1. Target area for teaching

• Monitoring Comprehension

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

• 55 minutes from 11:20-12:15

3. Which Common Core will you work toward

• Comprehension and Collaboration 1. a,b,c, & d 

1. Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 3 topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly. a. Come to discussions prepared, having read or studied required material; explicitly draw on that preparation and other information known about the topic to explore ideas under discussion. b. Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g., gaining the floor in respectful ways, listening to others with care, speaking one at a time about the topics and texts under discussion). c. Ask questions to check understanding of information presented, stay on topic, and link their comments to the remarks of others. d. Explain their own ideas and understanding in light of the discussion.

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 learning through literacy?

• Students will be encouraged to make all kinds of connections (text-to-self, text-to-world, text-to-text) each day as they are introduced to a new story and become familiar with it throughout the week. I will encourage them to find other texts such as books, magazines, newspaper articles, or even movies/shows that they can try to access and present to the class to draw comparisons to their story. This will help students understand that they are not learning in isolation, rather building upon their prior knowledge, making connections with their experiences, and learning new material all at the same time. It will be important for me to share other texts with the students beyond their story of the week because there is not currently time for read-alouds and I want the students to be exposed to more/different types of literature throughout the week. This way, I will be able to do interactive read-alouds to monitor their comprehension and expose them to different genres beyond what Reading Street offers.

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 learning? What norms would you like to see developed in your area as you teach this targeted area?

(Chap. 6 STW)

• Students are currently engaging in discussions that are teacher led during comprehension. We go over or review vocabulary words from the story and then read through the story and ask questions that allow students to show what they have learned from the story. I would like to see the students partake in one-on-one conversations with a partner after I have given them a question or idea to discuss, and then share with the class what the two of them discussed as a way to promote collaborative thinking. This will take some practice, but I feel the students would enjoy and benefit from working as a team to offer new ideas and thoughts about the story. If this goes well, I would also like to try student led discussions where they are feeding off of each others ideas and I am participating only when necessary. If they were to engage in this type of discussion, they would be expected to not talk over one another, stay on topic, and participate/be engaged. The tables in the Berne and Clark article offer several great ideas that I will adapt and use in my classroom during their interactive discussions.  

        6. Which core practice do you want to develop or improve upon as you teach? How will       focusing on this core practice focus on your own professional learning?

• Comprehension Strategy Assessment and Instruction is the Core Practice I would like to work on during my literacy unit. It is so important that the students understand the why in literacy, more specifically, in vocabulary and comprehension, as these are foundational tools that they need to build upon as they begin to transition to middle school. Being able to draw upon their prior knowledge and make text-to-text, text-to-world, and text-to-self connections as they read will allow them to see that they are reading for a purpose for themselves and not for a grade. I want them to work on visualizing the content of the story and explain how those visualization came to light in their minds. I hope to learn different strategies for teaching and monitoring comprehension during my teaching that will enrich my student's ability to make connections and help them find what their interests and passions are. 
   
  7. What resources within in the community, school, classroom, do you have to work with within this area?

• Reading Street, libraries, internet, book room, my educational textbooks

8. What additional resources do you need to obtain?

• Newspapers, magazines, additional strategies that I can use to check for comprehension

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

• I will use the results from the Reading Street test that students take at the end of each week
• Give students a “Reading Inventory” assessment to see what they are interested in in terms of genre and subjects  
  • I will make a chart of observations about how each student participates during the current comprehension lessons to use when thinking about how I could increase participation opportunities who are usually quiet during oral discussions 
  
  
  10. What else will you need to find out about all the students in your class to help you develop lessons plans for guided lead teaching

• Ways to engage all students and create an atmosphere where everyone feels comfortable to share their ideas. I also want to differentiate instruction when possible, but need to establish a way to determine a way to properly assess where they would be best suited. I also want to determine what they are genuinely interested so that I can create lessons that are intriguing and educate them about topics they want to learn more about. 
  
  
  11. What else do you want/need to learn about the core practice to support your learning and teaching? 
  • Ways to engage students in a meaningful way so that they are learning comprehension skills that work best for them. I also want to look deeper into the resources about how to help students determine what the most important parts of the text are and how to develop and ask higher level questions that they have as they are reading and learning new things.

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

• I am worried about finding time to incorporate my authentic activities into the Reading Street curriculum. It is important to me that I be able to create some lessons and activities for vocabulary/ comprehension and deliver them to the students, for I worry that wherever I get a job next year will not use the same curriculum. Teaching the students I have now some of the ideas I have will allow me to see how I may need to adapt, change, or differentiate instruction and provide me with the opportunity for my mentor teacher to observe my lessons and give me feedback. While my M.T. is very open for me to try new things this year, I'm not sure that time will be on my side.

Dennis Target Area

1.      Describe your target area for guided lead teaching.

The target area for my GLT will be to instruct students using book clubs.  Students will be assigned to groups of no more than five based on reading levels, reading interests, individual backgrounds, and individual behaviors.

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

At least 90 minutes of reading instruction per day are required by the East Lansing district. 

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

o   Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text.

o   Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character’s thoughts, words, or actions).

o   Compare and contrast the treatment of similar themes and topics (e.g., the quest) in stories, myths, and traditional literature from different cultures.

o   By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poetry, in the grades 4-5 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

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?

The ultimate goal for students participating in book clubs is to increase awareness of the connections between real life experiences to literatures themes and characters.  In addition to making connections with the elements of a piece of literature, students will also be more cognizant of the similarities and differences between themselves and their peers.  Being able to identify, describe, compare, and contrast the various elements of a text within a book club group will give students the knowledge and experience of how to argue and defend an opinion or position. This knowledge will help them to build a social etiquette for both formal and informal situations outside of the academic context.

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)?

The types of classroom talk that will take place throughout the development of this unit include teacher-led discussion and independent student discussions.  Through a guided release of responsibility, the teacher will first model comprehension and discussion strategies that promote higher-level thinking for book club groups. Before the teacher can implement the discussion however, expectations of behavior must be explained to the students. Teacher expectations can be introduced to students by creating an anchor chart with the entire class.  The teacher will model discussion strategies with a demonstration group that includes another adult and two or three students, while the rest of the class observes (Berne & Clarke).   As students’ progress through the text, the teacher will model less and the students will be more responsible for their discussion of the text.  This strategy will push the students to engage in higher-level thinking; they will be generating and responding to questions and connections with the text. 

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?

I have chosen Explicit Instruction and Responding to Reading as the core practices that I want to develop as I teach using book clubs.  I have chosen two core practices because I think that in order for me to be successful in teaching my students to respond to reading, I must be able to deliver explicit instruction successfully.  To model strategies for book club, I will have to explicitly think aloud, guide interactive discussions, and also use anchor lessons and anchor charts.  These explicit strategies will help my students develop as readers and help them to partake in purposeful discussion with their peers.  By focusing on these two strategies, I will learn which reading structures work best for my students and which explicit instructions are received well by my students.  In addition to learning what strategies are the most helpful for my students, I will learn how to finesse the traditional methods to meet the needs of the specific groups that I am working with.

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

o   Book Room

o   Reading Coordinator-Kristen Kildea

8.      What additional resources do you need to obtain?

Before I can determine the additional resources needed for this discussion, my mentor teacher and I need to make a final decision on the text for the book club.

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

My mentor teacher and I have already assessed our student’s fluency levels using the AIMSweb assessment system.  This tool has allowed us to identify groups of students as above average, average, or below average readers.  We have begun to use this knowledge to instruct these small groups with basal readers from reading street.  In addition to using the information from the AIMSweb scores, I will give my students a Literacy Attitudes Assessment to discover how they feel about reading, what they enjoy reading, what they don’t enjoy reading, etc.  Based on our student’s interest, my mentor teacher and I will be able to select a novel for a specific book club based on student ability and student interest. 

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?

In order to successfully manage the Book Club, I will have to consider student behaviors in addition to student reading levels.  I do not want to combine a group of four or five students who do not get along or have one very vocal student in a group with several shy students.  I will group students in a way so that their individual strengths and weaknesses complement each other.

In addition to organizing students based on behavior, I would also like to organize them based on their different backgrounds and home situations.  I want all students to make connections to the chosen text and I want them to share their connections with their peers so that they are all learning new and different perspectives.

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

I would like to learn more about how to use explicit instruction to teach vocabulary.  Most of my students struggle with the new vocabulary that is introduced through Reading Street and I would like to expand my student’s vocabulary repertoire without having to have them use rote memorization to learn definitions.

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

One major concern that I have with the teaching of my unit is my ability to gradually release the responsibility of participating in a meaningful discussion about literature to the students.  I want students to feel safe voicing their perspectives and the connections that they make to the text.  I do not want to dominate the questioning or allow just one student to dominate the group’s conversation.    

Target Area

1.     Describe your target area for guided lead teaching. My target area for guided lead teaching is the Vocabulary portion in the Read and Comprehend section of Reading Street.

2.     Approximately how much time per day is allotted for your instruction in this area? 55 minutes

3.     Which Common Core State Standard(s) will you work toward? RL 3.4, RI 3.4, L 3.4, 3.5, & 3.6

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? Students will use their knowledge to learn new words, recognize them in a story, and build content knowledge and skills that relate to their lives. Students are learning literacy by incorporating these new words in to daily usage. Students are learning about literacy by observing the importance of understanding new words in a text. Students are learning through literacy by figuring out the skills to find and use these new words properly.

5.     What types of classroom talk take place within this target area? Introduction, Teaching, Modeling, Guided Practice and Time on their own are all kinds of classroom talk that happen in this area. To what extent is the talk teacher-led, student-led, or focused on higher-level thinking? This is mostly teacher- led discussion, but there is an opportunity to students to talk to one another, then share as a whole class again. 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)? The norms I would like to see happen are no talking and moving when the teacher is talking, sitting at our desks while paying attention and actively listening, and hands raised when they want to answer a question.

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”)? The core practices I want to develop are Hybridizing and Activating Prior Knowledge.  How will focusing on this core practice contribute to your own professional learning? Focusing on these practices will help my professional learning greatly. I think it is so important to understand your class, their likes and interests to bring all they know into teaching new materials. That way the teacher can focus on important and new information in a fun way to the class. Also with more and more districts going to basal type programs, I think hybridizing is going to be essential in making the information relevant to my class. Keeping things interesting and on level with my class’s academic achievement will really help me in the future.

7.     What resources within the community, neighborhood, school district, school or classroom do you have to work with in this target area? Reading Street, My Sidewalks, Dictionaries, Computer Lab, Library, and a Thesaurus.

8.     What additional resources do you need to obtain? Access to Reading Street Materials and handouts that I can build upon.

9.     How will you pre-assess your students in your target area? Give them a vocabulary pretest before any instruction on the given words.

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? More ideas for differentiated vocabulary instruction.

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

12.  What concerns, if any, do you have about planning and teaching your unit? I’m a little worried about teaching and making everything accessible to the range of learners in my classroom.

Hybridizing a Writing Curriculum

Before the reading today, I felt as though writing would be one of the easier aspects of literacy to teach. However, after reading the difficulties some teachers have had with connecting standards and skills while making writing enjoyable for students made me realize that there is a great deal that goes into teaching writing. As a beginning teacher of writing, I liked Routman's advice to have students generate a list of topics that they are interested in and to always write for people who are important to them. This will ensure that the student's true voice is coming through their piece of writing. Modeling is an area of expertise that I hope to gain practice in this year. If students are able to see the steps of the writing process while I create an example, they will come to know my expectations of their writing in the future. I would also like to implement the sharing and publishing of the student's writing this year that Routman discusses. Finding resources beyond bulletin boards to display and publish their work is going to be another one of my goals this year. Finally, I would like to experience one-on-one conferences with students about their writing so they know that I am not just merely reading it over once and putting a grade on it, rather helping them see their growth and encouraging them to become even better writers through revision and editing.

If I strictly followed the advice of Routman, the principal or other teachers in my grade may feel that not teaching writing as a series of skills is a mistake. Giving the students the freedom of writing about whatever they want to the audience of their choosing may appear to be too risky if students have not been taught the rules and mechanics of writing first. Issues may also arise if the school I am hired at already has a writing curriculum in place, such as Lucy Calkins or Writer's Workshop. As a new employee, I would most likely be expected to follow the curriculum that the district feels students are making the most academic growth with.

I would both finesse and hybridize Routman's ideas with my own experiences of teaching and learning writing. For example, in my recent experience in classrooms, mini-lessons appeared to be a great tool in teaching skills like conventions, adding humor, adding details, creating paragraphs, etc. However, Routman believes that mini-lessons are best served in small groups of students who need work on a particular skill or perhaps during one-on-one conferences. I may choose to finesse her ideas by teaching one or two mini-lessons a week and let students know that when they share their writing with myself or the class, I will be looking specifically for the skills the mini-lesson that week taught. In theory, hybridizing Routman's ideas, using my experiences as a writer, and the curriculum the school I am hired at teaches (if there is one) would be the best way to teach writing. To answer Taylor's question, it may be risky to take an independent stance by hybridizing the writing curriculum this way, but as long as the students are making academic progress and enjoying writing, doesn't that suffice the action in “What can I do”?

First Post!

Hello Sharpest Crayons in the Box! I hope everyone is doing well on this lovely Monday afternoon. Unfortunately, I may be switching TE classes because of internship placements, but I didn't want to miss out on being the first post on this blog! The very first page of our reading states, "Writers write best about the things they know and care about" (p. 11). I absolutely agree, not only from the point of view of a teacher, but of a writer. I am an English minor and have written several papers in my day, as I'm sure all of you have during undergrad, and I know that it make it a lot easier to achieve that '10 page minimum' when the topic was something that I actually cared about. Along with the stories we heard about in class on Thursday, students are going to be effected by the world around them before they ever step foot in our classrooms, and we have to consider this when it comes to helping them learn. Although it may take time to get to know each and every student as an individual, it ultimately will make it easier for us to understand each child as his or her own person. I am unsure of the kinds of professional dilemmas that will come up this year, but I am thankful that I have a support system of my classmates who are all going through similar situations together. Whether its problems with certain students or parents, it will be nice to have everyone's opinion if/when a situation comes up.

One of the best parts about Literacy is that it can be found in nearly every other part of a school's curriculum, as well as in activities outside of the classroom. As a teacher, this acts as an opportunity to incorporate literacy lessons throughout the school day and in ways that allow our students to retain and actually use what they learn. I struggle with math, however, literacy shows up in math all the time, and I hope to 'hybridize' my knowledge of literacy within my math lessons, hopefully allowing me to gain a better understanding of the math lesson as well. Literacy has a more distinct tie to language arts, and as an English minor I hope to 'finesse' my teaching techniques within language arts because I feel it is something I am comfortable with, but could always use more practice and there are endless lesson plans that I have never even heard of. I want to make learning obtainable to my students as individual learners, and feel as though the first step in accomplishing that is by asking myself; What can I do?