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.
Whitney-
ReplyDeleteI have also been doing word study in my classroom and have found that the lessons that are laid out in the Month-By-Month Phonics books seem a little dry. To differentiate in my lesson, I decided to try and make personal connections between the material and my students. According to Harvey and Goudvis, in Strategies That Work, "students who have background knowledge about a topic have a real advantage because they can connect the new information they encounter to what they already know." I think it is really important to try and make these connections, even if they seem really small. I was struggling with ways to do this during my word study, so after talking with my MT we decided that we would change some of the mini lessons throughout the book to words that the students could be better connected with. Instead of looking at name brand patterns, we looked at patterns in famous musicians last names. I chose to look at the endings of One Direction and Taylor Swift. While I felt like this might not be enough of a connection, after teaching the lesson I realized how much more excited the students were to learn this information than they were the day before when we looked at name-brands. Even this small connection helped the students be more engaged in the lesson, which I think helped them understand the material more. Don't be afraid to stray from the laid out lessons that the book gives you! Good Luck :)
Thanks for the advice! I am so glad you are working with it too, I am interested to hear more about your lessons and how they work! How do you deal with differentiation? Or are you finding that you don't find the need to?
ReplyDeleteSo far I haven't done any differentiation. It seems that the students don't really need it, or I haven't noticed. I think because there is so much repetition built in on the same words that the students are getting enough exposure that they are all understanding in it. I haven't really thought about it that much though so it's definitely something that I am going to look out for now!
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