Ashley's Lesson Reflections 2-3

Lesson # 2

The main difference that was apparent from the students was their attitudes. From the first day to the second, was like night and day. Students wanted to learn the letters, they wanted to learn and volunteer. I was so nervous creating this unit without a lot of teacher support, because students recognize it and let it affect their performance. If students are not motivated they will not perform well. Their best ability will not be shown from what they deliver.

I like using the Richardson approach and asking students what they notice about what is on the board. You can use this is any subject not just writing or reading workshop. I like using this as a warm-up activity for students to really focus on what is written on the board and come up ideas. They need to be able to support their reasoning with evidence on the board or in general. If these expectations are not clearly stated students will say random off the wall answers just to get a laugh out of their classmates and I do not want students to become comfortable with the idea that they can do that when I am teaching.

I like how students notice things in common among lessons, with practice they have become pretty successful in making connections and telling why. In today’s lesson, the focus was on the letters “f, k, b, and h” and these letters also have the under curve when writing them in cursive. When working with a partner and trying words and practicing letters the students were really on task. A few times I wanted to get their attention and speak, but they were listening so well I did not want to interrupt.

I am considering for future lessons creating or assigning partners. This does not just happen in writer’s workshop, it happens in math as well. It is just a few students that can not work together. They become noisy and disruptive, but today they do were not present for part of the partner work time. This was because some of the class was getting their hearing tested in the library. So when I was thoroughly impressed with the noise level in the room, it became very obvious it was because the ones that can not handle it yet were not present.

I made sure to walk around the room and check on a few students, I had them work with me only for a few seconds to check their understanding and see if they were taking their time and taking the activity seriously.


Lesson # 3

Today’s lesson was much different from the previous ones. It was crazy! I think that the fact it is the day before a holiday makes it a lot harder to teach material. The students are just so excited it was like their volume was turned up and their thinking was turned off. Completely off task would be an understatement. At one point I had kids running around during my lesson, over by the rabbit cage, etc. It didn’t really bother me until a student decided to try to sharpen a pencil while I was talking with the electric sharpener. In that moment it was clear that as an educator you really need to be patient. I wanted to just explode, but instead I took a deep breath, looked over at her and the class became silent…then I continued with my lesson.

This lesson was on uppercase letters of the alphabet, A-Z. I did a “think aloud” today, it was the first one I had ever tried. It went well, I was surprised. I thought initially I would feel uncomfortable and would be nervous or forget what I was talking about, but really it went well, I was not nervous and I did well. I think that the students really understood what is expected for them to do during partner work based on how I was thinking. I liked this method of modeling and having students try it by themselves. When I was walking around listening and watching what students were doing, I was impressed to hear them repeating word for word what I was saying.

During this partner work time is when I like to take some students for re-teaching. Now I am far along enough in my unit to know which students are falling behind. The only perk about my unit is that I will continue to teach cursive handwriting throughout the year, not with a mini-lesson beforehand, but will included sheets in their homework packet to have them practice weekly.

I assigned partners this lesson and I really happy that I decided too. Especially today with Thanksgiving tomorrow, the students that normally are loud and off task together were with students that are not afraid to tell them to shape up. There is quite a range of maturity levels across my classroom, some are extremely mature and others are very mature for their age. Taking the maturity of the students into consideration when pairing them, was extremely beneficial, especially when it reduces the tattling on partners who are not participating. I made a game up for pairs to play, and whenever students think that they are playing a game they always are more engaged.

Lesson Reflections

Lesson #1
From general observations I feel confident that my students gained an idea of the characteristics of an adventure and understood what we read so far in the story. Individual students were able to respond to my questions about the fantasy and realistic elements in the story and were able to give their opinion about whether or not they would like to participate in this adventure. Many were also able to find good descriptive verbs in the text for the Good Verbs Keeper to write down. However, after a while students started suggesting every verb they could find and I had a hard time explaining why some verbs were worth noting more than others. (Ex: “plunged” was a good descriptive verb but “said” was not.)

An alternate read of this lesson came in this incident of the students suggesting every verb they could find. I believe that many students were eager to participate in whatever small way they could. The idea that some verbs are stronger or more descriptive than others may have gone over the heads of some students, but all students recognized that we were trying to identify some action words and were eager to contribute. Also, during the opening discussion about what an adventure was most students seemed to fixate on the idea that an adventure meant traveling or taking a journey, particularly traveling around the world. I had to probe farther to get responses such as “exciting” or “trying new things.” I’m guessing that they were thinking more of what people do on an adventure, not what an adventure is. Knowing this showed me what they knew already about adventures and gave me a place to start for showing them a broader picture of what an adventure is.

Many of my students are better readers and thinkers than I gave them credit for which I saw in their ability to find verbs and the chosen “Important Information Keeper’s” summary for the day. The girl I chose to do this did a very good job of picking out the most important details from each set of pages in the story. However, I don’t know yet if that skill extends to the rest of the class.

This is only the first day of reading this story and the unit as a whole. I would like to wait another day or two before taking action to re-teach any students who may need it. I need to gain a better idea of what they do and do not understand about this story first. I do plan to spend time tomorrow summarizing and reviewing ideas from today’s reading. That should help some students pick up on some of the information they might have missed.
Trying to fit a large amount of material for this unit into two weeks is requiring me to cram a lot of activities into each day. If I taught this lesson again I probably would have done the discussion about what an adventure is on one day, given students a short writing activity related to it, or done a read aloud from a different adventure story. Their attention began to wane toward the end of the lesson and I think this would not have happened if the two parts of the lesson – the adventure discussion and the reading – had been broken up into two separate days.

Lesson #2
I think that my students are getting a better idea of how summarizing works in terms of using this strategy to help them keep track of what was previously read in the story. However, many of them seem to struggle with differentiating between summarizing (or focusing on main ideas) and retelling the whole story. The student I chose as the Important Information Keeper on this day tried to retell everything and I struggled to maintain the flow of the lesson while also making sure he knew how to do his job correctly. It’s likely that other students would be likely to make the same mistake. I tried to emphasize to the whole class that summarizing meant focusing on just the most important ideas, but I’m not sure if I was clear enough.

Alternate reads: Issues with summarizing aside, I found that students were very engaged and intrigued by this story, especially the prospect of finding a whole new world at the bottom of the school lost-and-found. Throughout the reading students were raising their hands to point out things they noticed in the illustrations and asking their own questions about the story. I could tell that even the most struggling readers were engaged because at the end when we worked on filling out the “Story Steps,” students who usually seem unmotivated and unwilling to contribute were raising their hands to share what they knew about the story.

At one point in the story I asked students to look for clues in the illustrations. Students were very excited by this and wanted to keep contributing things they noticed even after I told them it was time to move on. Although I am working with third graders who are beginning to work with more challenging texts, they still respond heavily to clues in illustrations. I should use this as a tool to build on in future lessons.

I think that the idea of summarizing needs a little re-teaching so I plan to review it again during tomorrow’ s lesson. I plan to be very specific with the Important Information Keeper and make sure him/her knows exactly what to look for. My CT also suggested that I have other students in the class give oral summaries of each page in addition to the Information Keeper writing it down. That way more students can participate and this one student will have a little support if needed.
Teaching the idea of summarizing might have been more effective if I found a better way to have students interact with the Important Information Keeper. Perhaps I could have had this student provide summaries after every couple of pages instead of just at the end. This would have reinforced the process of summarizing throughout the lesson.

Lesson #3
The idea of summarizing and focusing on main ideas is starting to sink in, although many students still want to retell more details than they need. At the end of every two pages (when I remembered) I had a student give a quick summary of what was read on those pages. Some students kept their ideas focused, while others still gave more information than needed. The oral responses I gained during the “Think About the Selection” questions showed me that several of my students are capable of thinking beyond the story about possible outcomes, character motivations, and their own personal feelings about the story. Many students’ responses were a little superficial, but I can tell that they are trying to think about higher-level ideas, even if they can’t articulate their thoughts completely.

Alternate reads: I found during all of these lessons that I tend to probe students a little too much to reach a specific response that I want them to find. In some cases, students come up with their own ideas that are just as good or better than mine. Sometimes I need to run with their ideas and not worry so much about my own. This happened when I asked a question about why the characters couldn’t figure out which door they needed to take to get out of the lost-and-found. One student came up with a new idea and I praised him for it, but then I continued to explain my own as well. This point was not completely necessary for understanding the story so I probably could have let the rest of the class follow this boys’ interpretation instead of interjecting mine too.

During the MEAP we worked a lot on the strategy of looking back in the text to find the necessary information for answering comprehension questions. When I gave students the comprehension worksheet for this story I also gave them the page numbers on which they could find each answer, as a tool to help the struggling readers. I saw nearly all students actively looking back in the text for their answers and commenting on how helpful this was. Although it was not an objective for this lesson, I’m glad that my students were able to practice the skill of re-reading and searching for specific information in text.

Summarizing still needs to be practiced so I plan to build more informal summarizing into the next lessons in my unit so students will have more chances to work on it. If possible I also want to make sure I meet with students who struggle with reading to help them understand and remember what made this story an adventure. This reinforcement will help them before the final two lessons where they will be comparing and contrasting all three stories in the unit.
I realized that these lessons did not offer much opportunity for feedback from all students as individuals, with the exception of the comprehension worksheet at the end. To gain thoughts and ideas from all students and again to keep their attention, I might have assigned some of the “Think About the Selection” questions as written journal entries or discussed them in individual conferences instead of posing them to the class as a whole.

Reflection # 1

My unit for writer’s workshop covers learning to write in cursive using different strategies and tools. They are not long mini-lessons and are important for students to become aware and familiar of. Recently, from sitting in on meetings and grade level “block” time, I have learned how overlooked cursive is. Teachers are feelings extremely pressured with the amount of curriculum that needs to be covered and the deadlines for Benchmark Assessments. Their argument is simply that technology is increasingly becoming more prevalent in the classroom and students need to learn to type before writing in cursive. I disagree; I believe that if students can not read cursive writing, we are promoting a sense of illiteracy.
After many discussions with my CT and especially after hearing parent concerns at Curriculum Night back in September, we thought it would be a great idea for me to plan and squeeze in a unit on handwriting. My CT would still plan other mini-lessons for writer’s workshop, but a solid 25 minutes of our 2 hour and 15 minute literacy block would be set aside for handwriting. Parents absolutely loved this idea! Each week, cursive packets would be sent home for students to practice tracing and copying down letters working on the different forms of letters in the alphabet.
I was surprised to see how excited students were to learn cursive. I was also shocked that some students at Walled Lake Elementary had never had any experience with cursive writing thus far. Only the students that were new to the school had any formal instruction from the teacher.
For the pre-assessment, students were to copy a poem written by Shel Silverstein. The poem is written in cursive already, students just have to look and copy onto handwriting paper. At the bottom of the sheet is a form that students will fill out assessing their own work. I really like this idea because for the most part students in the 4th grade are pretty honest, and will give their honest self-evaluation of their work.
Something that surprised me that I realized about certain students is how much they do not like writing, and it is not even because they are not good at it, they just try and do anything and everything to avoid sitting down and writing. I have one student that asks to use the restroom everyday during this time and I finally started saying let me see your work and realized he was not completing any work before in his writers notebook. We do not check their writing on a daily basis only when we are drafting and publishing pieces but students have the opportunity to write daily and he would barely write more than a few sentences for weeks. Now, in writer’s workshop, students have to show me their work before they use the restroom.
The lessons are so short I would probably not change any of it if I had the opportunity to teach it again. I would just give certain students more practice sheets to do at home. I would also use this really neat bumpy handwriting paper that I used for my last lesson. It looks the exact same but the students’ notice they went to far on the lines because they cross the bumps and recognize they need to end sooner.
Students that go to Mrs. Pfeffer in the resource room for Language I noticed struggled and needed additional support. Even though they are not in the room for writer’s workshop they still participated in the handwriting part. One student struggles with holding the pencil and with writing in general and needs to be given thorough instruction and protocol. For example, I walk by and whisper “Garrett, I am really looking at your spacing and writing in a straight line, reaching from the bottom line to the top line.” That pulls his attention to the activity he needs to focus on and for about 5 minutes he will concentrate on the task at hand. Without written or thorough instruction he is off task right from the beginning and will not know where to begin.

Teaching Reflection

  Lesson 4 - Day 4

What did students learn and which students struggled with the lesson?  

During this lesson students were about to discuss the different characters that were in the story. They had to identify a character that they were going to write about. We discussed how it would not make sense to pick a small character to sketch because we would not know enough about that character. Every student chose between two characters. I modeled an example of how to fill out the character sketch for each of the two characters. Then the students worked independently using their books to help them finish his/her own worksheet.

What are alternate reads (interpretations) of your students’ performance or product?

I quickly realized that due to time, many of my students were not going to be able to finish. I told students not to worry and to take their time, they would be given more to finish later. I was very surprised on how well certain students worked individually. Every student seemed focused and got to work. When checking my students work after they had more time to complete it, I made sure that they all had one character and that they weren't going back and forth between main characters. I also made sure that they had 3 character traits and examples of each. Everything above that was extra. Because my group of students was already differeniated based on their reading level, my expectations for the completion of the character sketch were the same. The expectations for the other two reading groups were different than for mine.

What did you learn about your students’ literacy practices that extend beyond your objectives?

I was surprised by the level of student participation during the discussion over character traits. I was impressed by how well students monitored their own behavior. Students were able to use their books to go back and look for examples to support their answers. Students were able to identify the main characters and discuss their significance. They could explain why other characters were less significant to the story. Identifying single words for character traits was slightly more difficult. I noticed they were picking emotions as opposed to words that described the actual character. I think I was able to fix this misconception during my modeling for the most part however. 

When and how will you re-teach the material to students who need additional support?    

Every student seemed to understand what I was looking for after the discussion and modeling. I do not feel re-teaching would be necessary for this lesson. Especially because they will eventually get to discuss how their character has changed later in the unit. This will allow them to get another look back at character traits and allow them to see and discuss how their character has changed over the course of the book. If students need additional support, I can pull a small group at the end of the character change lesson to give further information.  

If you were to teach this same lesson again, what would you do differently and how do you think the changes would improve students’ learning? 

If I were to teach this lesson differently, I would read for less time allowing for more time for the students to work on the character sketch worksheet. I think that by the time we were done discussing and modeling an example for each character, the students understood much what was expected much more clearly. Then unfortunately due to the time slot, they only had a few minutes to get started. Then they had to wait until later in the day when there was some free time to pull it back out and pick up where they left off. Next time, I would make sure to allow for a 10-15 minute mini-lesson and then 10-15 minutes to work on it. 

Lesson 5  - Day 5

What did students learn and which students struggled with the lesson?

Students learned that in a story there is a problem and a solution. In between the conflict and resolution there are events that lead up to the resolution. This was the perfect lesson for that day because the chapter we read was a great model for a problem, events, and a solution. There were a few third graders who were having a hard time identifying a problem. They were picking small issues in the book that would not be considered a problem or have enough events that led to the solution. After we read the chapter together, I was able to use the chapter as an example. I modeled how I would use that example to fill out the worksheet. Students raised their hands and gave their ideas for the problem. As students were working individually at their desks, I was able to walk around and check to see if students were on the right track. Only one of my students needed me to sit help guide him through this.

What are alternate reads (interpretations) of your students’ performance or product?
As with the day before, all students in my group were expected to come up with a problem in the book, 3 events that lead up the the solution, and the resolution. If students chose the main conflict in the story, they knew they were responsible for going back and adding the events and resolution as we continued reading daily. Every student was expected to write in complete sentences. They were all expected to have the 5 things I mentioned above in order to have a satisfactory demonstration of their knowledge on the assignment. 
 What did you learn about your students’ literacy practices that extend beyond your objectives?
I learned that some students had a difficult time understanding that not every issue in the book constitutes a problem. Some students needed more explanation and examples of the main conflict in the story versus a smaller conflict versus no conflict. I had to give more examples than I had originally planned for. While the majority of my group was able to give other examples from different read alouds that we have done. This was impressive to me because we had not done the connections lesson yet. Students did a great job working together and monitoring their own behavior while others were reading. Students were participating in the discussion as well as volunteering to read.

When and how will you re-teach the material to students who need additional support?

During my mini-lesson I quickly noticed that I was going to need to model this more than once. I gave an example from Tales of A Fourth Grade Nothing. Some students still seemed confused. I then read the chapter. Then I used that chapter to model how the 5 points they were expected to do. Next, I had students volunteer their own examples which allowed students to make text to text connections that served as great examples of problem and solution. Then I allowed students to work individually while I walked around the room. One student I noticed still seemed to be confused so I was able to sit and work one on one with him as we discussed the problem he picked and how it was solved together.

If you were to teach this same lesson again, what would you do differently and how do you think the changes would improve students’ learning? 
If I were to teach this lesson again, I would have more examples of problem/conflict in other books that we had all read readily available. It worked out that a student was able to make a great connection to a different book. Having just the one example of a small problem and a large problem in Tales Of A Fourth Grade Nothing was not sufficient. My students needed more examples of problems/conflicts that were meaningful to them which would be in read alouds that they were all familiar with. The more examples that students can relate to their learning the easier and more applicable it becomes. 

Lesson 6 - Day 6 

What did students learn and which students struggled with the lesson? 

Students practiced visualizing in this lesson. This was a difficult lesson for most students because they were being asked to think a lot deeper than normal. They had to visualize a scene in their head and draw it. This was not difficult for them however, after they drew their visualization they had to turn it over and fill out a graphic organizer. As they were filling out the graphic organizer, they had to add to their picture what they were missing. This became difficult for a few students. They were not giving as detailed visualizations as they were being asked for.

What are alternate reads (interpretations) of your students’ performance or product?
When looking at the students work, I was more interested in the ideas that they conveyed on the graphic organizer and how they represented them in their drawing than the actual drawing itself. Some students are great artists but I was not evaluating students ability to draw, I was evaluating students ability to visualize a scene and include all the elements of a visualization. Students visualized different scenes. I was able to sit in a few of the partner shares and listen to them explain their visualizations. This was very interesting to hear how they explained their visualization. 
What did you learn about your students’ literacy practices that extend beyond your objectives?
I learned that students had practiced visualizing prior to this lesson which I knew they had done a little bit in Making Meaning. My third grade students said they did a lot of visualizing the previous year. This made the lesson run smoother in the sense that they had some sort of an idea what they were being asked to do. However, they quickly found that they needed to include way more than they originally thought. Students were using the book to re-read the part they were visualizing after they realized they needed more details. This showed me that the students were able to look back in their books. 
When and how will you re-teach the material to students who need additional support?
Instead of doing a traditional "re-teach" of the material where I would normally pull a small group and give further instruction or answer questions etc. I instead have been giving students more opportunities to practice visualizing. In our daily read aloud, I have had all the students close their eyes and visualize the scene I read. I ask them probing questions and use the same terms as on the graphic organizer they used. This allows students to practice what they learned and apply it to other situations not just their author study book.
If you were to teach this same lesson again, what would you do differently and how do you think the changes would improve students’ learning? 
If I were to teach this same lesson again, I would not give the students the author study cover sheet to do as homework. The visualization worksheet required students to draw and use creativity. Asking them to do more drawing and creativity that night for homework seemed to be too much and poor planning on my part. Instead, I would have assigned the cover sheet to be done the night after the connections worksheet. I think this would have resulted in more thought-worthy and creative cover sheets.

Teaching Reflection

What did students learn and which students struggled with the lesson (s)?

The students seemed to grasp the idea of good paragraphs and bad paragraphs. They seemed to understand my train model and what the parts of them were and their functions. I was very wrong when I thought they would be able to make a topic sentence. They struggled hard with this concept. They didn't understand that they couldn't have topic sentences with the describing words "fun", "awesome", "cool", and a lot of them wanted to write the paragraph like they were talking to an audience. This is something I definitely should have pointed out and reiterated during my lesson.

The other lesson with the supporting details was far too crammed into a short amount of time that the children didn't get to have the time I wanted for them to work in class and with me. They all understood why the parts of the paragraphs were important but they didn't know how to apply that to their own writing.

· What are alternate reads (interpretations) of your students’ performance or products?

The students haven't finished the lesson completely yet since I made the unit out of 10 lessons and we had two days off during the two weeks. They will be editing and revising on Monday and turning in their paragraphs to me on Tuesday.

· What did you learn about your students’ literacy practices that extend beyond your objectives?

The children are able to do activities that, for example, they have to point something out but are given the material. Creating their own material on the other hand? That was difficult. They could easily show me what paragraphs had but when it came to them writing ones, they had a really hard time applying what they knew.

· When and how will you re-teach the material to students who need additional support?

During the editing and revising as well as the publishing is a great time for me to help the students who need more help. Some children are more independent then others so these children can work on their paragraphs with no aid. This leaves time for me to walk around and observe if anyone needs extra help.

· If you were to teach this same set of lessons again, what would you do differently and how do you think the changes would improve students’ learning?

I would probably try to make it much more interesting. At this point, I was making sure I had the right objectives met but I would like to become more comfortable being creative with these lessons.

Fluency and Comprehension

I see fluency and comprehension as being very closely linked. Fluency aids comprehension because the more fluent a student is as a reader the easier it will be for him/her to comprehend what is read. If students can read accurately, quickly, and with the proper sentence expression very well, they spend less mental energy trying to decode words and can use that energy to work on understanding the text as a whole. Comprehension also aids in improving fluency because as students develop comprehension strategies and practice them through reading they develop schemas about different ideas and build their vocabulary with more words they can read automatically. In turn, they continue to become more fluent, which gives them the tools to begin comprehending even more difficult text, and the cycle continues on and on. My placement is in 3rd grade and my CT always points out that 3rd grade is the year when the focus in reading falls more heavily on comprehension and less on fluency. Students are expected to be fluent enough readers by the beginning of 3rd grade that they can easily make this shift. Unfortunately, for students who are not fluent readers, if intervention and individual attention are not given these students are at risk for falling even farther behind.

Fluency is not directly taught in my class, except occasionally as a center activity (timed reading, etc.). My class does spend considerable time teaching vocabulary and text structure through spelling tests and homework, focus vocabulary in guided reading, sentence structure (noun, verb, adjective, subject, predicate, etc.), and paragraph structure (main idea, supporting details, etc.). These topics are taught in a variety of ways - mini lessons, guided reading, worksheets, spelling tests, and writer's workshop. Students are working on building familiarity of a greater number of words and are beginning to dig deeper into the components of words, sentences, and text overall. So far I have not seen any assessments on fluency specifically. We are supposed to do DRA testing this fall but we have not gotten around to it yet. Worksheets and writing samples are used as informal ways to assess some of students vocabulary and text structure knowledge. Comprehension instruction is taught mostly through guided reading of stories in a basal reader. The reading book outlines a specific comprehension strategy to focus on for that story. My CT will model the use of that strategy and will conduct full class discussions where the students get to talk about and try that strategy themselves. After finishing each story, the class usually completes a worksheet with questions about the story requiring a variety of comprehension skills (pulling information directly from the text, summarizing, predicting, inferring, etc.)

Due to the generally full-class structure of lessons in my class, it's often difficult to learn about individual students as readers, especially the quieter students. For my guided lead teaching I'm planning to create activities that make the students more individually accountable for their reading and understanding of the stories. Although reading of texts will be guided and I will help students with unfamiliar words I plan to give students the opportunity to apply certain strategies on their own using a story map or other graphic organizer before we discuss them as a class. I will be able to look at these papers later to gain some idea of what students are able to do on their own related to comprehension. I also plan to take anecdotal notes of students fluency when they read aloud in class.

Oct. 19th- Fluency & Comprehension

Fluent readers read with accuracy, automaticity and prosody. It relates to comprehension because usually as readers deep comprehension comes with fluency. However, like mentioned in the articles fast readers do not always have high comprehension, they simply can decode and recognize sight words. It is important to ask readers comprehension questions as they are reading in order to make sure they are not just fast readers. Teachers should not focus simply on how fast students can read through material. So it is important to understand that fluency and comprehension lead to one another, it is a continuum. They are both of equal importance and can vary in value from grade level to grade level.

In my 4th grade classroom at Walled Lake Elementary we use Reader’s Workshop. We also assess students by using the DRA’s (Developmental Reading Assessment) that are issued in the beginning of the school year. Also, by looking at their scores from the previous school year help to see if maybe scores reflect whether or not students read at all over the summer time. It was amazing to see the difference in reading levels between students that said they read over the summer and those that admitted they didn’t read a single book.

Based on the assessment results, students are at various reading levels. Based on these reading levels, students are put into groups. After the MEAP is over next week I will actually have a group that I will meet with everyday during reader’s workshop and I really look forward to seeing their progress throughout the school year. Other ways to assess students on their fluency and comprehension is by conferencing with them in both readers and writers. Also keeping running records and visiting model classrooms once each semester. I have never heard of a model classroom but in our school there is a classroom which happens to be a 5th grade room and teachers sit in on a literacy lesson once each semester. I really look forward to doing this next month.

October 18th, 2010 Blog

New book club blog posting based on this week’s assigned readings—What is the relationship between reading comprehension and reading fluency? What approaches are used to assess and teach fluency in your classroom? What else do you need to know to fully understand your students’ reading development? How could you find out?


I think that fluency specifically deals with students accuracy. It's reading smoothly, not too slow, and paying attention to punctuation and grammar- basically the skeleton of reading. Comprehension is taking the meaning out of what you have just read. For example, I am placed in a third grade room and there are a lot of people lacking comprehension AND fluency, but mostly comprehension. As another example, I just babysat for a child who is also in third grade and I was shocked at how fluently he read AND what he comprehended. It's possible for a child to comprehend what they are reading even if they lack fluency, but it would be more slowly. They would also comprehend less information since they are reading more slowly and choppily.

In my class, we use the DRA to score the children's reading. This takes into account the time it takes for the student to read (words per minute), mistakes, self corrections, stumbles over words, and also comprehension at the end of the DRA test. All of these things are more of a label that the DRA test can place on a student for the benefit of the teacher placing the students in guided reading groups and similar groups that might need to work on comprehension or other reading qualities. We also have one on one student conferencing which really takes into account what the students are reading and if it's the right level and difficulty. These are a good idea if the teacher isn't sure what the student needs to be working on, because the teacher can hear the student read out loud and asses based on that, rather than having to be keeping a score (like on the DRA).

I think that there needs to be a way to asses the students writing and reading connected, such as with answering questions derived from the text. I think that would really show the students comprehension. Working one on one is really important as to figuring out what the student needs to work on and it also allows you to see the student not affected by other students and student's answers around them.

Helsel and Greenberg

I read the Helsel and Greenberg piece titled “Helping struggling writers succeed: A self-regulated strategy instruction program.” In this article describes how teachers can combine writing instruction with instruction on self-regulatory behavior. The authors hypothesize that the reason many students struggle with writing is because they struggle with self-regulation skills such as goal setting, choosing the best strategies for a task, self-instructing, monitoring progress, knowing when to seek help, and managing time. The article describes how self-regulation is a necessary skill to produce quality writing through being able to make a plan for writing and make thorough revisions. The article sets out a model for teaching self-regulation strategies through writing which includes building background knowledge, discussing the strategy, modeling, having the student memorize the strategy, offering support for the student in implementing it when writing, and allowing the student to demonstrate it independently. The authors also present a case study of working with a sixth-grade student on building self-regulation through writing and the success this student found through this model.

I feel that this model for teaching self-regulation strategies could be very beneficial in my 3rd grade class. This article seemed to be written to give teachers ideas for bringing older students who struggle with writing up to grade level, however I believe these methods can be modified for younger students who are just learning how to self-regulate in the writing process. There are several students in my class who struggle considerably with reading and writing. If they are not taught specific strategies for self-monitoring their work, they will fall even farther behind. At the same time, students who can write at or above grade level could also benefit from learning these strategies to improve their process even more. Teaching self-regulation strategies would probably be best taught in combination with writing strategies in mini-lessons as part of writer’s workshop. I would like to learn more about which strategies would best help students learn to be independent in monitoring their own writing process and also how to teach writing strategies with self-regulation strategies embedded. This will take considerable thought when it comes time for me to plan these kinds of lessons.

As I analyzed my students’ writing samples and remembered the work I did with them on these pieces of writing, I learned that many of my students struggle with having a main idea and supporting details focused on the main idea. For example, one of the writing samples was a personal narrative in which students described when another person cared for them or when they were caring toward someone else. Most students were able to identify the person or event they wanted to write about, but then struggled to write details that were focused on this topic or eventually led back to the idea of being caring. My unit will be focused on guided reading, but I can use this unit to discuss main idea and supporting details. Throughout my unit I plan to present my students with broad themes related to each story they read or that tie all of the stories together. I plan to work with them on identifying and explaining details and examples from the stories to support these themes.

Salch & Marino 2001

This article "Conferring in the Writing Workshop" is all about conferencing with students about their writing. Conferencing is important to talk with the students about their writing problems as well as their good techniques as a writer. A lot of teachers think that writing can only be done in one way- assigning a task and then having the students write about it. But in the article, there were a lot of examples of students who have no motivation until they are able to talk about their ideas or share them with the class. It also helps when talking with a child to zero in on one problem and if their body language is telling you they are not into it, switch topics.

My teacher uses conferencing in the classroom, so I can see how it fits in exactly. We normally do it during the independent writing workshop. This might be during the idea notebook time or during the time where they work on their personal narratives. I think that what I need to work on as a professional is working with students on the level that they individually will understand. One student might need to have their problems pointed out to them and they will figure out how to work on it, but other students might need the problem to pointed out and dissected and explained to them what they need to do to change it.

I really like conferencing- I think it's helpful to see where the students think they stand personally. It is a way to learn something about students that they can share with you, something you might not have noticed just while looking at their work. I think that writing is something that really needs to be developed from the students own voice and the only way they are going to learn their own voice is through writing a variety of ways. Students also might not be strong spellers or use grammar the right way but have very good story lines, so conferencing might be able to more clearly illustrate that.

Helsel ang Greenberg

Helping Struggling Writers Succeed: A Self-Regulated Strategy Instruction Program
     This article describes a Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model of instruction which combines explicit teaching of writing strategies with instruction in self-regulatory skills. While some students excel in the Writer's Workshop environment others struggle with the independence. Difficulty in self regulating the writing process can result from several factors such as struggling writers do little revision on their without teacher or peer support. According to the article, it has been propose that children's understanding of self-regulated learning can be enhanced in three ways, they are; self regulation can be learned indirectly through experience, can be taught directly through instruction, and lastly the use of self-regulatory skills can be elicited through practice. The main goals of the SRSD model are to "help students master the higher-level cognitive processes while developing autonomous, reflective, self-regulated use of effective writing strategies." There are 6 SRSD stages which include, build background knowledge, discuss it, model it, memorize it, support it, and independent performance. The author of this article believes this model is valuable in upper elementary and middle school.
      I think that this model could work for upper elementary students. I am teaching in a 3rd/4th grade classroom currently so I think it could be applied. I think it would be more beneficial for the 4th graders and students older. My third graders may benefit from it later in the year however I think it may be a little early to begin it now. In order for me to implement this into my classroom I would need to work more with the students during writing before I would feel comfortable. Currently, I have not taken over writing so I would not feel confident starting this SRSD right now. I think my CT could implement this during Writer's Workshop, but like I said previous I think that it would  be most applicable to the 4th graders as of now. I would like to see how it is done by her before I would feel confident in running it alone.
     Today's module has made me think deeper about my unit plan especially the assessment portion. I was looking at some rubrics to assess students and after reading the different articles and watching the videos, I think I need to take more time and really think about what I am going to be assessing my students on during the course of my unit. I also need to spend more time on creating these rubrics for assessment. Most of my assessment will be informal throughout my unit so I need to establish a clear understanding of what it is I will be looking for and how exactly I will know which students have met the expectations.

Beth Kovalcik, Janine L. Certo

"The Poetry Café is Open!"

The article focused on teaching devices of sound in poetry within a 2nd grade classroom. The project was team-taught by teachers, and it included daily read alouds, 4 minilessons, and independent writing time in journals. The ultimate goal of these activities was to hold a café-like setting in the classroom where students would be able to share a piece of poetry they wrote for parents and administrators. The classroom would be transformed using tablecloths, vases with flowers, trays with pastries, and beverages, with a stool in the middle of the classroom that was considered the stage. One point the author really pushed was that poetry was meant to be both read out loud and listened too, so students are able to understand the power of language.

The students in the article were in the 2nd grade, so being in a 4th grade classroom, I definitely think I could use it. You also have to know your students and I think that some classrooms would not be able to handle the transformation of a classroom into a café setting. Some students could definitely ruin it for the whole class. If I was to use this idea it would fit in with Writer’s/ Reader’s Workshop. I say both of them because reading different genres of poetry is important, so during readers, the teacher would read a few examples and the students could share reading with a partner, then during the minilesson the students could write their own in their writer’s notebook.

As a professional I definitely need to learn more about poetry or observe a poetry lesson. I feel like I do not even fully understand the different elements of poetry, so how can I explain it to students in the classroom. It is a huge unit in the 4th grade that is why I chose to read the article and learn more about it.

From the Module I think it is really important to not always focus on just formal assessments, but also informal. Having students create and write in journals is an assessment. After a minilesson about writing, what the students create afterwards is a form of assessment, seeing what skills students took away.

Book Club 6-8

In my classroom, there are a number of different literacy lessons put in place. The very first week, she "launched" the C.A.F.E. (comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and extending the text), the Daily 5 program, and a few of the small moments and idea notebook ideas. We used Making Meaning in the classroom as well with read alouds, shared reading, and individual reading.

The children have book bins that they were given by us, the teachers, at first. Slowly but surely, they have been able to "browse" the classroom library for "just right" books that they will maybe do either better at reading or think is more interesting. The books are leveled slightly but not to the extent that there are groups in the class that only read this level and the other group reads this level etc.

I would really like to attempt to do a few of the activities in the book club plus book such as the fishbowl activity because I would really like my students to be able to have a real discussion without me or my CT facilitating it every step of the way. Having partners and sharing is a good idea but I would love to have the students be in smaller groups that the whole class could then critique and learn eventually. I would also like to think outside the box of read alouds and maybe have students read aloud to the class to practice expression and fluency. A lot of students are still struggling with reading to their partners. All of these things are activities that I would have to teach to the children as well as teaching them the norms of what I expect during these activities.

Book Club Plus Ch. 6-8

My CT’s literacy program usually has three main parts – guided reading, centers, and writing. The class is divided into four reading groups and each day the four groups spend 20-30 minutes in each part of the literacy program. For guided reading, each group spends the time reading with the teacher, discussing the text, making connections, and working on comprehension strategies. For centers, my CT will assign individual students to work on different activities each day based on the skills they need to practice (forming sentences, word meanings, phonics, comprehension, etc.) Students are grouped at their instructional level for these reading groups (reading below grade level, mostly at grade level, above grade level, etc.), similar to the descriptions of “Literacy Block” in Book Club Plus. She is trying to encourage students in these reading groups, especially in the higher level groups, to move from having purely teacher-led discussions to discussions where students talk to each other and the teacher about the text. At this point, these discussions are still very much teacher-led because the students are still learning not to talk over and argue with one another during reading time. However, I believe that with continued practice and frequent modeling from the teacher the students’ discussion skills will improve. Due to the fact that we have been preparing for the MEAP and also working on a couple large writing activities I have not seen many of the Book Club Plus ideas used in my CT’s classroom. Based on conversations I’ve had with her, I do know that she will be implementing more of these ideas later. For example, I know that later on the different reading groups will each be reading a different novel centered around a theme. I am excited to see the conversations that students will have as their build meaning around these more complex texts.

Recently my class has all been reading the same texts from their basal reader, but they have done so in leveled groups. If I were to try grouping the students into more heterogeneous book club groups for discussions the students would need considerable preparation and modeling first in order to have productive conversations in their new groups. It might be helpful to begin by introducing the discussion format in students’ leveled groups and guiding them through sharing ideas with one another and recording those ideas in a reading log. A fishbowl discussion could then be used a few times to model the kinds of discussions they should have in their mixed groups, based on the ideas they previously generated. Some individual students would also need more specific modeling for discussion skills such as taking turns, staying focused on the discussion, and making their ideas clear.

Book Club ch. 6-8

In my classroom, in a typical day, there is a lot of literacy. We have read alouds, word study, reader’s workshop and writer’s workshop. The past few weeks I have observed and participated in formal assessments. A week ago, 4th grade had our “DRA Day” where we completed all of our DRA testing on each student and analyzed the data. We had to create SIPP plans and talk about whether additional assessment was necessary with particular students. I only administered 2 DRA’s but I learned a lot from this about student’s fluency and comprehension. This week, more specifically tomorrow we are beginning our “DWA” tests and 4th grade has their “DWA Day” November 2nd.
This has taught me a lot about assessing students both in reading and writing. However, when it comes to actually seeing them participate in guided reading groups, we have not yet started that. The MEAP preparation has put the reading groups on hold for the next couple days. We placed students into groups based on their levels of achievement. Like the examples in the book, the reading groups in my class are sort of seen as those exceeding the expectations, those meeting the expectations, and those below the expectations. They are also in groups that have a focus or a goal that is different from everyone else. Some examples of groups are fluency 1, fluency 2, comprehension, interpretation, and summary.
Each book club group has 5 to 6 members, and all of them are pretty diverse. My CT and one of the other 4th grade teachers do a lot of co-teaching so we are constantly working together. This is extremely beneficial for the students because the students are not always working with the same group and there are 4 teachers available to work with the kids, since there is another Michigan State student in her class until December (Special Education major).
Each Monday we have "block recess" in the afternoon, which is our time to work as a 4th grade team on literacy goals/objectives, MEAP preparations, ways to assess students, etc. Today we actually started talking about how to fill out these sheets when assessing students. My CT was explaining to me that I want to write notes in a positive way that what I am observing is clear and it is material I feel comfortable sharing with my CT, principal, and parents. That came to mind when doing the reading because it mentions the "I Can" statements that records progress in a way of achieving goals.
I can not wait for all the formal assessing to be complete and the MEAP to be over so that more informal, ongoing assessing can be recorded and I am assigned a group of students to work with and monitor their progress. It will give me a lot more responsibility in the classroom.

Book Club Plus Ch. 6-8

     It was interesting to read chapter 6 about assessments in book clubs. Thus far, I have seen very little formal assessment within book clubs. The fourth graders in our class my CT had as third graders last year. She is able to walk around the room and listen to different conversations and hear them read and makes a mental note of it. Sometimes she jots down notes but she has an amazing memory and is able to recall constantly to explain how she knows certain things to me. After reading about the "I Can" statements in the chapter it made me think of something my class did last week. As a whole group, the class came up with "will do's" and all wrote them down in their journals. They are very similar to the "I Can" benchmarks. The only difference is they also incorporate appropriate behavior will do's which helps with the management of having so many different groups. The students all have a copy of them and we also made copies that are laminated and each group sits it out in the middle of their group during book club to help remind them. This week, my CT is planning on pulling each group to do a more formal assessment to see how each student is progressing. I am anxious to see how this will work.
     After reading the chapter on classroom management I was surprised to see how many questions you must ask yourself before implementing book clubs in your own class. I think because my CT has used book clubs every year the whole process of setting up the clubs and establishing guidelines was all very smooth and quick. I did not realize how much more complex it is to do for your first time. We use our book clubs to supplement Making Meaning. They work together hand in hand in our room. Therefore, our theme for book club is the same as the theme for our unit in Making Meaning. For example, in Making Meaning we have been reading personal narratives. All the books the students are reading in their book clubs are personal narratives. One difference in the book clubs in our classroom and what is described in the book is the grouping. Our clubs are 4-5 people and diverse in gender, ethnicity, interests, and personalities. However, our book clubs have students reading in groups with students of similar reading abilities. Each group is made up by my CT. Each group has students reading the same book which is all at their "just right level". I am not sure if this will stay the same throughout the year or if this is just how we are running the first unit in order to assess the students.  I think it would be interesting to try the fishbowl activity within my classroom during book club. It would be a really good managing tool if I found a group who was working exceptionally well together, I could demonstrate the fishbowl by having them in the center of the bowl first. This would show the rest of the class a productive book club all while introducing the concept of a "fish bowl" to them simultaneously.
    

Blog 2 - Evidence in the Classroom

The book club basically uses everything that my teacher uses in our classroom so far. We have launched the Daily 5, C.A.F.E., and Making Meaning, although she has used the Daily 5 the most. There are mornings in the classroom that are solely focused on reading and writing. My teacher seems to use other resources to MEAP prep so we have also been looking at narratives, stories, and poetry. My teacher has been great with launching these programs at the same time without confusing the kids, but rather infusing them together to make them work.
We have reader’s workshop every day where the students have learned how to be good readers. We started by building up our reading stamina, then went into learning how to read with partners, and then reading out loud to partners in an appropriate voice that still has tone and inflection. We have also worked further on individual reading with the C.A.F.E. so the students have had to work on being good readers with comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and expanding vocabulary. My CT has given out “word detective” sheets, taught the kids how to pull out details to summarize a story, and reading out loud to foster fluency and accuracy. She might call on people who aren’t paying attention to tell her what she just said, or even have them speak out loud a summary. She has done an activity where she filled in a summary worksheet while the children are telling her what to write.
Writing is another thing that we do everyday in the classroom. We do writer’s workshop where we practice becoming better writers who can write for a long time. The students have a math journal, science journal, and idea notebook, which is where we practice the most writing. It’s a notebook that my teacher might give a prompt and have the students write as much as they can for 15 minutes. We also fill out summary worksheets that teach them how to write a summary that is not only in order, but filled with detail. Another form of writing we do is handwriting. We make sure that when the students are writing that they not only have quality sentences and details, but also quality penmanship. We have them write about their favorite books as well so that is writing into or through a text.

Chapters 1-5: Evidence in My Classroom

Through observing my CT’s literacy programs and in readings for this course I have come to fully realize just how many different ways there are to approach teaching literacy. Unfortunately, a lot of what I have seen so far is simply plans for how my CT wants to teach literacy. Up until last Friday all reading instruction was done through a MEAP review book with short reading selections and accompanying comprehension questions. This was a little tedious but it did serve two useful purposes. One was obviously to prepare the students for the test, and the second was to give us a very clear idea of each student’s literacy skills. Using this information my CT was able to divide the class into three reading groups based on abilities and make decisions about the skills each student needs to work on.

On Friday we finally began to implement the literacy program she plans to use all year. Literacy block every day is divided into three parts. In their separate literacy groups, students spend part of the block reading as a small group with the teacher and discussing their ideas about these readings. Throughout the year the class will read from basal readers and from novels. Another part of the literacy block is spent in centers. Each day my CT will assign individual students or pairs of students to specific center activities where they can work on phonics, vocabulary, and grammar skills that she feels they need to practice. The last part of literacy block is seatwork. This usually resembles the Lucy Calkins Writer’s Workshop model and the accompanying mini-lesson for each day is given before literacy block begins. The class is divided into three groups and each group rotates through all three parts of the literacy program every day. We have only implemented this for two days now and we are still training the students to manage their behavior while working independently at centers and seatwork without direct teacher supervision.

I can see possibilities for this literacy program to contain elements of the ideas in Book Club Plus!. The small reading group format would allow for community sharing and discussion along with reading. In these small groups, students have the opportunity to talk to each other and the teacher about their thoughts and ideas. Writing into, through, or out of a unit/text could be implemented into the seatwork portion of the literacy block at different times. Even though the class is in different groups, all groups are often reading the same texts. Different writing tasks could be given throughout a unit to accompany the reading. I haven’t seen all of these things in action yet, but I can imagine them happening later in the year.

Reading instruction also occurs through many of my CT’s science and social studies lessons. When reading from textbooks as a class my CT talks to the class about features of informational text and discussions are constantly held to make predictions, draw conclusions, and connect the textbook reading to students’ lives and the greater world. I see many examples in my class through literacy, science, and social studies for talk to be used as a way to surface knowledge, inquire into, and reflect on information in a given text as described in the reading. I hope to see more examples of these ideas as the year goes on and the literacy program develops more.

Literacy in the Classroom

I did not realize how much literacy is present daily in my classroom until I read the readings for the week. On a daily basis we have Readers Workshop, Writers Workshop, a read aloud, and during block recess the first half hour rotates weekly between math games and literacy games. Each day I am still learning a lot about how each of these components works to fit the needs of students in my classroom, it has been extremely difficult with the DRA testing and MEAP preparations.

My teacher uses the “making meaning” curriculum but does not really follow all the scripted parts. As I slowly begin to take over the read aloud lessons, I will follow this closely because I do not have nearly as much experience as he does. This has required me to take home the curriculum and read about it, in order to familiarize myself with it. Until this year I had never heard of it and it seems that most of the school districts in the area, at least those in our section, use this. My CT has been teaching 4th /5th grade in the District for about 17 years and does really well making sure students are following and making connections to the story without following the scripted parts word for word.

Throughout the school year teachers are constantly giving instruction and assessing students formally and informally. I have not been in a classroom yet where I have seen MEAP testing and/ or the steps taken for preparation. I feel the amount of pressure put on teachers to try and get students prepared and I'm not even really responsible, just from sitting in on meetings with the principal and team meetings with the other 4th grade teachers. I did get to sit and practice issuing DRA tests with my CT while he was filling one out as well and I was shocked to see how low some students were reading. When looking at their scores at the end of 3rd grade some dropped a few levels and it shows how important it is for students to read throughout the summer. The DRA’s are issued during Reader’s Workshop, and actually were finally completed this morning. While this is taking place, the students are given time to read independently when not with a teacher.

During Writers Workshop, students sit for about a 15 minute mini-lesson that is co-taught with my CT and another 4th grade teacher. Then they revisit previous work or move on to start something new depending what the topic is. Writer’s workshop right now is focused on the MEAP, and things that may appear like “a comparative piece” or “small moments”. Students have plenty of time to create and write down ideas and then are given time to talk and share what they wrote with a partner. Some are even shared with the class and displayed on the “elmo” sometimes showing examples of what their work should look like written down on paper, teaching the students to be neat and legible.

Book Club Plus Ch. 1-5

     After reading through the first five chapters of this book, I was shocked to see how much of it I could relate back to my internship classroom. Literacy is interwoven throughout our entire day rather it be during our writing block, our morning work, or throughout our science lessons. We use guided reading, writer's workshop, teacher read-aloud, book clubs, independent reading, and literacy centers (in our way). This was shocking to me that in my daily routine all of these aspects we already include. One thing that I think is a little bit different is that our book clubs do not have students of varying reading levels. Our guided reading occurs within our book clubs. Also, because we have three teachers, we have more than three groups for ours. Having three teachers allows for us to divide the students up into more groups and still be able to meet and check in with each group throughout the week. These are two differences that I have noticed thus far.
     The students are constantly reading and writing throughout the day. Reading is incorporated throughout every subject. There is a teacher read aloud everyday for 10 minutes after lunch. There is a 50 minute block devoted to writing specifically which is our writer's workshop where each student uses their writer's notebook. The curriculum is a mixture of Lucy Calkins and Writer's Workshop. The last 50 minutes of the day is devoted to Making Meaning and book clubs. Making Meaning lessons usually take about 15-20 minutes and then the rest of the time the students are reading/writing in their book clubs. There are plenty of opportunities for the students to practice speaking, rather it be answering questions throughout the day, sharing answers with a partner, talking with a group, etc. Listening opportunities are also nonstop throughout the day. The students have to listen to directions, to questions, to their peers, etc. Viewing is also something that the students are constantly encountering. Most of our lessons are done using the Smart board and the elmo which the students view. There are bulletin boards, posters, student work, etc. all over the classroom and the school which are more examples of viewing.
     One example of writing into/through/and out of a unit that I have seen so far is actually through the science curriculum. The students first wrote about all the things they thought they knew about the earth, sun, and moon. As the they work through each lesson and the unit progresses, they write in their science journals correcting misconceptions and writing concepts that they learned. The unit hasn't ended yet but we have already started planning a final writing activity for the students to complete at the end of the unit where they will reflect on what they have learned about the earth, moon, and sun. I think that writing into/through/and out of a unit is a great way to incorporate writing into subjects that are not usually as writing intensive.

The School Community :)

This past week I started to take on more responsibilities in the classroom, one of which was dismissal. At WLE, they have a drive-thru where parents arrive and have a yellow sheet in their window with the student(s) name they are picking up. My CT happens to be the faculty member that is always outside making sure things go smoothly and that the students are getting into the correct vehicles. I took advantage of this alone time in the classroom with the students and began asking questions about their school community. I had never really been to Walled Lake before and barely knew more than 3 or 4 roads. The students were completely engaged in this end of the day routine that went on during the 2nd week of school. They were really excited to share about places that they were going, or the restaurants they ate at, or just where they lived.

I took notes and wrote down some of the places they mentioned, then went and visited a few of them later that week. I did not realize that right around the corner, less than a ½ mile away, is the actual lake, Walled Lake. It is huge! I was not surprised to see how gorgeous all the homes were around it. Some of the students had mentioned living on the lake or lived walking distance from “Mercer Beach”. While driving around the lake looking at all the homes I did pass by the beach. I definitely plan on revisiting these places because it was pouring rain when I drove around and feel like I missed so many details and opportunities for both math and literacy. Other places I plan on visiting is the community center and the library both of which are minutes away from the school.

Driving around really gave me an idea of how large Walled Lake’s school district is, many of us in class are in Walled Lake Schools and I found this surprising before having no background knowledge of the community. It surprised me how different each of our school communities seems to be just from talking in class. My school is not very diverse, and just minutes down the road another schools’ community is extremely diverse. I expected to see more people out and about in the “downtown” part of the area but again the weather probably played a major factor in this, so when I travel around Walled Lake later this week I expect to see more children and adults walking around shopping, eating, and interacting.

School Community

I visited a number of places in the community. I visited a lot of food places really close to the area including Quizno's, Subway, and a pizza place. I also drove through a few neighborhoods, all of which were completely different. Some had trailer parks and some had huge mansions on a lake. I chose to go there because I did ask my teacher where in the community children live and go, so she directed me towards a few food places as well as a shopping corner that one of the students' parents owned.

I expected to see people from the community eating, shopping, talking, and living their lives as they would in their neighborhood. Everything was mostly on track for what I would expect. There were teenagers working in the fast food places I went to and children even eating and shopping in the places. I saw children playing and riding their bikes with their friends. In shops and food places, children are going to need to be able to read things such as numbers and percentages because they might need to know if an item is more expensive than another, or if a "buy 1 get 1 free" deal is cheaper than getting a larger size of something.

Relating each of those to literacy is something that I can more easily do with the neighborhoods the children live in- it gave me a glimpse inside the place that the children do have their literacy learning while they are outside of school setting - their homes. I didn't expect the students to live in such economically diverse areas in the same school district.

Considering the Community

One place that I visited briefly is the Novi Public Library. I was very interested to see what it was like after hearing so many good things. I didn't have the time to look around and explore like I wanted to, so I plan on going back later this week. A few of my students told me they frequent the library often. After Curriculum Night, one parent told me that she takes her kids there daily after school. I found this to be very interesting. When I revisit the library, I am expecting to see students there (not necessarily mine). I am excited to see what all the hype is about the library. I hoping there will be a pamphlet of information I can have to take home with me also so that I can read more about it. I want to take the time to explore the library so that I can participate in conversations with students. I also want to be familiar with what resources the library provides for my own use as well as being informative for the students.

After looking around the classroom during snack time and during lunch, it was obvious that there are a wide range of taste buds throughout the school. Students were eating Chinese food, pizza, sushi, fruit, etc. This made me curious as to what restaurants and grocery stores are located around the Novi community. Just from driving around on Grand River and Novi Rd, I have spotted all sorts of different ethnic restaurants. One restaurant I saw from afar had it's name in English and another language. I am curious to see how many other restaurants have this. I am planning on looking further into this as I travel around Novi later this week.

Expectations for Community Visit

I plan to make my visits sometime later this week, so here are my expectations ahead of time. One place in my school’s community that I would like to visit is the public library in Southfield. I want to find out what kinds of literacy resources this library has available for children in the community. Regardless of whether students in my class visit the library regularly with their families or not I want to know more about what they might find so I can talk about it in class and make connections and suggestions. Libraries also often have fliers and pamphlets available about events in the community which might give me more ideas about places I could visit to learn more about Southfield.

There is also a city park not far from my school that I would also like to visit. I believe that parks are good places to learn about a community because here I would be able to see families interacting and possibly sports or other games being played. This could be a valuable resource in learning about things students in my school like to do in their spare time. These could be possible experiences that I could draw upon when teaching reading comprehension or writing to help students understand a certain context or develop ideas for writing. I know that many students in my class play sports like football, basketball, or soccer so it would be a good idea for me to know where they often play games (maybe at this park I found or another one). The context of sports is something I could use as a connection or analogy to help them understand skills, strategies, or concepts in literacy.