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.