Visualization and Questioning

The readings for this week were really relevant to me because in my classroom we have just went over both of the skills of visualization as well as questioning and how they can be helpful while reading. Through our Making Meaning mini-lessons both of these techniques were covered using the picture books that followed along with the lessons. My teacher also incorporated anchor charts based on the students understanding of how to visualize or "make a movie" in their mind, which is now hung up inside of the room. In Strategies That Work, the lesson that develops the understanding of showing not telling was one that I found to be very important. A lot of my students have difficulty in description in their writing and have a lack of use of sensory details, which is something we have begun to work on as well in our classroom. I like how this chapter explains that students should be able to visualize while the read as well as how they can transition this skill into their writing, it should be something that should be a skill for both areas.

I really liked the strategy that was described that helps students to understand and define unfamiliar words. I feel in my class it is very likely for the students to continue to read without understanding a word and then this will mess up their entire comprehension of the passage. I liked that this was something that they could do individually while they read and can look back on later in case they encounter the same word in a different context, it is like making their own dictionary. The modeling of this lesson I feel is extremely important so students can see first hand that it is not something to be upset about if they encounter a word that they find unfamiliar, but that there are other strategies that can be taken to understand the definition of the word beside a dictionary; which more times than not provides another definition that they will not understand.

History is a very dry subject in my classroom and it usually consists of lecture and notes followed by a discovery channel movie that reinforces the content that has just been discussed. I would really like to try the introduction of a picture book to teach historical content because I want to further develop my student's abilities to draw inferences and ask critical questions. I think that this would be a great way to change the pace of the way social studies is working in my classroom in order to develop a greater interest and ability to remember the content. Students are more likely to remember information if it is presented in a way they will enjoy instead of a way that bores them.

The use of sticky notes in books while my students are doing Independent Reading Time is a skill that my teacher encourages, so they can remember their questions later. I liked the introduction of the I learned/I Wonder chart because this causes the students to think on the next level and to begin to question text at a deeper level and not just rely on asking surface questions.

Meagan Bourdage - Inquiry 2 Part A

1. Describe your target area for guided lead teaching.
• My target area for guided lead teaching will be writing instruction, specifically I will be teaching strategies for writing a personal narrative. 
2. Approximately how much time per day is allotted for your instruction in this area?
• Approximately half an hour per day is allotted for my instruction in this area.
3. Which Common Core State Standard(s) will you work toward? 
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.5.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.5.3a Orient the reader by establishing a situation and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.5.3b Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, description, and pacing, to develop experiences and events or show the responses of characters to situations.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.5.3c Use a variety of transitional words, phrases, and clauses to manage the sequence of events.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.5.3d Use concrete words and phrases and sensory details to convey experiences and events precisely.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.5.3e Provide a conclusion that follows from the narrated experiences or events.
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?
• Teaching in this target area will be very beneficial and provide students an opportunity to learn important content and skills that they can use in their own lives. This unit really focuses on using personal events in writing which makes the writing meaningful to students. The students will learn through literacy when we use different mentor texts that will help to illustrate different strategies for writing personal narratives. The strategies that students learn can be used in other types of writing as well which means they will become better writers as a whole. Since they will be learning these strategies using mentor texts they will learn how to identify different strategies in other texts as well which will also help with comprehension. 
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)? 
• Within this target area there will be different types of classroom talk taking place each day. The talk will be teacher-led and student-led when new strategies are being introduced. The teacher will talk to introduce the strategies and then call on students to share their own ideas and thinking about using the new strategy. A great deal is also focused on higher level thinking since students will be writing about their own experiences, which makes the lesson much more meaningful to them. This meaningfulness is what lends to higher level thinking. I hope to encourage students to share their text-to-self connections with the mentor texts since this will ultimately help them with their writing. 
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 that I want to work on developing/improving as I teach in my target area is writing instruction. Focusing on this core practice will help me with creating methods for teaching writing strategies that are effective and evoke higher level thinking. Focusing on this area will also help me to learn through doing, I will be able to see first hand which was most effective for my students. For example, I will learn if using writing journals was a positive practice. 
7. What resources within the community, neighborhood, school district, school or classroom do you have to work with in this target area? 
• There are many resources that I can use for teaching this unit. I think that I will mostly use the elmo and promethean that are located within the classroom. These are excellent resources that I have become more familiar with using. I can also use the school copier for handouts, school supplies available by my mentor teacher, and writing binders that each student already has set up. 
8. What additional resources do you need to obtain?
• I need to obtain the mentor texts that I required by this unit since my MT is new to fifth grade and hasn’t taught this unit before. 
9. How will you pre-assess your students in your target area?
• Students will be pre-assessed using an on-demand personal narrative writing pre-assessment. For this assessment students will given pages of loose-leaf paper and pencils to write a personal narrative about a moment they spent with a person that really matters to them. This piece of writing will be scored using an assessment rubric.
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 look at other writing pieces to get a better picture of who my students are as writers. I feel that looking at just one piece of writing is not enough. I also want to have conversations with students to get a feel for their own personal feelings about writing (do they like to write? do they write for fun? etc.). Asking these questions will help me to make writing more meaningful for students. 
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 strategies for teaching writing strategies, I’m curious to find out what works best in my classroom. I think that I have a lot to learn in this core practice because I’ve never had experience teaching it and my class hasn’t done a lot with writing thus far. 
12. What concerns, if any, do you have about planning and teaching your unit?
• I am most concerned about the fact that my mentor teacher has never taught this unit before. This means that if there are any kinks or things that just don’t work in the plan haven’t been ironed out yet and I’ll be the first to figure them out. I’m also concerned about the length of the unit and fitting it in with the 1/2 hour time frame that my MT has set aside for writing. 

Heather Anderson - Inquiry 2 Part A - Target Area and Core Practices

Talk with your MT about your idea, and use the information you gained from Inquiry One to respond to the following guiding questions listed below.  Upload to Angel and blog before our Week 4 class (Oct. 2) AND post them on your book club blog:

1.     Describe your target area for guided lead teaching.

o   My target area will be to facilitate comprehension instruction. In fifth grade, we put a lot of emphasis on reading comprehension, so I will be reading a book aloud to them and we will complete a packet of information about the book that relates to how they understand the book. It will be mostly personal response, making inferences, understanding figurative language, and choosing a theme.

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

o   60 minutes, 5 days a week. So this lesson should take me about two weeks in the classroom.

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

o   CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.1 Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.

o   CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.2 Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.

o   CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.3 Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., how characters interact).

o   CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative language such as metaphors and similes.

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?

o   Not only will they be able to use all the comprehension strategies we are working on now (rereading, text-to self connections, etc.), but they will acquire new comprehension strategies (making inferences, understanding figurative language, etc.).

o   This target area is mostly learning about literacy and learning through literacy. They will be using a novel that we read aloud as a class to determine the important information and theme of the text. We will outline the different characters as well as pull quotes from the book to describe the character.

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)?

o   The type of classroom talk we want to establish is student-led conversations. We want to show the importance of responding to each other during a discussion. We want them to use language such as “I agree with Billy, but I think…” or “I think Johnny has a good idea, but I think…”

o   We also want the students to think deeper into the story. We want them to analyze what the characters are like and what they are doing in the story.

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?

o   I would like to work on guided interactive discussion and explicit instruction. The conversations during my lesson will be mostly student based but I will have to pose certain questions to them to get the conversation going. I would like to work on formulating good questions that require them to think deeper about the book.

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

o   In our classroom, we have a book for every student and the teacher. We also make packets for the students to jot down their ideas about theme, characters, etc.

8.     What additional resources do you need to obtain?

o   Since my mentor teacher has taught this unit in the past and found that it really works, she has everything we need for the lesson right in the classroom. The things we might need are more posters to hang around the class to show the importance of all these comprehension strategies.

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

o   My mentor teacher and I talked about having the students write down what they think figurative language, theme, and the other key components we are covering in our lesson are during a Making Meaning short story. We will have them jot down their ideas during a second reading of the story. This way we can see what they know and what they don’t know.

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?

o   I think it is important to give the pretest and see what the students know and don’t know. Then I will know what I need to spend more time covering in my lesson.

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

o   I am learning through Making Meaning what it means to have a guided discussion. I would just like to see it in another form besides “Turn to Your Partner” and then report back to the class.

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

o   Since I have only been doing Making Meaning with my class, I have concerns about writing a plan for a different kind of comprehension approach. It will be interesting to see how the students respond to a new kind of instruction in the classroom.

Meagan Bourdage - Writing Strategies

The first advice given by Routman in this weeks reading is to integrate basic writing skills while teaching. I’ll admit, when I first started to read that chapter I was skeptical because I had a hard time seeing how students would begin writing without knowing basic skills. As I continued to read Routman’s idea became much more clear to me. The example that stuck out most to me was to teach paragraphs with a long piece of writing that a student has already written. This makes complete sense to me since the student would be able to see many of their ideas being grouped into different paragraphs rather than just one. I also think that using a piece of their own writing to help teach them would be effective since it gives them ownership. I wonder if it would be just as effective to do the “I-do, you-do, we-do” method with this too. For me, teaching in this way may be difficult at first since I myself learned with the basic skills first, therefore, it may be more natural for me to try to teach basic skills first without integrating. Also, this may be difficult if a curriculum requires that basic skills be taught in a certain way.

Routman also talks about teaching basic skills through teacher demonstrations that focuses on why. During the demonstration the teacher should reread work to be sure it is the way he/she intends, think aloud, and not be content with the first draft. To me this would really help students learn the process of writing and how good writers think. Routman also emphasizes explaining why one lead is better than another when writing. While I agree with each of these things I feel that I might have a difficult time teaching this way at first. This is because I am not always confident about my writing and feel that I am not a very creative writer. I would need to spend time finessing my own writing and editing skills in order to teach writing in this way. I could integrate technology into this by using the promethium board to edit my paper in front of students. 

Next, Routman emphasizes the need for daily writing. This is something I have seen my own mentor teacher really try to follow. Each of the students has their own writing binder with tabs for a writing tracker, drafts, ideas, and resources and they add to them almost every day. I love that these binders allow for students to be organized about their writing, which I think would only help them improve their writing process. This is something I definitely feel confident about doing in my own classroom. I think that writing everyday would really benefit my students and I look forward to seeing how my students right now benefit from writing each day as the year progresses. It would be fun to even create a writing journal on the computer. Students could use a flash drive to store their very own writing binder that can be easily transported and worked on else where.

Finally, Routman suggests conferencing with students. This is something that my MT has talked a lot about doing, but I haven’t had a chance to see her do it yet. I am really interesting in seeing how she conferences and what different strategies she chooses to focus on and why. I think that this would really benefit me when it comes time for me to do my own conferencing with students. Right now I think that  would be confident conferencing with students as long as I had a specific strategy to focus on. I worry that I might try to focus too much on grammar and punctuation, however, since I’m not entirely sure what is expected of a fifth grader’s writing. With conferencing there can be a dilemma of time, this has been the problem for my MT. I really like Routman’s suggestion to to a whole-class share for a formal conference. Students can learn from each other in this way and even contribute themselves. This is a great way to help one student while also helping the rest of the class. 

        

Heather Anderson - Agency, Readiness and Action

This year in my internship classroom, we will be evaluating comprehension through Reader's Workshop. We have a literacy binder with records of all our students and what they are reading. We conduct conferences with them often which check to see if the student picked a book at their reading level, if they can comprehend the book, and their feelings or questions about the book. We also have them set a reading goal for themselves that they must try to meet by the next time we conference with them. This way of assessing comprehension has been pushed by the school district and is mandated by my placement school. I feel like this way of assessment is meaningful and productive because we are grading them on their progression throughout the year and not what they already know. One dilemma I will have to face is that each student is at a different reading level and have different needs as readers. As we go through the conferences with the students, we will group students by the different needs they have (comprehension, fluency, punctuation, etc.) By grouping the students, we will be able to save time by having the students work with us and each other to strengthen their weaknesses.
I also liked in the Strategies That Work book that they mentioned the importance of interactive read-alouds in relation to comprehension. Read-alouds are not only important for comprehension but for teaching specific strategies too. For my first mini-lesson I am doing a read-aloud where the students will have to answer my comprehension questions throughout the book. They will have to think about the underlying meaning of the story as well as guessing how the book will end. I will also add in my own experience at the end to help the students make connections to things happening in their own life. This will help establish my professional identity and build teacher-student relationships.
I feel confident in planning for literacy because we have a literacy program established at my school. We use a program called Making Meaning, which is scripted and works on a different strategy almost every lesson. I will finesse the "set in stone" lesson by adding stories or examples that the students can relate to. For example, if we were talking about bullying in a story, I would share examples from the "bully free" assembly that we had in the beginning of the year. This will help the students connect with a real life situation. I am still learning about the assessment process and I feel like I need to know more about the students as individuals before I can evaluate them and make decisions. By watching my mentor teacher and sitting in on conferences, I should feel more confident in my ability to assess reading and comprehension.