Homework

My philosophy of homework is homework should...

• Fulfill a purpose which the student have been told. The purpose will be either to practice previously learned skills or prepare for future learning.
• Never exceed 30 minutes (second grade). Of this time fifteen minutes is designated as reading practice and the rest is used for skill practice (math, vocabulary, spelling) on days it is needed.
• Follow a set procedure to help both students and parents understand what needs to be done. All of my students have a yellow homework folder. This folder contains both a reading log and a calendar where students write assignments. The folders also have paper for quick communication between the parents and teacher.

Responsibility of teacher

• Clearly explain all directions and expectations.
• Provide timely and meaningful feedback.
• Be available to help students when necessary (before or after school).

Responsibility of students

• Take responsibility of their own learning.
• Complete assignments on time.
• Ask question when needed.

Responsibility of parents

• Encourage students to complete homework when assigned.
• Provide students with an environment that supports positive work habits.
• Discuss school work with students to develop an awareness of what is happening in the classroom.

Technology and homework

• I post the classroom homework policy on the class homepage. I also have a link to websites which offer more practice to students on basic skills. I do not put anything on this that I do not send home in a paper format because less than 25% of my students have access to the Internet at home.

Fiction and Nonfiction Texts

In order to compare and contrast fiction and nonfiction texts I had a reading group do a Venn diagram activity. This reading group is a combination of first and second graders. They recently read a nonfiction text about Jane Goodall and are now reading a fiction Magic Treehouse book about gorillas. I created a Venn diagram and a list of book elements. The students then used both texts and searched for the elements on their list. They cut and glued the pieces where they went on the Venn diagram.



Nonfiction texts have much more support for students than fiction. This is especially true as students begin to move out of picture books. The vocabulary in nonfiction is difficult for ELL students. It is helpful to them to have the glossary to support them on this. Fiction vocabulary can also be difficult for ELL students especially as they move up to texts with less pictures. My students struggle with this in chapter books and often do not know how to figure out the meaning of unknown words. Another thing which provides ELL students with support in nonfiction books is pictures and captions. In the second grade science text, nearly every page has some sort of graphic aid to demonstrate the concepts on that page. Students often struggle more with nonfiction books even with these supports. One reason for this is they often do not know how to use them or even that they are present in the book. For this reason, this proved to be a very useful activity with my reading group. As a group we looked through the books to find the elements, we discussed what they meant and how they help with comprehension. I think these students will be better prepared to read nonfiction texts as a result of this.

Sheltered Lesson

The lesson in this video contained some of the elements of sheltered instruction. The lesson had clear objectives, it activated background knowledge, there was some focus on vocabulary and it was delivered very clearly. This was a social studies lesson about the Declaration of Independence.

The lesson opened with the teacher going over the objectives. The objectives were clearly written on the board. This was a good visual for the students. It seemed like the teacher was doing well making the directions clear for the class. The students had at least some background knowledge and the teacher activated this early in the lesson. The teacher asked questions and got some short answers. The students were able to make some comments about the Declaration of Independence. I do not feel she allowed for enough discussion in this part of the lesson.

The next part of the lesson focused on vocabulary. The teacher discussed the word grievances. She wrote the word on the board and discussed what it meant using several examples and synonyms. Once again I felt the teacher was doing too much of the talking. I think it would have been more effective to give an example and then have the students come up with some examples of their own. One of the key elements of the SIOP lesson plan is to allow for plenty of student interaction. It is difficult to even comment on the student interaction in this video because there really was very little.

Overall I did not feel this was the best example of a sheltered lesson. I would have liked to have seen what happened in the rest of the lesson. Since this was only the introduction I feel it is possible all of the student interaction, scaffolding and application were just not shown in the video.

I did some research on SIOP to better understand what this lesson was intended to be an example of.
The SIOP website http://www.siopinstitute.net/

Miscue Analysis

I did my running records on one first grade student and on a third grade student. The first grade student's first language is Spanish. He has been speaking English since kindergarten. The third grade student's first language is Russian. He has been at our school since last year and has been in English speaking schools for 3 years now. For both of these students I used portions of text at their independent reading level.

The first grade student I worked with had an 91% accuracy rate. All of this student's miscues were visual. Most often his miscues were the result of vowels. For example he read rug instead of rag and bag instead of big. His other mistakes were reversals of "d" and "b". From my work with this student I know he does not have a firm understanding of English vowel sounds. If he does not have a word as a sight word he puts any vowel into the place and never self-corrects while reading. This student's comprehension is also quite low. He is one of those students who sound like an at grade level reader but is not. He needs work on his English vocabulary to help recognize some of his miscues and to allow him to understand what he is reading. This is also a student whom is getting specific phonics instruction in the area of vowel sounds.

The second student I worked with was a third grade Russian boy (actually the only non-Spanish ELL student at my school). The first thing I noticed while listening to this student read was he is not a fluent reader. He read in short phrases or word by word. There was no flow to his reading and it was difficult to listen to. This student also made a couple visual miscues. It was visible he was trying to figure out the words; however, he seemed to have few strategies for doing so. This student also made some syntactic errors. For example instead of reading "she jumped out of his way" he read "she jumped out of the way". Like the first grader I worked with this student did not correct miscues even when they interfered with meaning. His comprehension of this passage was quite low. This student needs to work on reading fluency. He pays little or no attention to punctuation, his reading is extremely choppy and he detects no miscues. If I had not been familiar with the text I would have had difficulty understanding it the way it was read. This student would benefit from reading being modeled for him.

The two students I worked with have similar English speaking abilities. Although these students were able to read the passages neither was able to comprehend what they had read a proficient level. The first grade student's biggest difficulty at this time is his vowel sounds. He is not confident enough with English vowel sounds to use them with any consistency. The third grade student seemed to have more understanding of English grammar and language patterns which resulted in his syntactic miscues. The first grader did not have enough experience with reading English to make these types of mistakes.

These links were a helpful review of running records as miscue analysis.
https://umdrive.memphis.edu/lmcgllvr/public/RDNG%207553%20SPRING%20%2709/Running%20Records%20Class%20handout%20-%2011%20pages.pdf

http://www.myread.org/monitoring_analysis.htm

Directions:

Label each activity (L) for learning/word recognition or (A) for acquisiton/sociopsycholinguistic view.

Some activities can have both labels. Be prepared to explain your choices.

The students:

___L__look up words in the dictionary to write definitions

___A__make a Venn diagram to compare two stories

___L__practice sounding out words

___L__read in round~robin fashion

___L__correct peers when they make a mistake during reading

___A__identify words on a big book page that start with the same sound

___A_group cards with classmates' names by a criterion on such as first or last letter

___A__write rhyming poetry and then discuss different spellings for the same sound

___L__ask the teacher how to spell any word they don't know

___A_read a language experience story they have created with the teacher

___A__work in pairs to arrange words from a familiar chant into sentences

___L__divide words into syllables

___L_on a worksheet, draw a line from each word to the picture that starts with the same sound

___A__make alphabet books on different topics

The teacher:

__L___pre-teaches vocabulary

__A/L_does a shared reading with a big book

___L__makes sure that students read only books that fit their level

___L__has students segment words into phonemes

___A__writes words the students dictate for a story and has students help with the spelling of difficult words

___A__asks students to look around the room and find words starting with a certain letter

___L__uses decodable texts

__A__sets aside time for SSR (sustained silent reading) each day teaches Latin and Greek roots

__A___has students meet in literature circles

__L__conducts phonics drills

__L__chooses predictable texts

_L/A__teaches students different comprehension strategies does a picture walk of a new book

__L___uses a variety of worksheets to teach different skills

The activities marked as learning or the word recognition view of teaching reading require a greater amount of input from the teacher. These activities such as giving students vocabulary words, teaching phonics rules and round robin reading rely very much on the teacher telling the students what they are learning. Some of the other activities in this group such as using predictable texts and worksheets are methods of practicing the skills which are taught. All of these activities would be found in the lower levels of Bloom's taxonomy.

The activities marked as acquisition or the sociopsycholinguistic view of teaching reading require the teacher to be more if an guide. The students create meaning through doing. They learn vocabulary through reading many words. They learn language through hearing and using language. Less focus is put on the teaching of the skills and more focus is on constructing meaning.

Review of Children's Books

The first book I picked is actually a part of my literacy curriculum. Ducky by Eve Bunting is a story about a bunch of bathtub toys who get lost in the ocean. The toys float through the ocean until at last there are washed up on the shore and rescued by a science class.

The number one thing which makes this story difficult for my ELL students is the vocabulary. This story includes a lot of water related words which most of my students have not ever heard. It is rare for me to have even one student who has ever been on a boat or to the ocean. Some of these words include surface, drift (not something you do in a car like they think), float and bobbed. When teaching this vocabulary to my students I use a very hands on visual approach. I give groups of students a rubber duck and a bucket of water. Each group is responsible for learning one of the words and demonstrating it to the class with their rubber duck. Then all the groups demonstrate all of the words together.

The second issue I have noticed many students struggle with in this book is the fact that it is written in first person. I have found it is helpful to do a lot of practice with this before beginning the story. I have students say a sentence in third person and then change it to first person and discuss how using I or he/she changes it. Many of my ELL students struggle with pronouns so this is something we revisit throughout the year.

The second book I picked is The Car Washing Street by Denise Lewis Patrick. This is a story about a neighborhood where all the neighbors get together and wash their cars on Saturday mornings. The main character's family does not own a car; however, he still enjoys car washing morning because it is always a surprise what is going to happen.

This books main difficulty is the setting of the story is like a different world to my students who have never left Lochbuie, Colorado. Many of my students have never been to a city. They have little understanding of the setting descriptions in the book which include sounds of an urban environment. When reading this book I like to integrate it with our social studies curriculum and discuss how cities are different than a rural community. What are the different things they might see or hear. I also show pictures of cities which are similar to the one in the illustrations in the book.

The second difficulty with this book is once again vocabulary. For example the boy sits on his stoop. This is a word which not a single kid had heard before. They were unable to use the context to figure this word out. I have now learned it works best to discuss all of the vocabulary in this story using visuals when ever possible prior to reading it. I then tell the students to try to find the words while they are reading.

Decoding Unfamiliar Texts

To complete this assignment I went into my school library's Spanish section and chose books at a variety of reading levels. I have a very limited amount of experience with Spanish. I learned a little fifteen years ago in high school; however I was never able to even say a complete sentence fluently. I hear my students speak Spanish and I have figured out a few phrases through listening to them. My only other prior knowledge of Spanish comes from watching Dora and Diego with my two year old.

The three books I was able to get ranged from first to sixth grade reading levels. I began with the most difficult Los Cien Vestidos by Eleanor Estes. When attempting to read this book I felt I was able to decode somewhat successfully (my students would have thought it sounded quite funny). I was able to use what I know about phonics to try to figure out the reading. I most likely said several words wrong as the result of differences in the language, even with my unfair advantage of knowing the vowel sounds. My comprehension of this story was zero. Other than picking out a few words I recognized I could not understand the story at all. There were only pictures at the beginning of each chapter so I was unable to use them as clues. The book I chose at mid third grade level went very similarly to this one.

The last book I read was El Primer Halloween De Clifford by Norman Birdwell. This book is considered a first grade text. While reading this book I had many more advantages. First of all I am familiar with the subject of the book. I already have knowledge of both Clifford and of Halloween. This background knowledge was extremely helpful while reading the book. This was a good reminder of how important it is to check background knowledge before beginning a new book with students. The second thing that helped me was how closely the pictures related to the story. When I was unable to make meaning from the text I was able to look at the illustrations and back at the text and eventually make some meaning of it. Even with these advantages in comprehension I still struggled with some of the words and ideas.

I enjoyed doing this activity. I am always amazed at how quickly children learn English. Most of the ELL students in my school come into preschool or kindergarten as monolingual Spanish speakers. By the time I get them in second grade they are doing quite well. At the school I work in there is virtually no gap between these students and non ELL students on 5th and 6th grade CSAP. Doing this activity was a good reminder at how hard these students must work to achieve this.

Oral Language and Reading

The connection between oral language and reading is critical. Children who are exposed to a large amount of oral language are much more successful in reading than those who are not. Children need to have knowledge of how language works to become good readers and to have comprehension of what they are reading. Oral language is one of the most effective ways I have found to develops students' vocabulary. Students with well developed vocabularies are able to become better readers.

The school I work in has a very high percentage of both ELL students and low income students. I have found it is necessary to allow time everyday for children to be involved with oral language. I frequently use cooperative group work with carefully selected group members to allow discussions between students. I also encourage discussion both between myself and the students and between groups of students on a daily basis. I put emphasis on allowing students to discuss their thinking in all subject areas and do my best to ask questions in which the answers require explanation when possible.

Writing Instruction

During elementary school most of my writing instruction consisted of handwriting, spelling, grammar and conventions. For the most part the process was taught over the content. We were given a topic, went through the steps and received a good grade if there were no spelling or punctuation mistakes. I did have occasional teachers who included free write or journal time. This often made me very uncomfortable to not be told what to write about because it was so out of the ordinary.

As I entered the upper grades my writing instruction became even less creative. There was a formula to follow to produce "good" writing. I spent years feeling like a piece of writing could only be five paragraphs. No more no less. I can remember trying to find ways to make my ideas fit into my three body paragraphs. I had teacher after teacher who taught this method.

The writing instruction I between kindergarten and eleventh grade very much fit the traditional writing classroom model from Freeman and Freeman in Essential Linguistics (2004). The first classroom I was in which followed the process writing classroom model was my senior year of high school advanced composition class. This was the first time I was actually able to enjoy writing for a reason other than I knew how to get good grades in it. The writing had a purpose beyond learning the formula of good writing.

Teaching Philosophy

My philosophy of literacy instruction is literacy instruction needs to be integrated and differentiated.

Literacy instruction often begins in isolation as children learn the basics of phonemic awareness and phonics; however, as students become readers it should be integrated throughout the entire school day. Reading and writing serve purposes and it is important that children recognize this at a young age. Although reading and writing can be done just for the pleasure of doing so they also are important components of learning. These are not just things we do to pass to the next grade level or do well in school. Reading and writing are skills which will be used in many ways throughout life. I believe when students again an understanding of the purpose of reading and writing they gain a deeper interest in developing their abilities.

The second part of my philosophy of reading instruction is reading instruction needs to be differentiated to meet the individual needs of each student. It is rare to have a classroom where even than two students have the exact same needs in literacy instruction. Each student has strengths and weaknesses in both reading and writing. I feel it is important to consider needs of students when instructing them rather than just reading and writing levels. Frequent informal assessment is critical to being able to continue to meet student's needs as the grow in both reading and writing abilities. Groups should remain flexible to make the most out of every minute of the school day and individual intervention should be used when needed. My goal each year is to see growth in every student in my class. I can not achieve this goal by simply teaching a given curriculum to the entire class.