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.