Inquiry 2 - Target Area

Inquiry 2- Target Area

1. Describe your target area for guided lead teaching.

Writing Instruction – Genre Study

2. Approximately how much time per day is allotted for your instruction in this area?

We usually plan for 45 minutes – 1 hour of writing, but that is not always the case, depending on how the rest of the day goes. We will typically teach writing for at least 20-30 minutes each day.

3. Which Common Core State Standard(s) will you work toward?

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.4.6 With some guidance and support from adults, use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of one page in a single sitting.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.4.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly.

4. How will teaching in this target area provide opportunities for students to learn important content and/or skills that relate to their lives? In what ways does this learning include learning literacy, learning about literacy, and/or learning through literacy?

The students have not worked with the computers in their classroom yet this year, because my MT is not very comfortable or familiar with using computers. With the growth of technology, students need to become familiar with using computers in many different ways in order to develop skills that involve technology. This lesson will allow students to experiment with the technology in their classroom and develop an understanding of how to use computers in an educational way, with a focus on literacy in that they will be using the computers to write an informational text.

5. What types of classroom talk take place within this target area? To what extent is the talk teacher-led, student-led, or focused on higher-level thinking? What norms for interaction would you like to build within your classroom as you teach in this target area (e.g., see ideas in Chapter 6 of Strategies that Work, the Berne & Clark 2008 article, or draw from some of the readings done in TE 402 on classroom talk)?

Most of the directions and steps will be teacher-led so that the students understand. There will be student-led discussions revolving around their topic that they choose to write about, and also at the end of the unit, I hope to have a student-led discussion or share out with their writing pieces.

6. Which ‘core practice’ do you want to work on developing/improving as you teach in this target area (refer to document “Resources for Developing Core Practices”)? How will focusing on this core practice contribute to your own professional learning?

Genre Study – I haven’t done much genre writing before, since I have always been placed in Lower El classes. It will be interesting to see how the students react to working with a different type of writing that is new to them and involves different vocabulary.

7. What resources within the community, neighborhood, school district, school or classroom do you have to work with in this target area?

The school itself has many resources to use to teach my unit plan. There is a book room specifically for the teachers to use to gather information on how to teach certain topics, which consists of a variety of books on teaching. Also, my MT has her masters in Language Arts – Reading & Writing, so she will be a helpful resource while planning this unit.

8. What additional resources do you need to obtain?

I’m not sure that I will need to obtain any additional resources because there is so much within the school and in my classroom. I will do some internet searching for ideas and tips on teaching this genre, since I have never taught in an area similar to this before.

9. How will you pre-assess your students in your target area?

I will work with them prior to my unit plan on typing and becoming familiar and comfortable with using the computers. Also, I have seen many of their writing samples and ideas that they have written in class and I will use those to help me gauge where students are in terms of writing and the writing process.

10. What else will you need to find out about all students in your class to help you develop lesson plans for your Guided Lead Teaching?

It will be helpful to know what types of topics students are interested in researching and writing about so I can bring in books for them to use for research, so they can develop skills on researching both online sources and books. Also, it will be helpful to know exactly what the students have used the computers for and if they’ve ever used them for a writing project.

11. What else do you need/want to learn about the ‘core practice’ to support your planning and teaching?

I would like to learn ways to teach computer use, and encourage the use of computers in the classroom. Since we have 5 computers in our class that haven’t been used, as well as 2-half hour periods in the computer lab each week, I think it is important for the students to realize that the computers can be used for things other than educational math games online.

12. What concerns, if any, do you have about planning and teaching your unit?

I am not too far into my planning yet, so I am not sure that I have any questions now. I am sure that as my planning progresses, I will develop more questions on teaching and developing my lessons.

Inquiry 2 Part A: Target Area/Core Practice

Inquiry 2 Part A

1.     Describe your target area for guided lead teaching.

My target area for my guided lead teaching falls is “Comprehension Strategy Instruction and Assessment”. The core practice I will use is “determining importance in text”. To do this, I will focus specifically on the text structure and sequence of informational texts, as outlined by the Holt Public Schools Third Grade Reading Workshop Curriculum Guide.

2.     Approximately how much time per day is allotted for your instruction in this area?

There is 15-20 minutes allotted for the mini lessons I will be teaching. This block of time happens immediately following lunch each day.

3.     Which Common Core State Standard(s) will you work toward?

Listed are the Common Core State Standards I will use to guide my unit plan. I have also written my school’s “I can…” statements that correspond to the Standards. These are statements that we use to help our students understand the goals and purposes of what they are learning. I will most likely not teach all of these Standards in my 10-day unit, but these are all of the Standards that need to be taught during the 8 weeks of the school year in which we focus on test structure/sequence of informational text.

o RI 3.5 Use text features and search tools (e.g., key words, sidebars, hyperlinks) to locate information relevant to a given topic efficiently.

·   I can find meaningful information by looking at text features (i.e. table of contents, sidebars, hyperlinks, captions).

o RI 3.7 Use information gained from illustrations (e.g., maps, photographs) and the words in a text to demonstrate understanding of the text (e.g., where, when, why, and how key events occur).

·   I can use words and illustrations (e.g. maps, photographs) from the test to show I understand how, where, when, and why important events happen.

o RI 3.8 Describe the logical connection between particular sentences and paragraphs in a text (e.g., comparison, cause/effect, first/second/third in a sequence).

·   I can describe how a text is organized. Examples include comparison, cause/effect, and sequence.

o RI 3.3 Describe the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect.

·   I can tell the sequence of events/series of events in an informational test (historical, scientific, or technical).

·   I can tell the cause/effect of an informational test (historical, scientific, and technical texts).

4.     How will teaching in this target area provide opportunities for students to learn important content and/or skills that relate to their lives? In what ways does this learning include learning literacy, learning about literacy, and/or learning through literacy?

This target area encompasses comprehension, which is an essential skill for students to learn. The main purpose of reading a text is to understand it and get some sort of information across, whether it is a fact or someone’s thoughts. Teaching strategies for comprehension will increase students’ abilities to understand an author’s purpose behind their text. Also, with a focus on informational text, this unit will help students’ understanding of the informational texts around them that they come into contact with on a daily basis. These include textbooks used in school as well as newspapers and online articles. This unit will also expand their thinking about literacy to include different features of informational text. For example, many informational texts have a cause-effect structure. Not only will students have a chance to experience learning about a specific cause-effect event/sequence, but they will also have opportunities to see how this structure mirrors daily events. They will be able to make test-to-self connections.

5.     What types of classroom talk take place within this target area? To what extent is the talk teacher-led, student-led, or focused on higher-level thinking? What norms for interaction would you like to build within your classroom as you teach in this target area (e.g., see ideas in Chapter 6 of Strategies that Work, the Berne & Clark 2008 article, or draw from some of the readings done in TE 402 on classroom talk)?

I would like to focus on class discussions that move from teacher-led to student-led. My goal for the end of my unit is for my students to be able to understand the purpose of having a meaningful conversation about a text with their peers. I do not think my students will be having completely student-led conversations that focus on higher-level thinking and analysis of text at the end of 10 days. However, at the end of this unit, I think my students will be able to engage in group discussions with some teacher support. Over the course of the 10-day unit, I will use the gradual release model of teaching, where I begin by modeling the strategy for my students. Each day I will release some of the responsibility to the students so that they can work towards having independence (less teacher support) with their group discussions.

6.     Which ‘core practice’ do you want to work on developing/improving as you teach in this target area (refer to document “Resources for Developing Core Practices”)? How will focusing on this core practice contribute to your own professional learning?

The “core practice” I would like to focus on is “determining importance of text”.  Specifically, I will focus on informational texts during this unit. Focusing on this core practice will help me gain a better understanding of and have experiences with teaching informational text. So far in my TE field placements, I have focused on fictional texts when I have read to students and taught mini lessons. I have not had a great deal of experience with how to teach informational text. Also, focusing on this core practice will help me to better understand the way that I think about informational texts. I will need to closely analyze my own thought processes that occur when I read different informational texts so that I can model these thinking strategies for my students. Working on this core practice will allow me to have experiences teaching something new.

7.     What resources within the community, neighborhood, school district, school or classroom do you have to work with in this target area?

Within my classroom, school, and school district, I have access to numerous informational texts. One big resource for me will be my school’s librarian. She has told me (and the other interns at Midway) that she has access to a large variety of books and that she will always do her best to find a resource we need. She will also have many good ideas about texts that I can use for my lessons. In my classroom, my MT has also shown me many different lesson planning and curriculum books that I can use to get ideas for my lessons. In the HPS Third Grade Reading Workshop Curriculum Guide, there are resources listed for lesson plan ideas for all of the CCSS. I can use these, and other reference books my MT has, to guide my ideas and thinking about how I can teach this target area.

8.     What additional resources do you need to obtain?

I would like to find out if there is some sort of community newsletter that is mailed to Holt residents. This may be a good informational text resource to use in my lessons. I also need to spend time looking at the books my MT uses to see what ideas there are for teaching this target area. Also, I would like to look online for lesson ideas and resources pertaining to this target area.

9.     How will you pre-assess your students in your target area?

As I am unit planning, I will write down observations about the genres of books my students read. This will help me understand their general interest in books and the types of genres they prefer. I can also look at the details of the formal testing many of my students did at the beginning of the year again. This will help me understand more about how these students already comprehend text in general (even if the testing was not done on an informational text). I may also begin by doing an activity to find out what my students think informational text is and what some examples of informational text are.

10. What else will you need to find out about all students in your class to help you develop lesson plans for your Guided Lead Teaching?

I also need to find out more about each student’s personal interests and what activities/hobbies they enjoy. I can use this information to help me pick out informational texts for my lessons. I would like to use texts that my students are interested in so that they will be more engaged in the activities.

11. What else do you need/want to learn about the ‘core practice’ to support your planning and teaching?

I need to find out what specifically the most important ideas are that I need to teach (i.e. what elements are the most important in an informational test? Which elements should I focus on the most?) Also, I want to learn what other teachers think the importance of reading informational text is. I would like to learn about all of the different structures informational texts can have (e.g. cause-effect, series of events, comparison…) Are there other structures? Do different types of informational text (historical, scientific, technical) generally follow the same text structure?

12. What concerns, if any, do you have about planning and teaching your unit?

One of my concerns is that I will have trouble finding answers to all of my questions I listed above. I think I will be able to find many ideas for how to teach the specific CCSS for my unit, but I am concerned that I will not be able to determine which type of lesson idea will best fit my students’ needs. Finally, when teaching my unit, I am worried that my students may not all be engaged in the lesson, making it ineffective for those students.

Inquiry 2 Part B

1.     Describe your target area for guided lead teaching.

              Vocabulary Acquisition, Use and Assessment

2.     Approximately how much time per day is allotted for your instruction in this area?

10-20 Minutes and then another 20 minute chunk for individual work during silent reading.

3.     Which Common Core State Standard(s) will you work toward?

RF.3.3

4.     How will teaching in this target area provide opportunities for students to learn important content and/or skills that relate to their lives?  In what ways does this learning include learning literacy, learning about literacy, and/or learning through literacy?

This area is essential for students to build a vocabulary they can use not only in their school work but in their everyday lives. Words are one of the most foundational pieces of the English language and it is imperative they know how to communicate with them. It is especially key in a world of technology.

5.     What types of classroom talk take place within this target area? To what extent is the talk teacher-led, student-led, or focused on higher-level thinking? What norms for interaction would you like to build within your classroom as you teach in this target area (e.g., see ideas in Chapter 6 of Strategies that Work, the Berne & Clark 2008 article, or draw from some of the readings done in TE 402 on classroom talk)?

Most of our word study work is teacher led with student response. There is little higher level thinking.

6.     Which ‘core practice’ do you want to work on developing/improving as you teach in this target area (refer to document “Resources for Developing Core Practices”)? How will focusing on this core practice contribute to your own professional learning?

Explicit instruction and authentic application activities:

o    Word-study concepts

o    Word-study activities

7.     What resources within the community, neighborhood, school district, school or classroom do you have to work with in this target area?

·         Month-by-Month Phonic

·          Words their Way

·         Pintrest word study lesson (given to me by my MT)

·         Word games (given to me by my MT)

·          

8.     What additional resources do you need to obtain?

At this point none, my MT has been very helpful in providing me tons of resources to spark ideas and guide me in my lesson planning.

9.     How will you pre-assess your students in your target area?

We have done a few pre assessments with our students that include:

·         Dolch word assessments (writing the first 100 words)

·         Core Phonics assessments (letter sound associations)

·         I will do a weekly pre assessment of the specific aspect of word study we will be working on. (words with blends and di-graphs, etc) This will help me differentiate my lessons for higher achieving students as well as struggling learners.

10.    What else will you need to find out about all students in your class to help you develop lesson plans for your Guided Lead Teaching?

I will need to know what type of support they have at home so that I can send study sheets home with students. If there is little support at home I would like to plan for extra support at school. I will be able to get somewhat of a feel as to their at home support level from their goal setting conferences next week (I hope).

 

11.    What else do you need/want to learn about the ‘core practice’ to support your planning and teaching?

I need to learn how best to group words for a word study as well as how best to present them and then differentiate the lesson so that all students can be successful and gain knowledge from it.

12.    What concerns, if any, do you have about planning and teaching your unit?

I am not sure at this time what questions I have about planning my lessons. I plan to do some helpful readings this weekend that my MT gave me and then begin to break apart my lesson ideas. After this time I think I will have more questions.

Target Area

1.            Describe your target area for guided lead teaching.

The target area for my guided lead teaching is Acquisition, Use and Assessment of Foundational Skills.

2.            Approximately how much time per day is allotted for your instruction in this area?

The students are split into small fluency groups that meet once a day for 15 minutes. There is also the opportunity to teach fluency in a whole group setting, five times a week for 15 minutes. Usually the whole group lessons focus on comprehension, but in certain circumstances we take this opportunity to teach fluency if it is a lesson that would pertain to all students.

3.            Which Common Core State Standard(s) will you work toward?

Specifically I will be working on fluency in relation to whether or not the students can read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension. This includes: Reading on-level text with purpose and understanding, reading on-level prose orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings, as well as using context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary. These are the 4^th grade reading standards of foundational skills, specifically fluency.

4.            How will teaching in this target area provide opportunities for students to learn important content and/or skills that relate to their lives? In what ways does this learning include learning literacy, learning about literacy, and/or learning through literacy?

To be able to comprehend different readings, it is imperative that students read fluently. If students are more likely to read text fluently, they are more likely to comprehend the text effectively because they are focusing less on the decoding of words and more on what they mean all together. This learning will help students understand that literacy does not have to take the effort of reading each word by sounding them out. Instead they will learn that being fluent in literacy means that they can read the words rapidly, accurately, and expressively. Some students feel very frustrated with reading because they think it is so much work to have to sound out each word. Once they become fluent, reading won’t be as much of a task, instead it will be enjoyable because they can focus on the meaning of the text.

5.            What types of classroom talk takes place within this target area? To what extent is the talk teacher-led, student-led, or focused on higher-level thinking? What norms for interaction would you like to build within your classroom as you teach in this target area (e.g., see ideas in Chapter 6 of Strategies that Work, the Berne & Clark 2008 article, or draw from some of the readings done in TE 402 on classroom talk)?

The teacher, as well as the students, talk about fluency in class. It is important for the students to understand what fluency means and what all of the different components of fluency are. To learn this, the teacher explains the different tasks that the students can do to work on their fluency. This includes teaching the students how they listen for fluency when someone else is reading; such as, listening for inflection, correct use of punctuation, as well as hearing the words read smoothly. Once the teacher has taught what all of these components mean, and what they have to do with fluency, it is the students job to notice them when being read to, as well as comment on why they thought that reading was fluent.

During small group sessions, the students are explicitly taught expectations on what their roles are. During these sessions, the 4-5 students in the group gather at the back table with the teacher. Because the rest of the class is doing individual reading at this time, they have to keep voices low so as not to distract their fellow classmates. They also know that during these meetings they must keep eye-contact with the teacher, follow along in the book when someone else is reading, as well as read along during coral reading. Others norms and expectations are laid out for them during different tasks based on what they are about to participate in. Since these expectations are already laid out in class, and the students respond well to them, I think it would be important for me to be consisted with these expectations throughout my lead teaching.

6.            Which ‘core practice’ do you want to work on developing/improving as you teach in this target area (refer to document “Resources for Developing Core Practices”)? How will focusing on this core practice contribute to your own professional learning?

I would like to focus on reading on-level prose orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings while I am teaching fluency. I feel like a lot of the students in the fluency groups had goals about becoming more fluent when reading aloud. Because of this, I would like to focus most of my lessons on some form of oral reading. In the past, I have mostly worked with students on their comprehension or other areas where responses are more individual. Rarely have I seen oral reading, and if I have, I haven’t seen it enough to notice an improvement in students learning. I feel that if students become more fluent at reading aloud, they will become better at self-correcting themselves while reading individually.

7.            What resources within the community, neighborhood, school district, school or classroom do you have to work with in this target area?

In our school, we have access to tape recorders as well as many different level books. These will be helpful for read alouds because students will be able to record their own reading and be able to go back and listen to how fluent they were. There is also access to Reader’s Theatre scripts that I would like to utilize with the students to work on their fluency.

8.            What additional resources do you need to obtain?

After seeing my students work with sight word flash cards, I realized I want to challenge them by giving them shorter phrases to memorize into flash cards as well. To do this I need to find a list of appropriate phrases to work with this group of students.

9.            How will you pre-assess your students in your target area?

The students have already completed DRA tests that broke down their performance on many different tasks, including fluency. I will use these scores to help determine where each student started as well as what level of text I should be using with them.

10. What else will you need to find out about all students in your class to help you develop lesson plans for your Guided Lead Teaching?

I would like to find out more about what interests them so that I can develop tasks that will be fun to them. I know of a Lego game that students play to help with their fluency. If I know students interests, I will be able to tailor my lessons to these interests.

11. What else do you need/want to learn about the ‘core practice’ to support your planning and teaching?

I would like to learn different ways to assess student’s progress in fluency. Besides looking at running records, I am unaware of how to check whether or not they are becoming more fluent.

12. What concerns, if any, do you have about planning and teaching your unit?

One concern that I have for planning my unit is creating lessons that won’t be too hard for the students but ones that will challenge them. I don’t want lessons to be unachievable, but I also want to make sure that they are being pushed to achieve all that they can.

Week 2

  I think that in order to take Routman's advice on teaching writing I would need to develop a sense of what is essential versus what is not. She says that, "...those skills need to be taught because the writer needs them to convey a message, not because they are on a checklist or in a prescribed 'scope and sequence' program" (Writing Essentials p.12). It is important to become an expert in helping create meaningful writing. What is meaningful to one set of students may not apply to the next so it is important to discover what makes meaningful writing and how to determine what students deem meaningful. 
    I especially want to focus on the integration of writing and basic skills because writing scores in my school are so low. In fact my third grade group decided to work on integrating writing into our social studies and science lessons whenever possible. Finding ways to do this can be tricky We decided a good way to do this and check for their understanding at the same time is to practice summary writing.  Routman says, "One of the most effective ways to teach reading comprehension is by asking students to write summaries" (Writing Essentials p.127). She also points out the importance of teaching how to construct a summary. I am excited to start to become more familiar with teaching this writing as well as how it works with their lessons. I think the struggle with integrated these subjects is finding a good balance of time for writing and the subject matter. The students only have a total of 2 hours a week of social studies and 2 hours of science. I look forward to finding ways to make this work to our advantage. 
     I would like to try writing in our science and social studies and focusing on content while there and then take some time during our writers workshop to polish a piece. This would give extra time to writing and science and repeated exposure.

Classroom Dilemmas

      With the new Common Core Standards being implemented in my school this year, my mentor teacher and I, as well as the other fourth grade teachers in my school, have had many meetings on we they will plan our literacy lessons. While the Common Core Standards give a broad sense of what should be touched on during the year, it is our job to take those areas and simplify them into units, lessons, assessments and rubrics. Many of my fellow classmates are feeling the pressures of following rigid curriculums, such as Reading Street; I on the other hand feel that there is so much freedom in our curriculum that you don't even know where to begin. I am very grateful that I am facing this dilemma during my internship year so that I can learn from the teachers that have experience building lessons and units. Even though they have been teaching literacy for many years, you can still tell that they are all a bit nervous about what direction to go in. 

     Since there are six elementary schools in our district, we have to confer with the other fourth grade teachers, and somewhat decide together what lessons and units to teach, and in what order. Since there are so many different teachers to get in touch with, they felt like it would be too difficult to share information. Since the other interns and myself have recently taken classes at MSU that incorporated different technologies, we all suggested that we could build a Wiki that all the teachers would have access to. That way, any one could log on and submit what lessons they taught, share what went well and not so well, as well as keep everyone in the loop on how units in general were being taught. Since many of the other teachers do not have experience with Wiki's we thought that it would be something good for us interns to implement. While this is only a small way of impacting the teachers in our district, we all feel confident that this is an area that we will be able to excel in this year.

     This is also the first year that I have ever been in a classroom with a Smart Board, and ELMO, and basically any other type of technology. I am very excited to be using these and have been trying to find many different ways to use them in the classroom. I think technology is a great way to finesse and hybridize literacy practices in your classroom. There are many different websites and programs that can tailor lessons to different types of learners. Even though I might be restricted on some of the curriculum material I am given, by using different technologies, you can find different ways to teach a level of different learners. I can't wait to learn more from my mentor teacher on how use all of these tools in the most effective ways.