Sunday, February 8, 2009
Week 3 Post
I really felt that Gibbons had a lot of good stuff to say about reading that related to my field classroom. The Scaffolding book spoke a lot about having students fluent in reading by grade three, and the majority of my classroom is fluent in reading. My CT has them reading silently, aloud, and as a class. They are constantly editing and producing books, which they read aloud to their classmates and have in their classroom libraries. Also, the chapter spoke of how ESL students should read aloud rather than write to effectively develop their literacy skills. I have three ESL students in my field classroom, one ESL student in particular is struggling because he just moved here from Korea. He works one on one a lot with my CT and practices reading and editing his book before he shares it with the class. I think reading to the class really encourages him to work on his reading and overall improves his reading. Overall, I really enjoy how well my CT goes about teaching literacy effectively in the classroom. He makes sure it is everywhere in the classroom, which I think is great to do because literacy is so integrative. I don’t like when students simply work off to themselves, because I think literacy should be apart of the whole class more than an individual activity.
Week 3 Post
It was difficult to relate the concepts discussed in the Tompkins chapter to my field placement because I feel that my students are well beyond the basics of spelling. I have seen students blend sounds together while trying to "sound out" a word, but they don't really sing songs and chants or participate in any of the activities listed in the chapter.
When I worked with Kelly* last semester, I noticed that the words on her spelling lists all rhymed. I feel that this is a good approach to teaching students new words because they are able to compare the rime part of the words even though the words have different onsets.
Towards the end of the chapter, Tompkins begins to talk about spelling tests and how some teachers feel they are beneficial in the classroom, while other teachers feel that spelling should be learned through reading and writing. In my field placement, instead of my CT giving his students a basic spelling test where he says the words and the students write it down, he gives them a list of 5 words and the students circle the word that is misspelled or they circle none of them if all of the words are spelled correctly. I feel this is a great way to test students on their spelling because this will connect to the students learning how to edit their own work in the future.
After taking the Digital Natives Quiz, I was surprised that I only received a 4/6. I wasn't sure what "modding" was or "smart mobs." I am not at the "emergent stage" of digital literacy because I knew what more than half the terms were, but I'm definitely not a digital native! It seems that someone at the emergent stage of digital literacy would not be familiar with any of the terms from the Digital Natives Quiz, and they would not know how to use a blog, wiki, IM, etc... They would be exploring through the programs but would need assistance from someone who is digitally literate. This is similar to the emergent reading/writing stage from the Tompkin's chapter (chapter 3) since students are just beginning to learn their alphabet and write scribbles that will eventually form into letters.
When I worked with Kelly* last semester, I noticed that the words on her spelling lists all rhymed. I feel that this is a good approach to teaching students new words because they are able to compare the rime part of the words even though the words have different onsets.
Towards the end of the chapter, Tompkins begins to talk about spelling tests and how some teachers feel they are beneficial in the classroom, while other teachers feel that spelling should be learned through reading and writing. In my field placement, instead of my CT giving his students a basic spelling test where he says the words and the students write it down, he gives them a list of 5 words and the students circle the word that is misspelled or they circle none of them if all of the words are spelled correctly. I feel this is a great way to test students on their spelling because this will connect to the students learning how to edit their own work in the future.
After taking the Digital Natives Quiz, I was surprised that I only received a 4/6. I wasn't sure what "modding" was or "smart mobs." I am not at the "emergent stage" of digital literacy because I knew what more than half the terms were, but I'm definitely not a digital native! It seems that someone at the emergent stage of digital literacy would not be familiar with any of the terms from the Digital Natives Quiz, and they would not know how to use a blog, wiki, IM, etc... They would be exploring through the programs but would need assistance from someone who is digitally literate. This is similar to the emergent reading/writing stage from the Tompkin's chapter (chapter 3) since students are just beginning to learn their alphabet and write scribbles that will eventually form into letters.
I was thinking about writing in the placement that I am currently in, and I feel that I don’t see enough of it. I go in the afternoon on Monday and the morning on Thursday. The morning has a structured schedule similar to Ms. McClosky’s schedule in the Tompkins book. They start the morning with a class meeting. They do the lunch choices, calendars, a couple of math related morning routines and then they go to their seats and work on their morning sentences. They have two sentences that they need to correct and rewrite on the line below. The CT puts it on the ELMO and projects it onto the white board and they correct it ass a class. When they are finished they can read . Then they have a free choice time where they can read, write or practice words on the white boards. There are many other reading opportunities throughout the day. There are many of the things discussed in Chapter 3 of the Tompkins book. There are signs, printed rules, and labeled class items to name a few. I guess my concern with the writing is this: during their writing time I see many people in the class focusing on the pictures to go with the stories instead of the story itself. I am waiting to see how much writing they do for other subjects but unfortunately there are a lot of obstacles to seeing the other subjects. There are speakers coming in, or switched gym periods, or an extra music class . Plus there was a substitute one of the days which meant worksheets. I wish I could be there more often to see what goes on.
Week 3 Post
This week in my placement, we were not in the classroom but on a field trip to Waldumar, which is an outdoor education center. It is focused on science and map skills. This was my second time this semester spending such a lovely day there. The first time I went, I was so bored out of my mind that I was counting down the seconds until I was allowed to leave the freezing cold barn that has not yet been introduced to a heating system. Today, I was in charge of leading a group of students out into the woods with a gps system that I had no idea how to use and did not end up working! It was a frustrating day, especially because I could witness the students learning language arts.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Week 2 Post
Most of the third graders in my field placement are at the fluent stage of the "Three Stages of Reading and Writing." They make text-to-text and text-to-self connections during reading time. The students in my class are becoming familiar with the writing process as well. They have written creative stories every month and they will start with a rough draft, then conference with my CT, Katie, or I and then we will go through their story with them and correct spelling and grammar.
As Katie was saying in her post, our CT tries to get his students to use more interesting words by prohibiting them to write the words "big," "small," and "said." He has a list of words on top of the white board that the students can use instead of big, small, and said. When he stops allowing students to use a particular word, he will have them take out their thesaurus and look up "more interesting" words for the students to use instead, and then he will put them up above the white board.
There are a few students in the class, like my focus student Kelly, who are unable to create their own stories, or even sentences without assistance. Kelly is at the Emergent Stage of the Three Stages of Reading and Writing. She knows her alphabet and how to write her name and letters, but when she writes, she does not put a space between her words, and she uses invented spelling. If you ask her to read what she wrote back to you, she will be able to. She understands the concept of print and directionality concepts such as reading from left to right and from top to bottom on a page.
Kelly has improved a great deal from when I first started working with her last semester during TE 301. She is able to follow along during shared reading with one-on-one correspondence, she just has a difficult time writing sentences on her own.
As Katie was saying in her post, our CT tries to get his students to use more interesting words by prohibiting them to write the words "big," "small," and "said." He has a list of words on top of the white board that the students can use instead of big, small, and said. When he stops allowing students to use a particular word, he will have them take out their thesaurus and look up "more interesting" words for the students to use instead, and then he will put them up above the white board.
There are a few students in the class, like my focus student Kelly, who are unable to create their own stories, or even sentences without assistance. Kelly is at the Emergent Stage of the Three Stages of Reading and Writing. She knows her alphabet and how to write her name and letters, but when she writes, she does not put a space between her words, and she uses invented spelling. If you ask her to read what she wrote back to you, she will be able to. She understands the concept of print and directionality concepts such as reading from left to right and from top to bottom on a page.
Kelly has improved a great deal from when I first started working with her last semester during TE 301. She is able to follow along during shared reading with one-on-one correspondence, she just has a difficult time writing sentences on her own.
Comment on Ashika's post
Once again my computer won't let me comment on other posts, but this is what I was trying to comment on Ashika's post:
It sounds like your CT has established a great classroom community for his students! This reminds me of the 3rd chapter of the Tompkins text where Tompkins says that reading and writing should be demonstrated as integrated processes. Your CT is doing this by reading a book with the class and then writing out the students' questions. This will help them become more familiar with sentence structure and spelling of high frequency words. Is "Fly Away Home" a chapter book? I saw the movie but I never read the book. It's great if it's a chapter book and the students are able to comprehend what the teacher is reading and able to ask questions about the book.
It sounds like your CT has established a great classroom community for his students! This reminds me of the 3rd chapter of the Tompkins text where Tompkins says that reading and writing should be demonstrated as integrated processes. Your CT is doing this by reading a book with the class and then writing out the students' questions. This will help them become more familiar with sentence structure and spelling of high frequency words. Is "Fly Away Home" a chapter book? I saw the movie but I never read the book. It's great if it's a chapter book and the students are able to comprehend what the teacher is reading and able to ask questions about the book.
To Amanda's comment on my first post
For some reason I can't reply to your comment on my post from last week about Kelly, but here's what I was trying to say:
Kelly has trouble with her sight words, for example she has a difficult time distinguishing "that," "they," and "there." None of her English spelling look similar to the Spanish language, but she does confuse her vowel sounds. She'll pronounce "set" like "sat" because she assumes every c-v-c word has an "a" sound in the middle. My CT said it's very difficult to keep in contact with her parents, it was easier in the beginning of the year because her sister went to college close to home so she would attend the parent-teacher conferences, but now her sister went out of state to college. He said that Kelly's parents brought their landlord to a conference once and she's going to try and help Kelly out.
Kelly has trouble with her sight words, for example she has a difficult time distinguishing "that," "they," and "there." None of her English spelling look similar to the Spanish language, but she does confuse her vowel sounds. She'll pronounce "set" like "sat" because she assumes every c-v-c word has an "a" sound in the middle. My CT said it's very difficult to keep in contact with her parents, it was easier in the beginning of the year because her sister went to college close to home so she would attend the parent-teacher conferences, but now her sister went out of state to college. He said that Kelly's parents brought their landlord to a conference once and she's going to try and help Kelly out.
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