Letter to Parents and Student Discription

Student Descriptions:

My three target students were Darren, Aaron, and Sarah.  These students were selected for the lessons because my mentor teacher said they all struggle with comprehension while their reading rate is at grade level.  After talking with my teacher about what areas of comprehension they struggle with it was apparent that they needed some explicit strategy instruction, not simply asked comprehension questions since that is the approach most often used in class. I had each of these students read to me and one thing I noticed right away was that when they didn’t know a word they would keep reading without stopping, sometimes they would even mumble the word and move over it. I asked them what they did when they didn’t know the meaning words and all three of them said they use a dictionary. I realized I wanted to teach them a decoding strategy and my mentor teacher and I decided on context clues. Then we talked about a less specific strategy that might help there comprehension more generally. I told her that my favorite strategy for visualization and she agreed that would be a strategy to teach.

Dear Parentals,

     I'm just writing to let you know how your student in progressing in our class. What a joy it is to Aaron and all of his enthusiasm in our class. He has made incredible gains in his reading comprehension this year through explicit learning of different strategies he can apply while reading. I would like to share these strategies with you so that you could continue them at home. 

The first in the use of context clues. Context clues are used when you don't know a word and want to look at the language around the word to help you determine a definition. Aaron especially liked this strategy, as well as other students, because it means they don't have to go to a dictionary every time. You can ask Aaron to share more of his understanding of this strategy before working with him on it.

The second is visualization and that works exactly as it sounds. Students are asked to visualize what they are reading and then describe back to you what picture they have created in their "minds eye". Important things to note are 1.) Some elements in the story are included in their picture 2.) They will include and are encouraged to include many elements that are not in the story in their picture since this is one of the great things about reading! You can create your own picture!

Thank you again for your involvement on the class field trip to the zoo. The students still regularly speak of your mimicking the orangutang.

                All The Best,
                Kaitlyn

Mini-lesson Reflections 1 & 2

Dear Fellow VAKS,

When teaching these small, yet seemingly insignificant lessons there are many things I learned, actually. Which I was quite surprised. When I first thought about who I wanted to teach, I immediately thought of the rowdy kid who never wants to sit down to do his homework and the ELL who is being pulled out of the classroom at least 3 times a day. But when I thought about it more, I wanted to spend some time with the students who perhaps weren't so obviously struggling. I wanted some kids in the classroom that there wasn't a clear diagnoses on. So I thought about students who I did not know or hear much about. A couple students came to mind.

One was a quiet Latina girl who was very sweet and hardly made eye contact. Every time I have tried to get to explain what she was doing on her school work, or even say hi, she gave me less than a sentence.

The other was the "new kid" who apparently had been labeled under special education in his previous school, but had not recieved any paperwork in his new school yet. I distinctly remember the second encounter I had with him, after my introduction shaking his hand. I was told that he often gets off track, and that they were supposed to be studying independently for a spelling test they were about to have in a few minutes. So I took "initiative" and interrupted his conversation with another student.I told him I wanted to quiz him on some of the spelling words, and so ignorantly assuming he would struggle with this. He spelled every word perfectly.

So when I took them out of the classroom, we worked on a really fun activity on Kerpoof.com and they were able to write their own stories from the visuals that were given. The website would not load on the school computers for about 20 minutes, and I thought this was a huge inconvenience at the time...but it was in this time that we were able to talk with no agenda. I was able to find out the girl's favorite band and TV show-which was a passion that I had never seen from her before. I was able to joke and laugh about the book Where the Wild Things Are in a really in-depth way from the "new kid" because the book was left on the table.

Then once we got started they excelled in ways that were unexpected by both me and my mentor teacher.

In this whole brief reflection, I can narrow what I learned from this to three things.

1) Do not just assume because someone is quiet that they do not have mountain loads to share
2) Do not just assume that the labels handed over to you define their learning capabilities
3) Take advantage of the non-instructional settings and befriend your students

All best in your future challenges and rewards,

Sarah Rawley

Letter to Student/Parent

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Hiatt,

     I'm just writing to update you on your childs' progress in the classroom. I'm very happy with the strides Mia has taken, she's growing and learning everyday. Recently I completed an individualized reading lesson with Mia. Throughout the semester I've noticed Mia often times reads in a monotone voice. The objective of the lesson was to explain to Mia what it meant to read with prosody (inflection, emotion, etc.) and have her practice while reading a book. We did some examples and non-examples of readings with prosody, which Mia did excellent at. At the end of the story, I think Mia had a good understanding of how to read with prosody and she was able to complete the book with this mindset. Being able to read with prosody is a factor influencing becoming a fluent reader.
     It would be very beneficial if you could continue this reading lesson at home. Reading a book a day and helping Mia focus on how she sounds while reading will really solidify the idea of reading with prosody. If you're interested in helping in the classroom, I have an open door policy which means you're welcome at any time. We work on reading lessons each day. You could aid me in completing these readings lessons and get some exposure in how to aid your own student on the home front.
    Overall, Mia is a wonderful student who I enjoy having in my classroom. She's a funny, intelligent, personal girl who is improving everyday.

Thanks
Valerie Kipp

Differentiation

Consider what you know about your focus students’ literacy learning, and the range of suggestions for differentiated instruction outlined in Tompkins, Chapter 11.

 

 

My target student struggles with fluency and intonation when reading. He reads as if there is no punctuation and his voice is very monotone when he reads out loud. In order to meet him in this particular need, we could do a Reader's Theatre. I really liked the Reader Theatre story of the Little Red Hen. We would get into a small group and all have these particular character parts. I would have him read the story to himself, and then I would read the story out loud with lots of different voices and exaggerated intonation. Then I could read it again with no intonation. We could dicuss the differences in both and talk about how they read in their head, and which they liked the best and why, and how I knew how to read with the intonation using the punctuation. Then they could choose their parts and they would practice their lines and then at the end of the week we could have a play in the classroom using this Reader Theatre. The main goal of this lesson would be to get them to understand why it is important, to improve fluency and intonation and punctuation reading.

 

A letter I would write to this target student's parent:

 

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Fake Name,

     

 

        I am writing to tell you two things in particular regarding your wonderful son. First, he has improved drastically the past few months in the difficulty of readings that he is choosing to read in class. We have moved into chapter books, and he is feeling very accomplished when finishing each chapter. Thank you for the encouragement you have given for him in this. He has told me that he has to read one chapter a night before he goes to bed. This has helped him immensly to stay on track.

 

The second thing that I am writing to you is to ask you if perhaps he could read the chapter out loud to someone in the house before he goes to bed. Although he has proved to fully comprehend the reading he is doing silently, he seems to stuggle with his fluency in reading out loud. He reads as if there is no punctuation and has a somewhat monotone voice. I have a plan where we are going to have a Reader's Theatre and he will have a certain character script to read in the play. In doing this, we will be talking about the importance of making the character come alive through our reading, and that when we are reading out loud we are doing it for the purpose of others listening. I think if he practiced this at home, and even if you read out loud to him at times, this important concept will settle into his thinking even greater. I have a few books that have great characters in them if you would like to borrow!

 

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

 

Thank you,

 

Sarah Rawley

 

 

Writing Instruction Video Notes

In-Class writing instruction with Lucy Calkins

http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=186708

Notes:

-       Uses words like revision, which the student understood (leading me to believe these real world words are often used

-       Teacher talks through the students thought process with the student and repeats what she says in different ways.

-       Teacher keeps asking clarification questions, which the student explains easily.

o   “What are you going to do to make this even better?”

o   “Is there a part that’s confusing?”

-       This lesson is occurring in a comfortable setting where the student sits in a beanbag chair on the ground with the teacher.

-       Teacher reads the students’ story to the student and tells her to pretend like she’s never heard it and tries to pick out confusing parts of the story.

o   Student picks out the confusing part after being read to.          

§  Says “This is the confusing part. I should add more pages here.”

o   This process got the revision process going for the student

o   Helps the student begin to reorganize the story.

o   Tells the student to ask herself “Does this make sence?”

Mockingbird Vocabulary Lesson

Tier 1

understand

 beautiful

 realize

confusing

Tier 2

counselor

disturbing

warning

manners

Tier 3

Asperger’s Syndrome

empathy

closure

healing

Lesson plan: 

First we would go over what each of the first two tiers words mean. We would have a class discussion where they would give their ideas on what these words mean and give a time where you would use that word. Their context can be real or made up. Then I will read the tier 3 words but tell them that these are big concepts that we will discuss once we go further into the book. I will tell them to look out for these words and use what is happening in the story to help them with the definitions.

As we read the story, they will write the definition of these words  as we come to them. They will give the sentences around them that deine these words, and then they will also define them in their own words. They will do all of these for each tier of words. We will also discuss them as a class as we come to them in the story as well. When they have had a fair amount of exposure and discussion of these words, or after we finish the book, they will choose one word from each tier and they will create a paragraph for each of the words that provide a real-life or made-up context that uses these words appropriately. 

These will also be our spelling words eventually.

Reading Lessons Overview

Reading Lesson Overview

Reading Lesson 1: Mia

Target Areas: Prosody/Inflection

Why/learning needs? My MT and I have completed numerous running records and reading assessments on all the students in the class. From these assessments, we have noticed that although Mia is able to read the passages with speed and accuracy, she lacks prosody and inflection. In hopes of helping her become a fluent reader, I would like to focus on teaching her how to gain inflection in her voice, to read with prosody. Thompson, Chapter 6 discusses fluency and what it means to be a fluent reader. Some strategies included in this chapter include choral reading, Readers Theater, guided reading, word recognition teaching and interactive reading. My rough plan is to do a type of Readers Theater. I’ve chosen a book that is mostly conversation between a daughter and her mother. I will read the role of the mother and I plan to have Mia read the part of the daughter. I’m going to direct model by showing her how I read with inflection in my voice, as if I were talking in real life.  I will point how my voice gets higher and lower and how the end of a question sounds compared to the end of a statement, etc.

Reading Lesson 2: Bailey

Target Areas: Reader Factors

Why/learning needs? As with Mia, Bailey is reading at grade level based on running records and short reading assessments that have been completed in the classroom. However, I think Bailey is missing out on some aspects of reading comprehension. I want to work on predicting, connecting and summarizing with Bailey. I think she would be able to have a deeper connection with the story if she was more invested in the plot and story line. These topics are discussed in Tompkins Chapter 8. It lists these aspects along with others and calls them reader factors. I think Bailey could benefit from extra help in all of these aspects, but I’d like to focus on the predicting, connecting and summarizing parts. I plan to do this by reading a book called “Boomers Big Day” about a dog whos family is moving. There are many parts in the book where readers can predict what will happen next, connect one part of the story to another, etc. Then once we’re done I will ask bailey to either write out a short summary of the story or tell it to me orally.