Catie Watson - Part A Step 3

Inquiry Three

Part A: Interpreting Evidence and Making Claims

Step 3

Teaching from a basal reading program was extremely challenging. I found Reading Street to be a very complex and confusing program with mediocre lesson plans to teach practical reading skills and strategies. Many of the texts/passages were random and quite boring. The examples the program provided to model the skills/strategies were oftentimes confusing and hard to follow. Unfortunately, my mentor teacher is required to teach literacy using this program, which can be very constraining at times. Although I was limited on what I could use to teach during my unit plan, I was able to create some new ways to have my students practice applying the learned skills and strategies.

Although I did not particularly enjoy using the Reading Street program, I did like the fact that my lessons and objectives were already established for me. Instead of trying to come up with an entire unit plan on my own, I was able to take what Reading Street gave me, and work to adapt the lessons to better suit my students. I was also provided with all of the texts that were used during my unit, as well as guided reading books that went along with the unit’s objectives.

I faced many obstacles during my unit plan. The first one was when I taught my students about cause-and-effect relationships. As I mentioned in my previous blog posting, many of my students had a difficult time distinguishing the cause from the effect. Once I took a closer look at what Reading Street was “telling” me to teach, I was able to identify where the problem was occurring. Reading Street’s lesson had me teach my students that the effect can be found by looking for “What happened?” and the cause can be found by looking for “Why did it happen?” I spent an extra day teaching this strategy and was able to clear up any confusion my students had. Both the cause and effect were events that had happened. Figuring out which event CAUSED the other to happen was crucial in order for my students to understand the relationship.

Another obstacle I encountered during my unit plan was that I did a poor job of designing and implementing some of the worksheets I used. Instead of being a tool for independent practice, I used the cause-and-effect worksheet during my modeling of the strategy. This allowed my students to simply copy down answers that we discussed as a class, rather than allowing them to use the strategy and show me what they knew with their own examples. I was able to overcome this obstacle by carefully monitoring my students’ understanding during guided reading groups and the answers they provided on their weekly worksheets. Although I was not able to gather a lot of information on what my students knew based on the cause-and-effect worksheet, I was able to collect data during guided reading groups.

Although my unit did not go exactly as I had planned, my daily presentations were a successful component of my unit. I was able to use various images and questions that kept my students engaged and interested. Many of my students seemed to be excited to talk about the questions I posed during my lessons, and they enjoyed the funny pictures and images that related to their own lives (such as images of basketball players and gymnasts, etc.) I also had success with my “sticky note” method. I was able to work on developing my core practice of “Writing about Reading” by using this method, and the students really seemed to enjoy it. I was also able to extend this method into their independent reading novels, and collected more data about each of my students and their comprehension.

As I had mentioned in my previous blog postings about my first two lessons, my unit has taught me how important it is to plan ahead and anticipate student responses. Now that I have been teaching Reading Street for several weeks, I have learned how to analyze the skill/strategy and what the program provides me with to teach the skill/strategy. I am better able to anticipate what my students might be confused about and what concepts and/or words I should emphasize. I have also learned the importance of creating effective worksheets and assessment tools. I believe worksheets should be used as a way for students to demonstrate their understanding of the given concept. During my unit, there were several times where I had my students complete worksheets that ended up being meaningless and a waste of time. Instead of assessing my students’ understanding, the worksheets were used to copy down other students’ responses. I have begun to realize what types of worksheets are beneficial and what types are futile.

There are several things I still need to learn about teaching literacy. I need to learn better ways of assessing my students’ progress. Taking more detailed anecdotal records might be a good way to track my students’ progress and help me know which students need extra support. I also need to learn more ways to finesse the Reading Street curriculum. I would like to talk with my mentor teacher and find out if it’s possible to bring in other texts when I feel the Reading Street texts are inadequate. As I continue teaching, I hope to learn more about literacy in order to become a better teacher.