Reading for Micro Teaching

I gathered from this article that when students are presented with informational text, it is harder for them to comprehend because it seems to be so cut and dry. Subjects such as history and science might be harder to understand because of the text structure. There are some other approaches that can be used such as brief lectures, films, role play, etc. These techniques have received positive feedback. Although these are good techniques, students still need to higher level reading skills to read informational texts. If students use prior knowledge, think about the text before they begin to read, use the text to support their ideas, etc it will help them become better at comprehending. Students are also encouraged to rely on each other for trying to comprehend text instead of constantly relying on the teacher so they do not become passive learners. Another beneficial technique can be having peer led discussions, which allow for a more “natural” feel when discussing. The teacher can observe this for assessing how well the students are grasping the material. When doing this, the teacher can also have them quote and site text as another way to verify comprehension. In any of these approaches, it is important to make sure that you are modeling the technique so the students know what is expected and are aware of what to look for. Keep in mind that this will not happen overnight and you need to take baby steps to form good comprehension.

4/4/11

Readings 4/4/11

This week while reading the Kymes article on “Compression Strategies” it really made me question what type of teacher I am going to be. I say this because the article focuses on online environments. I know that using new technology and the Internet is a new and great source for learners I also feel old school in its teachings. Using technology is increasing and I see it used in my classroom everyday. Currently my students are using glogster (online resource) to do their book reports. Doing this has been a great idea but it has also come with its problems. First my teacher had never used it before so it was hard for her to answer the student’s questions. Luckily she had the technology assistant and me in the room to assist. Other problems she ran into was making sure the students did not use www.youtube.com because of the possible bad things they could come across (they were however allowed to use www.schooltube.com). This leads to the article talking about having students know what a good source is. This I agree with being very important because there are a lot of sources on the Internet that are not reliable. The problem I see comes with time. I already see in my classroom how little time she has to do the things she needs to get done in all subject areas. Is teaching them what is a good and bad source another things that teachers have to get done. With the growing in technology there is the growing in what has to be taught. That is what raised my question “Am I going to be the older teacher who still does everything the old school ways?”

4/10/11

Readings 4/10/11

This week the article looked at Vocabulary Learning. Immediately when I read the title I thought of my placement and the new program they are using in the Okemos Schools to help improve the vocabulary level in the system. This system used visuals and previous knowledge to build an understanding of new terms. The article however was dealing with urban setting classrooms, which is not what Okemos is. So once I read the article I realized that this is what the article is talking about what is missing from the urban schools. Students in the urban setting are behind by two to three years and they say it is this way for many reasons. One talks about their lives at home. What they hear and do in their households reflects what they hear and do in the classroom. If they are not constantly surrounded by new or correct vocabularies it does not challenge them. Also how Okemos has a new system that is helping them to improve the student’s vocabulary urban schools do not have good ro updated resources to help improve. Overall it is a lot of lack of in Urban School and more involvement is needed in helping improve students understanding and comprehension of vocabulary development and learning.

4/24

Readings 4/24/11

In our last week I read the Tompkins Chapter 10 on Organizing Instruction. In this chapter it started by talking about Miss Paniccias teaching of mini-lessons throughout the year, particularly with writing strategies. I particularly enjoyed this because for my minilesson I did on on applying a students own knowledge in their writing. For my second minilesson I did a editing activity with the whole class which is just as Miss. Paniccias did. I learned new ways that I could have improved my minilesson. For one Miss.Paniccias used posters to help show each students plot of their story, which is really helpful in seeing that students understand parts of a story. She also used the writing process box which if I were to be doing my minilesson in the future to a entire class would be something that would really improve and me able to help apply to an entire class of different learners. The Basal Reading Programs was an interesting program to read about because I have never seen a classroom use one. I thought it was interesting that they are organized by topics, challenges, folktales and friends. Enjoyed this new approach to connecting textbooks to application. This is something I can see using in my classroom as well as literature focus units.

Mini Lessons

Mini Lesson 1:

The first student I worked with is one who is behind in her reading level. While she is not a bad reader she is behind the other students and it is greatly affecting her writing. I had her do a writing piece for me to she how she puts together a story and after giving her a topic so I could see how she relates sounds to letters to words. In her writing she struggled to complete her thoughts in writing and when looking at her spelling she continues to spell as she hears the letters in a word. She also has had a hard time with her handwriting and other people being able to understand her writing. All of this is connected in her frustration with every lesson she does. This reflected when I did the lesson with her because as we started to go over her writing so I could get an understanding of how and why she isn’t making the progressions she needs to she began to cry. This is something that is fragrant with her when we try to help her. I believe that because all of this has a connection to one another she feels a heavy sense of failure. With her frustration she decided she did not want to work with me anymore and wanted to get back to doing what everyone else in the class was doing so we did not get to finish my lesson. My teacher however continues to have her practice her writing and spelling my providing her workbooks to help.

Mini Lesson 2:

For my second mini lesson I worked with the whole class on editing. I was going to use it on just a couple students but after my CT saw it she wanted me to use with the whole class because she believed it was something that every was behind in. What I did was make sets of one to two sentences that had different grammatical errors they learned about earlier in the year. I let them know the number of errors in each one. They then were given time to work individually on finding the errors. Then as a class we went over each type of error and had them as a class inform each grammar error. Having them do this as a class is where I realized was possibly a flaw in what I was doing to seeing where they struggled. This however was because I thought I would be using this with one to two students not 27. However it was still a great help in the development of the students editing skills.

Mini Lessons

Mini Lesson 1: For my first lesson I worked with one of the first grade girls in my class. The students are all doing Reading Street and this particular student really struggles with comprehension. For the lesson I sat with the student and had her first read a book to herself and then read it aloud to me. After the student had finished reading I asked her if she could tell me in her own words what the book was about. She gave me a very brief summary saying the book was about a girl and a garden. I then gave the student a worksheet my CT had made that required her to answer questions about the text. Upon reading the first question the student said she couldn’t remember the answer but I explained that she could look back through the book to find the answer. The student did this and as she found the first answer I asked her question such as “without looking do you remember what happened next?” as the student flipped back through the book and talked out her answers she seemed to gain a better grasp on what the book was actually about. However I am not sure that she will be motivated to do that again when she is working on her own.

Mini Lesson 2: For my second Mini Lesson I worked with three first grade students on sentence structure. These students have been struggling to remember that they need to start a sentence with an upper-case letter, end with a period, have spacing between letters, have proper letter formation, and correct spelling. As of right now the important three my CT really want them to focus on are capitalization, punctuation, and spacing. To help them work on this I did an activity with them where they were each given a star, on each arm of the star we wrote one of the aspects of a star sentence. I then worked with the students and we made an example that highlighted each aspect. When we were finished I laminated their stars and gave them to the students as reminders for when they are writing. I think this activity did help the students, it gave them practice working on each of the parts of a star sentence, and they enjoyed making the stars and getting to keep them. 

Last Post

Scott article:
Something that struck me as odd was that the article says that dictionaries are poor tools for helping students learn the meaning of words. It basically says that student will read a words definition and apply it to a sentence incorrectly. The article also states that 50% of the time, students are generating sentences that are incorrect as far as vocabulary usage goes. I always assumed that dictionaries were helpful. And I still think they are. This article takes a bold chance by saying that it's a poor tool. I think it can be a useful aid in learning vocabulary but no one should only use a dictionary when learning words. I often see my students looking in dictionaries to help them understand a word. I can remember looking up words in the dictionary when I was young and then asked to write a sentence of my own using the word. It seemed to work for me. I don't know...just my opinion I guess.

Tompkins Chap 10
The Basel reading program seemed great until I read that all students would read selections at their grade level, the students wouldn't have much time to explore on their own, and that there were many work book assignment instead of hands on activities. I think this goes to show that no program is completely perfect. As Nate had mentioned in his post, one way might work for one student and for another, it might be a complete disaster. There might be many students in my class that the Basel reading program would work for but we're trying to do what's best for every body. I also don't see much of a point to reading this section if we're trying to steer away from programs where there are teacher directed activities or the students are reading at the same level regardless of what they are capable of.

Chap 11
Again, we're presented with the many ways of teaching literature such as Basel Readers, Literature Focus Units, Literature circles, Reading workshop and Writing Workshop. All have their pros and cons. However, I think i like the literature circles the best. I've seen them work in my placement this year and it's always good to give each student their own role to fulfill. I also like the idea of rotating roles so every student gets a chance to get some experience in a different area.
What I love about this chapter is that it gives some ideas for teachers when they come across the many different types of writing problems. I plan on referring back to this book many times throughout my career because it's got some great ideas as to how to approach students with difficulties.