Sunday, February 13, 2011

Begging to read chapter 3 of the book Literacy for the 21st century I instantly learned so much from the assessments the teacher did on the student Seth. I have previously been in a first grade classroom and saw some of the assessments they talked about in the chapter. Going through my personal experiences in the classroom both first and fifth I have seen some of these assessments but the one thing I have heard from every teacher is that they do not have enough time to analyze each students literacy and if they do they have to do a run down portion of it because of time. What I want to learn is what is a way to do this. The teacher in this chapter does a great job of really analyzing this student through five different really good assessments such as having him read aloud to her and she scores him. How does she have the time to do this when all I have heard form my CTs is how they do not have the time. I am scared that as a teacher I will not know how to properly assess my students the way Mrs. McNeal does.

I also enjoyed reading about how to determine students reading levels. The guided reading is something that I have observed in my placement in previous years and have seen as successful. Also I recognized the DRA assessment kit in my previous first grade classroom as they mentioned in the chapter. The only differentness is that in the book it is a number level of reading and I my classroom it was DRA but instead of a number system it was an alphabet system. So I wonder what is the difference? Is one better than the other?

For my jigsaw I choose to read the Carlisle article on helping children with disabilities. The reason I enjoyed the article so much is because I am not a special education major I have not had any experience with learning how to most benefit this types of students. Also being in my placement I had not had a student in the classroom with a learning disability until this year. During my placement I have adapted and learned on my own ways to help them in learning but have never been told by my CT correct or ways that she sees work. The only feedback I have got from her has been that I handled that student very well during my lesson. I enjoyed it best that it focused on particularly literacy and how to help with faster growth in literacy with students who had a learning disability.

Overall I enjoyed the readings this week because they seemed as if they were instructional guides to helping with different aspects of teaching literacy to different types of learners.

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