Wednesday, November 14, 2012

week 4 post


Bradley Cyr

Part A

Describe your target area for guided leading teaching

The target area I will be focused on will be Reading comprehension/Strategy instruction

Approximately how much time per day is allotted for you instruction in this area?

60 minutes per day

Which Common Core Standards will  C you be working towards?

·         Comprehension and Collaboration

·         Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners

·         Building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

·         Analyzing meaningful word parts, and consulting general and specialized reference materials, as appropriate.

·         Report on a topic or text or present an opinion, sequencing ideas logically and using appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details to support main ideas or themes; speak clearly at an understandable pace.

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?

Teaching these students the benefits of a short non-fiction text will allow students to find factual information that will be very valuable to their everyday life. Understanding how to read a non-fiction text is important because students can look up information that is useful to them for a specific occasion. For example, if they were to travel to an exotic area they may need to know the dangers involved and how to be prepared for such a visit. Students will learn literacy through modeling and guided leading teaching, they will learn about literacy through discussion, and they will learn through literacy by connecting prior knowledge to the text and synthesizing their ideas to create their own non-fiction text.

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 you classroom as you teach in this target area?

The type of classroom talk that will take place in this target area will be differentiated instruction with guided lead teaching. I will have different level texts for different groups. I will have the students come up to my table in four different groups based on ability level and I will read aloud to them for most of the text and allow for some choral reading. Some norms of interaction that I would like to build would be having a respectful learning environment where children feel respected as they read. There will be no other talking when a student or I is reading and students must be actively engaged in the text and the discussion. I will informally assess my students as my mentor teacher does during this process.

What ‘core practice’ do you want to work on developing/ improving as you teach in this target area? How will focusing on this core practice contribute to your own professional learning?

The core practice that I want to work on developing will be Reading comprehension/ Strategy instruction. This core practice will contribute to my own professional learning because I will have more experience with modeling to students and experience with guided lead teaching. I will also learn strategies for gradual release of responsibility and the time that it takes to release this responsibility for children to work independently.

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

We have many resources in the school to work with students in this target area. We have special education teachers and we have reading specialists that help students develop comprehension skills. We have books that are separated by ability levels and they have sets of those books so that we can have groups during differentiated instruction to focus on a particular text. We have access to dictionaries and we have computers for children to use to expand their vocabulary and find other strategies to increase their vocabulary and comprehension skills.

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

I will informally pre-assess my students by observing their reading ability and talking with my mentor teacher. I will figure out the ability levels of all of the students so that I can set up groups for differentiated instruction. I will listen to them read and I will score their worksheets that test their comprehension and vocabulary skills. I will talk to the special education teacher and the reading specialist and see what comprehension skills seem to be working for these students and what comprehension skills that they are lacking in.

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 find out how the children interact with one another. I will also need to figure out the guidelines and rules that my teacher has set for instructing students. What she will and will not tolerate so that my strategy and teaching style is very similar to hers so that the students are not confused when I discipline them on something that they normally would not be disciplined for.  I will also need to find out when certain students need to go and see the reading specialist and when other students have to go to special education so that I can teach these students when they are not in another room. I will need to find out some of their back ground knowledge so that when we are talking about certain topics I can have them chime in because they may have back ground information that they can present that will relate to the text and both the student and the student’s classmates will be able to relate to real world examples of some of the literature. I will also need to find out how much time they have spent reading non-fiction texts.

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

I want to learn more about the different strategies to teach and how to teach them. I want to learn more about the different managing techniques to use during this type of teaching and what I should and shouldn’t focus on. I want to know how many people you should have in each group to have the best results when teaching this type of strategy and also the size of groups that is realistic to be able to reach all of the students.

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

One concern that I have about teaching and planning my unit is selecting the appropriate genre and text level for each of my groups. I want to make sure that all of the students have a text that is just around their level. This will be hard because I have some students who are way below grade level but I am hoping that I find a way to reach out to these students and provide instruction that they benefit from as well as all of the other students. I want to make sure that the assignment is challenging and I want to make sure that the students are actively engaged during the entire time.

Part B

The common core standards that I will be working towards will be:

·         Comprehension and Collaboration

·         Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners

·         Building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

·         Analyzing meaningful word parts, and consulting general and specialized reference materials, as appropriate.

·         Report on a topic or text or present an opinion, sequencing ideas logically and using appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details to support main ideas or themes; speak clearly at an understandable pace.

Level of proficiency:

The level of proficiency that I’m working with will be that I have 7 students who are on their way of getting on track. The rest of the students are on track. I will use differentiated instruction for this by using different books for different groups. The content and skills that will be learned are worthwhile because through inquiry one I learned that students have not worked with non-fiction texts much .Students enjoy reading but they have not worked with non-fiction books enough to know how beneficial they are.

Goals:

o   The goals that I have are targeted toward my students learning needs because they have not been working consistently with non-fiction books. I am essentially teaching them the reading strategies of how non-fiction books are read and how they differ from other genres. Below are some of the goals that I want them to understand about non-fiction books.

o   The Table of Contents lists the sections in which the publication is divided. This may be chapters, articles, “parts” or major divisions or poems. Each section is usually paired with a page number on which it starts. The table of contents assists the reader, or sometimes the author in finding specific sections. It also shows the overall organization of the publication.

o   The introduction of a book can sometimes talk about why an author chose to write about the topic that they wrote about, especially if it will interest the reader to read the book. Sometimes the introduction of the book talks about how they got the information they got to write the book. It can also be used to provide an overview of what the book is about and the main idea of the book and what the author wants the reader to know about the book and what to get from it. The introduction of the book can also let the reader know what to expect throughout the book.

o   The conclusion of the book is to imprint and retell the main idea of the book. It’s also to let the reader know that the reasoning for writing the book was good, and that the point of the book should be considered very carefully. It usually restates the main ideas of the book, and relates to the introduction of the book. It’s important that your conclusion to not be too long and for the book to end with a bang!

o   The glossary of the book is used to define terms that are relevant to the book. Glossaries are usually found at the end of a book. It is read just like a dictionary, except it doesn’t have as many words as dictionary because it focuses on the book that was read.

o   In index of the book tells you where to find topics in an informational book. The index is always found in the back of the book. It tells you the names of the topics of the book and what pages you can find the topics on. Knowing how to use an index can save you a lot of time and be very helpful. A good index tells important concepts, people, places, and dates. It also includes subheadings so that a student is not faced with a long list of page numbers for a given term.

o   The headings and subheadings are used to illustrate the main idea of the following section.

·         Talk about the illustrations, photos and captions. The pictures make the text come alive, they also alive to dig deeper into the subject that they are reading about.

·         Talk about maps, diagrams, tables, and charts. These features are great because not only do they grab our attention, but they hold a great deal of information.

·         Talk about font styles, bullet points, and quotations. Students need to know that each of these features add to helping them understand the text.

·         Talk about timelines, activities, fun facts, and further explanation located in the back of the books. Make sure that students always look into the back of the book to find lot of valuable information that may be included. These features often go unread because no one can find them. Sometimes there is a for further exploration section that gives kids a chance to find similar texts that they may be interested in.   

·         In terms of comprehension, I want students to be able to explain the information, connect it to previous knowledge, and use this information as stated in the Strategies that work text. Readers need to think not only about what they are reading but about what they are learning. With insight, we think more deeply and critically. We question, interpret, and evaluate what we read.

Performance-Students will be expected to understand how to read and create a non-fiction book

Conditions- Students will be working with me through guided leaded teaching. They will watch me model how to read non-fiction books and the characteristics of a non-fiction book. With gradual release of responsibility they will create a non-fiction book themselves and eventually work on it independently. I will do this by first modeling, then by discussion in our group, then they can discuss with a partner and share ideas until they are ready to independently work on their book.

 

Criterion- Students must be able to show me that they can correctly put together a non-fiction book through gradual release of responsibility.

Objectives:

1.      Students will engage in group and partner discussion and be engaged when I model to students in guided leading teaching

2.      Students will create their own non-fiction book through gradual release of responsibility

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