. It will help create a friendly environment where students can feel comfortable with each other because they will know how to better express their thoughts. Students would need constant modeling as a support mechanism in addition to opportunities for practice. I would provide this support by incorporating lists of helpful and hurtful words, modeling my feelings through personal messages and reflections, and provided ways children can express their emotions through communications, journals, or even a tattling turtle.

There are many outlets to explore emotional literacy, such as creating a new digital project such as a Weebly. In order to do this, students must be aware of how to use a computer and navigate a website. Students, especially younger ones, may need hand over hand support and explicit direction and visual aides/ demonstrations. With the right directions, students can better develop their digital literacy by openly exploring and creating new things.

Exploring a variety of literacy types in a classroom is extremely important. While I do believe emotional literacy is important, I also believe that it has to be joined with other literacy types such as digital, social, cultural, etc. to truly be effective.

New Literacies Blog Update- Buckner

 Visual literacy is comprehension and communication through a visual/ graphic means. Pictures and graphics can, at times, be extremely arbitrary. A picture can communicate so many different things, which is why, when paired with writing, visual literacy can be so powerful. Pictures allow for interpretation, creativity, and ideas that text might not be able to express with the same ferocity. Visual literacies are extremely important in comprehension tasks for young students who are acquiring basic reading skills. Often young readers use context clues, such as pictures, to determine the meaning of words that still have not been learned. 

Visual literacies can be extremely important for students will learning, social, or cognitive disabilities. Aspects of literacy such as Picture Supported Reading, which places visual representations above words for students with reading difficulties, or picture exchange communication systems, can be extremely helpful in communication for children with social differences or ESL students.

In children's literature, particularly picture books, readers can learn a lot about the a book that the text does not explicitly tell through pictures. Picture books are a really interesting and specific genre of storytelling because so much really depends on the visual aspect of the book. 

 

 Some of the web resources I have found include: 

- http://k-8visual.info/ - collection of e-books and resources for using visual literacy in the classroom

Comprehension

I really enjoyed the readings for this week, especially the online articles. The articles talked a lot about different ways students think about texts they are presented with, and how we, as teachers, can aid in their learning and comprehension processes through instruction and discussion strategies.  Applegate, Quin, and Applegate's article "Profiles in Comprehension," addresses the styles of comprehension students in our classrooms partake in. The article divided students up into eight comprehension categories; literalists, fuzzy thinkers, left fielders, quiz contestants, politicians, dodgers, authors, and minimalists. Although I have not yet had the opportunity to analyze student comprehension for every student in my classroom, categorizing the way students think, and understanding the faults in that thinking is EXTREMELY helpful for teachers. The article pointed out the characteristics of these thinkers and interventions that can help them. 

I have a few students who I think probably could be identified as "Fuzzy Thinkers", and understanding what kinds of interventions could be useful was extremely helpful. 

I also found the "Kindergarteners can do it too! Comprehension strategies for Early Readers," extremely helpful. Noelle, Allison, and I all work in Kindergarten classrooms, and often because students lack word processing skills and writing skills, it is difficult to assess comprehension for these students. I loved the way this teacher used hand signals to indicate different types of responses to the text, as well as how she used charts / board write-ups to organize student thinking. Originally, I had really wanted to do a poem for my language arts lesson, but I was unsure how to go about directing a discussion on the poem I wished to share. This article gave a really great example of how to use poetry effectively in the classroom, and made me eager to use these strategies in the future for poetry/comprehension instruction. 

What do you think? Noelle Reardon

What do you think? Lupita: I really don’t understand why Mrs. Potter think Lupita is lacking academically. If Mrs. Potter’s reason for her lack of knowledge is due to Lupita being quiet in class and rarely interacting with other students I think that’s absurd. You can’t expect a child to adjust and do things she is not use to just because she changes environment. As we read in one of the readings how it is sometimes helpful to give students opportunities to show their knowledge in a variety of ways. Maybe Mrs. Potter could give the students an assignment where they have to make something or draw a picture. Lupita demonstrated her knowledge of figure out how a puzzle fits together and was able to help other students. Maybe it would be helpful for her to have more hands on activities. One way doesn’t work for every student and I think that is something we should keep in mind as future teachers. It’s hard for me to say exactly what she should do because the article gives very little information. Jonathan: From the reading we discussed in class how it is beneficial for students to have directions on the board. It is helpful for students to know what to expect next. I think this would be helpful for Jonathan and for other students as well. When the students are confused they can refer back to the board. I think she should do a reading assessment with Jonathan that evaluates his knowledge in phonetics, phonemes, comprehension, etc.. The sooner Mrs. Potter finds out why Jonathan is struggling the sooner she can help him. Eddie: I think Eddie would learn best with hands on activities or activities that involve movement. In the article it mentions how he will ask to go to the bathroom often, has trouble sitting, and doesn’t get his work done. If he can do activities that keeps his body moving the more likely he will stay on task. He probably challenging for him to finish assignments because he is forced to sit in a seat and not move. I think she could asses Eddie’s knowledge by having him draw pictures, make a project, or even act out plays would be beneficial. He is missing out on important information when he is constantly leaving the class or is zoning out. I think it would also be helpful for Eddie if Mrs. Potter to make lessons relevant to his life or give real life examples. As we talked about in a numerous readings that when a topic is relevant to a students life the students are much more likely to be interested and remember the material.

Tompkins

After observing my students writing, I have come to the conclusion they are all at various levels. Some students are at the letter name- alphabetic principle. That is, students are learning that phonemes represent words, but the spellings are abbreviated. For exmaple: "iswdrnbw" could mean "I saw the rainbow". Then, there are other students who are in stage 3, within-word pattern spelling. That is, the majority of the techniques are correctly in place, but some patterns of spelling are off. In order to design a center activity to help improve their spelling, it is important to cater to both student groups and their specific needs. I feel the best way to do this is by creating a center that has children use their weekly study words to create a short story. For example, if the week's words were "the" "and" "that" and "him" students could create a story using those words. This ensures the students are working on their spelling and word recognition skills without explicitly correcting them. Furthermore, it allows them to use their own imagination and inventive spelling. Nonetheless, as each week goes on, the students will learn more and more words and be able to incorporate those into their story in hopes of creating a full on sentence with proper spelling.

Hettinger & Knapp Article - Noelle Reardon

Hettinger & Knapp Article It is important that we provide our students with a variety of reading material. We need to motivate our students to read and that is not by making it a chore for them. When we provide our student’s with a variety of reading material the chances of them being motivated to read increases. Allowing students to read comic books or magazines is as beneficial as having them read a book. The key is to get students to read and any reading is good reading. I think it is important for us to teach our students that they can become better readers, but that is only by practice. Student who are low achieving in reading can be seen as having a disability even if they excel in different subject areas. Suggestions for motivating students to read are by having older students read with them, book-sharing, and partner reading. The article mentions a lot about parents reading with their kids and with people at home, but that is not always an option. If that is not possible for students at home than it is our job to create other opportunities so they’re successful.

Literacy in the Classroom

Currently, I am doing my field work in a kindergarten classroom in Lansing School District. Literacy is an important aspect of the curriculum and classroom setting. In my classroom, weekly activities are often centered around one story, or the teacher uses picture books to aid in subject area learning such as math, science, or social studies.  My mentor teacher has a vast picture book library, and designated reading area for students, where they come to read during center activities or during free choice. Every afternoon this area is also utilized for full class story time, where my mentor teacher picks a story, or several, and reads it aloud to the class.
Beck and McKeown's article "Text Talk: Capturing the Benefits of read aloud experiences for young children", examines read aloud techniques and failures by teachers to elicit student thinking and comprehension through read aloud. Beck and McKeown's article points out that read aloud experiences are especially valuable for young children, because although they may understand complex and challenging ideas, they may still lack the word recognition to read the stories on their own. Often stories that have strong or challenging themes and concepts have a vocabulary that students have yet to master. These ideas are extremely important to consider when teaching literacy skills to young children, especially kindergarten and first grade. Although techniques for comprehension are not always utilized in read-alouds, I think that understanding how to effectively elicit student thinking is an extremely important skill and is one that I hope to master this year as I continue working in my field placement.

January 14 Post - Noelle Reardon

List of Goals: 1. To apply the material to my teaching in the classroom 2. To become a more confident teacher 3. Learn about how to apply different teaching strategies in the classroom 4. Learn ideas how to make material relevant to my students. Type of School/Community: I plan to teach in an urban setting. I plan to teach in a Public School. I want to be able to learn how to make literacy instruction come alive for my students. I want them to enjoy learning and have a clear understanding of what I'm teaching. I believe there is always a way to make learning relevant to my students and I want to connect with my students so I can make learning relevant. I need to develop myself as a teacher if I want to make my teaching clear and relevant. Jigsaw Article: It is so critical to understand that students learn in so many different ways and one way is not more important than any other. It is important that I allow my students to apply their knowledge in many different ways. I can see whether or not my students have a clear understanding without giving my students formal testing. Some students may have a clear understanding of a topic, but performs poorly on tests.

Post 1/14

Literacy has always been something that has interested me. Growing up, I loved reading and I wanted my friends to love it just as much as I did. Today, as a college student studying education (with a concentration in Language Arts), I am still trying to figure out how to spread the joy of reading to other people. Now, I know not everyone is going to fall in love with the idea of literacy, just as not everyone likes math, science, or history, but my goal as a teacher is to find a way to present material (including literature) in a way that actively engages students and provides them with an opportunity to learn literary techniques as well as an opportunity to witness the important of literacy.

We are in a day and age where we are constantly reading- whether it is the word "STOP" on a stop sign, a phone number from the side of a cab, a story before bedtime, or a text message/ Facebook post/ tweet. Right now, you're reading this blog. Everyday tasks that take minimal effort are directly related to our development in terms of literacy. However, these tasks do not come so easy for many individuals.

I have witnessed in my placement, and through my volunteer work with at-risk children, that some students are falling behind in terms of their education in the language arts area. In my experience, and I know all experiences are different, the students are falling behind their peers because of a lack of resources- as a girl who has high hopes and dreams of teaching in an urban area, this situation is extremely troublesome.

I am expecting this course to introduce solutions to this trouble on my mind. I believe this course will provide me with proper techniques in order to ensure each of my students is receiving an equitable education. I hope that it will also provide me with resources I can use in my internship year and beyond to obtain meaningful materials that I can present to my future students. I want to learn about how to make these techniques and materials relevant to my students' lives. Furthermore, I want to walk out of this course being able to say "I can provide my students with multiple opportunities to find something that sparks their interest in terms of literacy"- if I can do that, the course has not only done it's job, but I have done mine.

-Allison Pargoff