My focus students literacy learning has improved over the semester. She is better at listening comprehension, writing, and reading. She has a hard time focusing but has been making strong improvements. Some of the differentiated instruction outlined in Tompkins, Chapter 11 are holding a grand conversation, a word wall, a mini-lesson, reading logs, guided reading, charts, and some other small activities. A grand conversation is when the students ask questions and the teacher helps to develop the background knowledge for the students that they need to help comprehend the story. This is done after a book read aloud and can help different leveled learners. A word wall is a wall with words for the students to practice using. The students can add new words to the word wall as the class is having a book talk. I have seen a slightly different version of a word wall in my classroom. My CT will pick a word to put on the word wall and the students will copy it down. I guess it is more like a word of the day, but it is to help the students practice their spelling and writing skills, and probably less emphasis on definitions. Do you guys see more definition based assignments/activities in higher grades? The mini-lesson consists of of teaching comprehension strategies, literary analysis, and other grade-level standards. This is done following an independent reading period and a literature study. The mini lesson is usually tied in to the novel that is being read at the current time. Reading logs are also used in the classroom. The Language Experience Approach is used with struggling readers to dictate quickly as they develop their summarize skills. Another approach used with struggling readers is the guided reading approach. This is another approach I have seen in my placement. This consists of working with small groups and reading short books at the students reading levels and afterwards discuss what they read and re-read independently to themselves. Some other helpful idea is using charts to go along with what is in a novel or making posters.
I felt that a great idea in the chapter 11 reading was the after school intervention for struggling readers. This helps struggling readers and they get to read self-selected books independently.
The suggested characteristics of differentiating instruction are having high standards, using assessment-instruction link, have flexible grouping, use a collection of reading materials, vary the instructional activities in the classroom, make instructional modifications, respect the students, and focus on individuals academic achievement. It is important to differentiate the content, differentiate the process, and the product. If you guys want to take a closer look at the info it is on page 363!
Dear ______
Student A has a hard time focusing in literacy. She has made great improvements throughout this semester, but I wanted to keep you updated on her learning process and my current ideas to make even more improvements. First, I want to start by saying that she struggles in staying on task during independent reading, and I believe this takes away from her comprehension due to the fact that she does not get very far in the book she is reading because she is distracted. The instruction I plan to impliment for student A in order to accommodate to her needs are to use dramatic play with each book she reads. I feel that since she is outgoing and loves to talk, that she may be interested in having fun while also retelling a story. I believe that this will be a positive outlet of her energy as well as encouraging her to focus on her book during independent reading so that she knows how to retell the story during dramatic play. We could start with puppets and see how it works! Also, I would like to have her use the computer for reading activities so that I can see if she reacts any better to reading from a larger screen and maybe doesn't like the format of the book or is not interested. If I feel that she is uninterested, I will let her choose her own book at her raeding level to gain her interest and maybe she will be more willing to read. When i do hear her read, she reads well, so I am not worried that there are any problems with decoding words, she just struggles to stay focus and may be uninterested. I hope we can work together to help improve student A's literacy learning!
I have had a harder time seeing improvement in my focus student. This is mainly due to the way that the classroom is structured. My CT uses many of the differentiated examples from the text, but many of them aren’t very transparent to me. An example of this is the AR reading time they get at the beginning of every day. I can see that my focus student is reading a text every morning when I come in, but I haven’t see much difference in the level of text she is choosing. I think part of this may be because I have only been observing her since January. I’m not sure where he started at the beginning of the year. I have also gotten the chance to do running records with her on two occasions. This is a tool my CT uses to help her keep track of the students that are struggling. It is actually mandated by the district and they are to use the DIBELS Progress Monitoring set of evaluations to do this. I have done two and the book that they do them out of has only two others completed by the CT. I know this is because I am actually helping her out in a way because she doesn’t have time to keep up with them. My focus student is usually not singled out during small group instruction as being below level though. The CT usually meets with one group a day for a mini lesson based on the story that the whole class is reading for the week. This is also because Reading Street is required curriculum so my CT doesn’t have much chance after this to choose texts of her own. There are off weeks planned in to the curriculum and she does use this time for her own thing, but I have yet to see it. I have also seen large group and individual instruction during this time, so the curriculum does do a good job of differentiating instruction.
ReplyDeleteI would say in response to Taylor’s post that one thing about the letter struck me right away. As a parent, I am quick to criticize a teacher when things don’t seem to be going well for my kids. It is just the nature of being a parent even as objective as I try to be. I don’t think writing this kind of letter is very realistic in the first place because it’s not a conversation that should be one sided and that is how a letter is no matter how you try to write it. This topic needs to be a collaboration to help the student and parents need to feel like part of the team. However, since it had to be done I don’t think that I would start with a negative comment. “Student A has a hard time focusing in literacy.” May be true, but it sets a tone that I wouldn’t want to hear more of as a parent. My personal experience shows that I can relate to a letter that is 90% praiseful of my child and uses that praise to show where we can go from here.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. "Smith",
What a great year to be teaching! I have seen good improvements in “DL’s” language arts skills over the current year. Right now she is testing at a 4th grade reading and comprehension level. While that may be worrisome because this is 5th grade I think the improvements she has shown can continue and she will be on grade before the end of the school year. There are many ways that I think you, I, and “DL” can add to her experience to make sure we meet these goals. I would encourage you to make sure to keep setting aside time for her to read at home. I am including a list of texts that are at her level and will encourage her to bring some home from our classroom library. I stay after school every day to work on my lesson plans and to provide any help that students may need. I would encourage your to pick out a day or two that you can pick “DL” up after school and I will provide some additional lessons. I am also open to any suggestions that you may have. Please feel free to contact me any time to discuss this.
Joel Cross
My focus student’s literacy learning has also improved over the semester; however, they were never struggling with any of the literacy content, it was mainly their ability to focus (similar to Taylor’s student). He was very hyperactive at the beginning of the school year and has progressively gotten more and more calm as the school year went on. I’m not really sure what has attributed to that, I’m pretty sure he was not put on any kinds of medication and he comes from a stable home. Either way, his increased ability to focus has definitely directly improved his performance in language arts. Before, he was hardly able to write out even just a rough plan for a story or keep focus long enough in between spelling words on a spelling test. He wouldn’t complete his assignments in class as a result and would then forget to take it home for homework. This lead to bad grades and left him with no practice on the literary aspects that they were learning about, so he continued to struggle with the subsequent work and projects that built upon those literary aspects. He has since been put in a resource room to help him catch up, and he is doing much better now, but he could still benefit from some differentiated instruction. Sometimes he has trouble making connections between the main topics that they are talking about in class and the books that the teacher reads to reinforce those topics; so, it may be beneficial to have a grand conversation and actively involve him in it. Similarly, vocabulary building would also be beneficial because you can include the spelling of the words, something that he is very good at and would build confidence (he is a good speller but does not always know the meaning of the words). Guided reading has been beneficial to him, especially when he was first struggling.
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ReplyDeleteIn my classroom, my CT does a really cool thing that I would like to incorporate into my teaching. My classroom has a word wall, but words get added to it as they stumble across them, they aren’t planned out words. This makes it more interesting, and I think it helps the kids remember the meaning of the word more because my CT makes more of a big deal about the word and what it means. For example, last week the students were learning about diagraphs and had to compile a list of words that had the diagraph (–ch) at the end. One student said the word “hutch” and my CT stopped and asked what that word meant. The student who said it could not give a clear definition, so he opened it up to the whole class. One kid said “when you kind of know something but you don’t really know why or how”, but he was really describing the definition of the word “hunch”. In the classroom, one of the assigned jobs is the “word wizard”, and this student’s job is to grab the dictionary when there is a definition debate and look up the word. They then read it to the class once no one else is able to come up with a correct definition. This is awesome, I think, because it really makes you think and it makes a good spontaneous little mini-lesson. It gets all of the students involved and they are generally excited when this kind of thing comes up. They remember the meaning of the word a lot better because of the hoopla it creates, and some kids feel smart and gain confidence when they get a definition right. So, to answer your question Taylor, yes, I do see more definition based activities in fifth grade more so than just spelling.
To go back to my focus student, I would write this to his parents:
Dear Mr. and Mrs. X,
Your child, Kid X, has come a long way in his literacy learning this school year. He is a very bright student and seems to enjoy the activities we do in language arts. To further his learning, I think there are some extra activities that he can do both in school and at home to reinforce what he is currently learning. Kid X really seems to enjoy spelling and is very good at it, but sometimes he struggles with the definitions of words. It could be very beneficial if you challenged him with words because he likes the spelling aspect, but then include the extra part of having him define them. Similarly, Kid X’s reading abilities are also where they should be, but there are some activities that he is currently doing in class to help him with comprehension and making connections. He is able to read and a good rate and can read at his grade level, but he sometimes struggles to get the main point of the readings as well as to figure out how the reading relates to the other aspects of class. To help with this, we have been breaking into small groups and practicing guided reading. This allows Kid X to be able to hear the story once and then talk about what we read. From there, he can read the story again himself and reflect back on what we discussed earlier to draw the connections between the text and the lesson. If you are interested in learning more about the strategies we are using in the classroom and using them at home, please let me know! I look forward to continuing Kid X’s literary learning and achievement as well as hearing your input!