Target Area Questions - Catie Watson

1. Describe your target area for guided lead teaching.
My target area for guided lead teaching is comprehension.

2. Approximately how much time per day is allotted for your instruction in this area?
I will have about an hour and a half to teach literacy each day.

3. Which Common Core State Standard(s) will you work toward?
CCSS Literature 1. Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text. CCSS Literature 3. 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).

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?
In my opinion, comprehension is one of the most important aspects of literacy. Teaching skills and strategies for effective comprehension will equip my students with the tools that are necessary to be successful in literacy, as well as all other subjects. Comprehension skills are also related to students’ lives because they will need to be able to read and understand text outside of school, no matter what type of profession they choose to pursue. Comprehension is necessary for students to learn literacy. There are many other skills that will be taught alongside comprehension lessons (such as vocabulary and fluency), which will help my students learn about all aspects of literacy.

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)?
Unfortunately, Reading Street limits the types of classroom talk that take place during literacy instruction. Much of the talk is teacher-led, while some of the time the teacher asks students to respond to questions. My hope is to incorporate small-group talk as well as think-pair-share. Another type of interaction I would like to build during my teaching is the idea of “Read, Write, and Talk” that is mentioned in Strategies that Work. I believe this strategy will aid in the acquisition of comprehension skills, as well as incorporating my core practice of ‘writing about reading’. This interaction will also allow students to interact with one another and gives them a chance to have meaningful discussions.

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 would like to work on developing the core practice of writing about reading. Focusing on this core practice will contribute to my own professional learning because I will be able determine which ‘writing about reading’ strategies best compliment comprehension instruction. I believe reading and writing go hand-in-hand, and learning to integrate these two important subjects will be beneficial to my teaching practice.

7. What resources within the community, neighborhood, school district, school or classroom do you have to work with in this target area?
I will be using the Reading Street curriculum for my guided lead teaching, and all of the supporting materials. We also have a reading specialist that I can confer with for extra support. I will also be using SmartNotebook software to teach my lessons.

8. What additional resources do you need to obtain?
Since Reading Street provides all of the materials, I should not need to obtain any additional resources.

9. How will you pre-assess your students in your target area?
I will begin conducting informal pre-assessments prior to my guided lead teaching by observing students during literacy small-group time, assessing their current comprehension skills and strategies. I will also be able to identify areas that I may need to focus on, within comprehension.

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?
I will continue to make observations about my students as I develop my lesson plans for my guided lead teaching. I will note what type of instruction seems to be most effective for my students, and what type of lessons they respond best to. So far, I have noticed that lessons are most successful when students are not sitting for a long period of time and when teacher-talk is minimal.

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 which ‘writing about reading’ strategies are most effective when paired with learning about comprehension. For example, I would like to incorporate the use of sticky notes during reading, and I would like to know what types of questions I can ask students to write on their sticky notes to support comprehension strategies.

12. What concerns, if any, do you have about planning and teaching your unit?
I am concerned that the Reading Street curriculum may limit my ability to effectively teach my core practice of ‘writing about reading.’

Caroline Paredes; Inquiry Two, Part A

1.     Describe your target area for guided lead teaching.

o    I am going to be teaching the Fantasy unit for my guided lead teaching. Within the Fantasy unit, I will teaching the children about the genre itself (i.e. what it is, how it differs from other non-fiction writing, common language, plot, etc.), writing fantasy, and reading fantasy. I will most likely be reading from Coraline as a group read aloud, with the integration of a recorded reading by the author. We will also continue to work on reading comprehension strategies (i.e. visualizing, making connections, inferring, etc.)

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

o    60 minutes a day, 4 to 5 times a week.

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

o    Reading Standards for Literature; Integration of knowledge and ideas. Grade 5, No. 7.

§  Analyze how visual and multimedia elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a text (e.g., graphic novel, multimedia presentation of fiction, folktale, myth, poem)

o    Writing Standards; Text Types and Purposes. Grade 5, No. 3.

§  3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined

experiences or events using effective technique,

descriptive details, and clear event sequences.

a. Orient the reader by establishing a situation

and introducing a narrator and/or characters;

organize an event sequence that unfolds

naturally.

b. Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue,

description, and pacing, to develop

experiences and events or show the responses

of characters to situations.

c. Use a variety of transitional words, phrases,

and clauses to manage the sequence of events.

d. Use concrete words and phrases and sensory

details to convey experiences and events

precisely.

e. Provide a conclusion that follows from the

narrated experiences or events.

o    Writing Standards; Production and distribution of writing. Grade 5, No. 4 and 5.

§  4. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the

development and organization are appropriate

to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific

expectations for writing types are defined in

standards 1–3 above.)

§  5. With guidance and support from peers and adults,

develop and strengthen writing as needed by

planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a

new approach. (Editing for conventions should

demonstrate command of Language standards 1–3

up to and including grade 5 on pages 28 and 29.)

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? (I still don’t entirely understand what this last sentence means but I will do my best)

o    Students will be working on developing and finessing their reading comprehension through the use of Coraline and also their writing through activities that ask students to write their own fantasy stories while using various components of the writing process to do so. These aforementioned skills are extremely useful to the children’s life now and in the future. Having a high skill level of reading comprehension and writing will directly help the students both inside and outside of school for the rest of their lives. Before going through with them, they will be made aware of the writing process and what it does for their writing, as well as how read-alouds are beneficial for them. Once they begin doing so, they will then learn through the literacy.

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)?

o    The talk involved in the interactive read-aloud of Coraline will be mostly teacher-led; however, there is still room for student-talk to occur. For example, I enjoyed the piece on pages 78-79 of Strategies That Work which explained how you could have children focus more on their thought process during reading as opposed to the reading itself during an interactive read-aloud. By doing this, they are then better able to understand the thinking that is involved in their reading, and when they might be drifting away from text comprehension. One activity that is done is that the instructor will stop reading at certain parts and ask students to turn to their partner and share exactly what was in their mind at that moment when reading, so that they may “see” their own thinking through conversation. I would also like to see some student-led discussion from my students. While they have not done this type of discussion in the classroom thus far, I feel as if the students are mature enough to be able to do so with little to no problem. I want to see the students sitting in a circle and having an active discussion with one another without necessarily always raising their hand to speak, and with little teacher interaction on my part.

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?

o    The core practice I would like to work on is “Practices to Facilitate Comprehension Instruction”. I am especially concerned with this core practice because I feel as if it is something that I always wanted to practice working on but was never able to do so as effectively as I would have liked because I have always been placed in lower elementary (Kindergarten and 1^st grade). I would really like to experiment with these teaching practices in an older classroom setting so I can become better at teaching them and then have an easier time using them with a younger (and more difficult) set of students.

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

o    There are the common core standards, my MT, her Trade Book, My MT’s “Fantasy Binder” which contains several lessons and other ideas from previous years, my colleagues (i.e. the other three interns at Hope), Hope’s library, the Holt public library, and an author- made recording of Coraline.

8.     What additional resources do you need to obtain? Neil gamin recording of coralline, lists of fantasy books, the fantasy genre

o    I still need to obtain the Neil Gaiman recording of Coraline, lists of Fantasy book examples, and more information on the Fantasy genre itself.

9.     How will you pre-assess your students in your target area? Pre-assessment of the fantasy genre. What is fantasy, what fantasy books have you read (have you ever?)

o    I plan to get more information on my students by administering a quick pre-assessment on Fantasy. Questions would include: “Explain the fantasy genre?” “What fantasy books have you read? (if any)” “How are fantasy books different from other non-fiction books?”

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? Sometimes religion has been an issue. Some children get scared… how to deal with that, kids participate in a different way. Have they learned it already, have they read it already?

o    I would like to find out more on how the students will handle “purposeful-talk structures” before I actually start planning a ton of them into my lessons. I would also like to know more on what the kids think of read-alouds in general. My mentor teacher also brought up that the religious beliefs of certain students have been an issue in the past during the fantasy unit. While we both agree that this shouldn’t be a problem this year, I still need to make sure so I can start thinking about how to “include” these students in this unit.

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

o    I could really use a refresher on all of these teaching practices I previously mentioned (which I plan to do on my own terms) I would also like to know how many of these structures would be a realistic number to work with during my two-weeks of guided lead teaching.

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

o    Not many, although I feel as if I am not going to have enough time to get through everything I would like to do with my students (which is surprising considering two weeks seemed like really long time in the beginning of the semester). I am also worried about having enough time to plan everything, considering that I will be doing my two weeks guided lead teaching for math the two weeks immediately prior to my language arts unit.  

Target Area Questions - Kelsey Schmitt - 9/27

1. Describe your target area for guided lead teaching.

Writing Instruction is the target area with conferences being the core practice.

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

             Writer’s workshop is 55 min a day, four days a week

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

W4.4 I can develop and write different pieces with appropriate organization based on purpose and audience

W4.5 I can develop and improve writing by planning, revising and editing

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?

Writing Instruction should connect to students’ lives. Mini lessons should focus around building personal connections that will help the students to create stronger writing pieces. They are learning how to create their own literacy to share their thoughts with others. And use literacy (various texts) to model the type of writing we want them to create. For example since they are writing narrative pieces now, we have sharing different narrative texts with the students during our mini lessons.

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)?

           

I think that the talk is fairly well balanced in our writing instruction. The mini lesson might be more teacher-led with student participation and sharing. I think as the year progresses the goal will be to move to more student led discussions. However it is important that we are giving students time to write and time to share as well.  As for higher-level thinking, I think that the mini lessons are striving to get students to think harder about the writing process. I want students to be able to look at different types of writing techniques that other authors use and apply it to their own writing. One of the norms that I would like to continue to cultivate is a safe-space for sharing writing. I don’t want my students to be afraid to share or feel they will be judged and criticized by their peers in a negative way. At the same time I want them to be able to point out what is strong and what is weak in their own writing, so they can strive to get better. I do not want to over praise and say that everyone’s pieces are perfect all of the time.

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 want to focus on writing conferences at my ‘core practice’. I think that this will be very beneficial to my own professional learning because I think that many schools are moving towards having writing conferences and workshops. It is a nice time to give each student some one on one attention, which does not happen very often during the typical school day. You can really tailor instruction very specifically for each student.

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

We use Lucy Calkin’s Writer’s Workshop as well as supplements from Café. My teacher also uses “Strategies that Work”” as resource too. I think it is great that I have access to so many resources in the classroom and am not limited to one thing.

8. What additional resources do you need to obtain?

           

I can’t think of any other resources that I need yet.  :)

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

Writing conferences could be difficult to assess so I think our first writing conference could be used as a pre-assessment to see where they are at when we start compared to farther down the road after multiple conferences.

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?

I could maybe make a survey to see how they feel about writing. I would also want to see some other samples of their writing to see a starting point, which I have already seen from their first spiral notebook entry.

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

I want to learn more about setting up initial writing conferences and I want to learn more about how to differentiate conferences for different leveled writers. No two conferences would really look the same.

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

           

My concern would be just my anxiety that the conferences would fail and worrying that I wasted my students and my own time.  I really want my students to get something out of the time together... I am sure after the first few conferences I will feel more comfortable and my nerves will calm.

September 16 Blog Post by Catie Watson

As I was reading Routman’s advice on teaching writing, I realized that there is a lot more to this subject area than I had previously thought. In order to be an effective writing teacher, I will need to understand the areas of writing that should be covered in 4th grade, as well as the Common Core Standards. As of right now, all I know about what is expected of my students is that they will need to write an informational, narrative, and persuasive pieces. Learning about the other skills that I will be teaching is crucial in order for me to effectively teach writing. I hope to develop my teaching skills by learning how to incorporate the basic writing standards and skills into the overall lesson goals. I also want to learn how to effectively monitor and keep records of my student’s writing. Since there are so many important aspects to writing, being able to keep track of each student’s individual progress is extremely important in order to help them improve their writing skills. I have already had several conversations with my MT about writing conferences, and I am excited to learn from her about how to utilize these rare one-on-one interactions with my students.

Some professional dilemmas I might encounter if I were to follow Routman’s advice is that my school has a writing curriculum that teachers are required to follow. The three pieces that I mentioned before (informational, narrative, and persuasive) are the main components of the curriculum and do not leave much time for other writing opportunities. Another dilemma that I would encounter is that much of the beginning of the year is spent on preparing for the MEAP test. Preparing for this test means that many writing skills are crammed into quick lessons in hopes that the students will be able to write a piece of work that scores high enough on the MEAP.

One way I hope to alter the writing curriculum is to have the students keep a writing notebook/journal. In this notebook, students could explore many different types of writing, genres, and stories. This would allow them to experiment with different types of writing other than informational, narrative, and persuasive. The only problem I foresee with this idea is that there will not be enough time allotted for mini-lessons that model and teach the various types of writing for my students to practice in their notebooks. I plan to speak with my MT and attempt to develop a plan that can incorporate these notebooks into our daily writing lessons.

Initial Blog Post by Caroline Paredes

As a first time, full-time teacher, I imagine facing quite a few professional dilemmas this internship year. Having never been so fully exposed to a classroom setting, I expect that there will be several spontaneous occasions where I am placed in a position that requires me to choose “the lesser of two evils” in regards to my students. Some may not be as serious, for example, when earlier this week I was left to decide whether or not I should send a child who has been known to take excessive bathroom visitations to the restroom after asking me for the first time that hour. While I did not think much of it at first, I was left to wonder what sort of message was being sent to this child after she ignored my instruction and asked my MT to use the restroom, and was then allowed to go (my MT did not know she had asked me first). It made me wonder just how strict I should be with my students. If I am not as strict, I imagine that they will not like me very much and will not be terribly motivated to do the assignments I provide them with (or will be motivated purely out of fear, which I do not want, as I do not want them to form negative associations with school). If I am too kind, friendly, and easy going however, I will have students who end up seeing me more as a friend as opposed to an authority figure, and I do not imagine that they will have much respect for me or my teaching. I am still finding it hard to find that happy medium where the students see me as a likable teacher who they respect, but who they also see as a safe contact person.

I also wonder a lot about how I am going to ensure that I am reaching ALL of my students, and not just those who are able to listen and follow direction at all times. For example, if I have one student who is not understanding the material and is disruptive and must be worked with at an individual level in order for them to understand the material, and the rest of the class is ready and eager to learn, when (or do) I choose to ignore or excuse the child who is being disruptive (and who will then, consequently, not learn any more of the material) so that I may focus my energy on the students who are ready to learn? I also imagine encountering several dilemmas in regards to how to grade the students in my classroom who are ESL learners or special education students in relation to the general education students (i.e. do I grade the students on a similar rubric, or do I completely alter the rubrics for these children?). Dealing with parents should also bring about quite a few dilemmas, for example, if a parent complains that their child has too much homework, do I lower the amount of homework to keep the parent and child happy, and risk that they do not gain practice in as much as I want them to, or do I keep it as it is and anger the parent and risk that the grades of the child (who in actuality, really can’t do that much homework due to their learning capability or time restrictions) suffer?

In regards to my current teaching methods, I feel very confident in my ability to plan creative and meaningful lessons for my students (or instructor, or classmates). I am also quite confident in my ability to assess my students, as we have covered this quite extensively in my TE courses as well as my TESOL courses, and I have also acquired several great resources in regards to student assessment during my undergraduate years.

Areas which I feel I need to learn and practice more in the classroom include classroom management and general execution of my lessons. These are both areas in which I have struggled with in the past and which I feel have not been thoroughly addressed in past courses. Considering all of the teaching that I will be doing this year and the amount of time spent instructing my class as a lead instructor, I imagine that I will be getting plenty of experience in these two areas. My two mentor teachers are also great resources and I have already been getting tons of advice and ideas from them in terms of how to properly execute a lesson and also how to best manage classroom behavior.