Maria Big Lesson #2 Reflection

·         What students learned and which students struggled with the lesson. 

Most of the students did very well at blending the sounds that I segmented for my literacy center. It was hard to determine who exactly met proficiency and who didn’t because some students would shout the answers out before others had a chance to think for themselves (even though I told them many times not to do this). I am happy to report that there were no students who could not complete the activity at all. However, student N and P are the two that may need more practice. Many times I found them waiting until someone said it out loud. On the other hand, they were able to get many on their own.

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

Another way I could interpret this activity is by looking at the students’ growth over time. In other words, I was pleasantly surprised that student P was able to do this activity at all because he struggles with letters and their sounds. This shows me that he is making great progress and that he is able to better work with sounds when he hears them instead of producing them himself. I can also read this lesson as a way to decide whether the students are ready for take home reading. Since many students were able to blend the sounds, that is one step closer to being able to decode words on their own and ultimately ready for take home reading!

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

I learned that they are learning from my previous lessons! For example, when I started this lesson, I stated a few words with /a/ in the middle. Many students were able to see the pattern and know that the /a/ stayed in the middle. This is something we practiced hearing in a previous lesson. In addition, I learned that different students use different strategies to blend sounds together. For some they needed to whisper it to themselves, others mouthed the sounds, and others thought about the sounds in their head. It is just interesting to know who uses which strategies and be able to link those to other reading strategies that they use (i.e reading out loud, reading silently, ect.)

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

I will be able to incorporate segmenting/blending in another one of my planned literacy centers, Mr. Munch. For students N and P, I will make sure they are answering questions that include blending. In addition, I can also segment and have the students blend when I am asking them to do normal everyday things. For example, I could say, “I need you to /s/ /i/ /t/” or “Please /g/ /o/ back to your seats.”

·         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?

The first change I would make to this lesson would be to include a few more challenge words. I included the word ‘clap’ in my list, but I think the students could have possibly blended words such as ‘snap’ as well. To be honest I was surprised at how well they could blend so I only included a few challenge words. This change would improve the students learning by giving those who need a challenge, a challenge. The next change I would make would be to make sure I choose words that I know the students will know. For example, many students did not know what a ram is and the mat picture looked a little funny. Having clear pictures will eliminate any unnecessary confusion.

What did you learn so far about implementing your ‘core practice’ and what do you need to do to continue your professional learning?

I am continuing to grow in my ‘core practice.’ From this lesson this is especially true for explicit teaching. The children would not be able to complete the activity unless I explicitly taught them how to do it. I think I was successful because they were successful! However, I need to be more explicit about not shouting out the answers. This would have helped me observe who really knows and who is just copying others answers.  

Allison Lesson 3 Reflection

·         What students learned and which students struggled with the lesson.

From this lesson, students learned about the letter sounds for letters of the alphabet, and practiced identifying letters.  I would pick a letter card, and I would say, “I have a letter that makes the /__/ sound.”  Then, the students would say which letter it was, and see if they had that letter on their card.  If they had that letter on their card, they would cover that letter with a bingo chip.  Overall, one student struggled to identify a letter for each letter sound.  During the lesson, most of the students would say which letter I was thinking of, together.  This particular student never said any letters for a given letter sound.  Also, some students struggled with identifying some letters on their cards (e.g., they confused a ‘B’ with a ‘D’).

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

One alternate read of my students’ performance is some of the students who did say the correct letter for a given letter sound did not actually know the letter, but got the answer from their peers.  Since the children said the letter aloud as a group, this could have given students the answer, who did not actually know the correct letter for a given letter sound.  Also, an alternate read for my student who did not say anything during the lesson could be that he did know some of the answers, but he did not feel like saying them out loud.  I could only go by what I heard during the lesson.  However, if he did know the answer, but he did not say it aloud, there is no way of me knowing whether he knew the correct letter or not.

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

From this lesson, I learned a lot about my students’ literacy practices.  First, I learned most of my students can identify the correct letter for a given letter sound.  Extending beyond my objective, I learned all of my students can match the correct written letter with a letter stated aloud for most letters (e.g., they say “Aa,” and they can find ‘Aa’ on their bingo card).  Also, I learned all but one of my students can state their ideas aloud.  Finally, I learned my students can follow directions.  I did not have to remind my students of the directions, during the game, because they all followed the directions I gave them at the beginning of the lesson.  From this one lesson, I learned a lot about what my students can do in literacy.

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

I will re-teach specific letter sounds to students by playing the “Who Let the Letters Out?” song to the entire class when we have extra time throughout the day.  This song will help the students practice all of the letter sounds, so they can easily pick out the initial sounds they hear in words.  Doing this will benefit the entire class, but especially the students who need more support with letter sounds.  Also, I will ask the students, “I am thinking of a letter that makes the /t/ sound.  What letter am I thinking of?”  I will do this for various letters, when we have spare time.  This will also help the students practice all of the letter sounds.  Also, I will quiz specific students, individually, who need extra practice with letter sounds when we have extra time in the day (e.g., during recess, snack, when they finish their work early, etc.)

 ·         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 make a couple of minor changes to it.  First, I would group the students by ability-level.  This way, I could provide more support for an entire group, or extend the lesson for an entire group.  The last group of students was all middle or high-achieving students.  I told them I wanted to challenge them, so I just gave them a word with the initial sound for the letter on each calling card.  Then, they had to say which letter I was thinking of.  This group did really well with this extension, and they all seemed to enjoy playing the game this way.  Therefore, it would benefit the students’ learning to group them by ability level because the entire group could receive the proper amount of support or extension to their abilities.

Second, I would change my formative assessment for this lesson.  While teaching this lesson, I wrote down letters students were able to correctly say to go with a given letter sound.  However, this was not as informative as I would have liked.  Instead, I would change the assessment so I write down which sounds or letter identification students struggled with.  This would improve my students’ learning because it would show me what I need to work with specific students on.

 ·         What did you learn so far about implementing your ‘core practice’ and what do you need to do to continue your professional learning?

So far, I learned my ‘core practice’ is important to getting my students interested in the given task.  I only used this ‘core practice’ with the last group when I stated words with the initial letter sound, instead of the letter sound.  I used students’ names in the classroom, or words of objects from around the school for a lot of the letter sounds.  When I did this, the students got big smiles on their faces because they knew what I was talking about related to their lives.  Doing this got them interested in the game even more because the task was not separated from their lives.  However, I need to continue my professional learning about this ‘core practice’ to see how else I could apply this ‘core practice’ to phonological awareness lessons in other ways.  I found using words and pictures (from the previous lesson) that are familiar to students to be successful, but I would like to know what else I can do to make phonological awareness lessons authentic to my students’ lives.  Also, I was only able to implement this ‘core practice’ with the last group, so I want ways to implement this ‘core practice’ with my lower-achieving students who I will not extend the lesson this way with.

Allison Lesson 2 Reflection

·         What students learned and which students struggled with the lesson.

 Students learned how to pick out words with a specific initial sound, specifically the initial /t/ sound, from my lesson.  They learned this because I had several pictures on the table of objects that had the initial /t/ sound and objects that had other initial sounds.  Each student got a turn to select an object from all of the pictures that had the initial /t/ sound to feed to the Sound Muncher.  Therefore, each student had to figure out which pictures had the initial /t/ sound, and which pictures did not have the initial /t/ sound.  However, 7 of my students needed more support from me to successfully complete the lesson.  These students looked at the pictures on the table for at least one minute before I stepped in to support them.  To support these students, I selected two pictures, one with the initial /t/ sound and one without the initial /t/ sound, and had them select which picture should be fed to the Sound Muncher.  Once I did this, each of these students were able to select the correct picture.  It seemed like it was overwhelming for them to choose the correct picture when several were in front of them, but when their choices were limited, they could successfully complete the task.

 

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

 Even though all of the students managed to correctly choose a picture with an initial /t/ sound, there could be another explanation for why all of my students did this correctly.  Some students who went near the end of the activity could have selected the correct picture because they heard several students correctly complete the task before them.  If they did not know how to do this at the beginning of the activity, they saw their peers complete this task first, so they learned what they had to do to correctly complete the task.  Also, I think the students who needed extra support were overwhelmed with the amount of pictures to choose from.  However, they could also have been shy.  Some of the students who needed extra support are quiet children.  Therefore, their shyness could have been why they needed support to complete the task, instead of their ability-level.

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

 From this one lesson, I learned a lot about my students’ literacy practices.  First, I learned each student can pick out the initial sound in a given word.  Even though some students needed support in finding a picture, once I narrowed their choices, they could successfully do this.  Also, I learned each student knows “t” makes the /t/ sound.  I asked them which letter my Sound Muncher was hungry for, to which they all responded, “t.”  Extending beyond my objectives, I learned my students can all speak aloud to a small group of people.  Each of the students stated aloud the name of the picture they chose to feed to the Sound Muncher.  Additionally, I learned each student can listen to the ideas of others.  After each student stated which picture they chose, I had the rest of the students give a thumbs up if that student was correct, or a thumbs down if that student was incorrect.  This got the students to listen to one another.  Finally, I learned most students can follow directions.  Almost all of the students remembered to do thumbs up or thumbs down for each picture, but some students needed a reminder about what to do.  Overall, I learned a lot about my students’ literacy practices from one lesson!

 

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

 I will re-teach this material to students who need extra support in various ways.  First, I will re-teach them to pick out the initial sound in words in lessons 4, 5, and 6 of my unit.  In lesson 4 (Sound Snacker-Sound Smacker), the students will choose a picture and determine if it has the initial /m/ sound or a different initial sound.  In lesson 5 (Phoneme Go Fish), the students will find pairs of words with the same initial sound.  In lesson 6 (Letter tub initial phoneme sort), we will sort objects into tubs of m, a, and s as a small group, based on initial sounds in each object.  Therefore, all of these lessons will help the students work on picking out the initial sound in a word.

 Second, I will re-teach specific letter sounds to students by playing the “Who Let the Letters Out?” song to the entire class when we have extra time throughout the day.  This song will help the students practice all of the letter sounds, so they can easily pick out the initial sounds they hear in words.  Doing this will benefit the entire class, but especially the students who need more support with letter sounds.  Also, I will ask the students, “I am thinking of a letter that makes the /t/ sound.  What letter am I thinking of?”  I will do this for various letters, when we have spare time.  This will also help the students practice all of the letter sounds.

 Finally, I will pull each of these students aside and show them five pictures, each with a different initial sound.  Then, I will ask them to find me a picture that begins with a specific sound.  This will help them practice the skills of this lesson without having too many pictures to choose from.

·         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 give the students less pictures to choose from for the incorrect initial sounds.  As I stated above, the students who struggled with this lesson seemed to be overwhelmed with the amount of pictures on the table.  Once I narrowed down their choices to two pictures, each of these students could correctly select the picture with the initial /t/ sound.  Therefore, if I provided them with fewer non-/t/ initial sound pictures, the students would be less overwhelmed, and better-able to select the correct picture without assistance from me.

 

·         What did you learn so far about implementing your ‘core practice’ and what do you need to do to continue your professional learning?

 So far, I learned my ‘core practice’ is important to teaching my students phonological awareness skills, and getting them interested in the given task.  All of the pictures I used for this lesson were pictures of objects I took with my camera from around our classroom and around our school.  Therefore, the students got really excited when I placed each picture on the table because they knew each object was from somewhere around our school.  Their faces lit up, and they got really excited to feed my Sound Muncher objects they knew about.  This excitement of recognition hooked my students into the lesson from the very beginning.  This ‘core practice’ is important to teaching my students these skills because they can apply what we are learning about to their everyday lives at school.  Instead of having pictures that were separated from their lives, I used pictures that were central to their lives at school, which helped them see the application of these skills outside of this one lesson.  However, I need to continue my professional learning about this ‘core practice’ to see how else I could apply this ‘core practice’ to phonological awareness lessons in others ways.  I found using pictures of objects that are familiar to the students to be successful, but I would like to know what else I can do to make phonological awareness lessons authentic to my students’ lives.

Maria Lesson One Reflection

            I am happy to report that many of my students learned during my lesson! During my lesson students sorted pictured word cards into words that start with the /a/ word and 'other sounds.' There were two/three students who did not meet proficient which was sorting 4/5 correctly (without help). Two students had trouble figuring out whether or not two of their words started with the /a/ sound (students P & B, they both got 3/5). The other child I cannot call proficient because she did not finish my center for behavior reasons (student N). Throughout the lesson I learned that my students are learning! Many of them remember letter sound that we have been working with throughout the past few weeks. In addition, I noticed that for some students they already know that the letter ‘a’ has more than one sound.  

            For students that need additional support I will work with them during choice time. We are giving assessments so many time I can have a quick side conversation maybe in between assessments about the /a/ sound would be beneficial for them so they are continuously hearing it. In addition, I will tell the interventionist they work with to work on the initial /a/ sound. The one thing I learned is that I need more tricks for how to respond to a student when they answer the question wrong. I don’t want students to feel back for answering incorrectly, but I also want them to learn from their mistakes! I think the other students can also learn from other student’s mistakes. 

Brianna Lesson Plan 2 Reflection

         For my second lesson, students were in centers and at one center they worked on discovering answers to questions they had from another text. From the previous lesson one question that still remained was "If a toad hibernates in winter, what does a frog do?" I began by asking if they remembered any of my questions from Monday, when the previous lesson was, but most students focused on a different question which I did not want to focus on that day ("Why did the toad just walk into Frog's house?").But it was the question they most remembered from the story, rather than the question I wanted them to remember, however it did bring up a good conversation at the end of a lesson of whether or not it is alright that a question does not have an answer. Next time,however, I think that I would remind them of the previous questions and write them down, rather than have them remember on their own, so they would have a visual to look at and know their questions have been remembered and therefore are important. As for the informational text, I read from an article that I had printed out from the internet,  but next time to keep them more engaged I would try and find the answer in a picture book that I could read so their attention stayed more focused. I still think they did a good job on finding answers in another text and now they are better at remembering these other sources we can find answers to questions in rather than the book they came from and I think that with practice they will get even more successful at it, and eventually they will learn to do this process on their own.

          Most students struggled with recalling questions from the previous lesson which had been two days prior to this one. So next time I would be sure to write the questions down that we had, so students would know that their questions were important and had been saved from the previous lesson, they would also then have something to look at and recall from, even if they cannot read yet. Students also struggled with paying attention while the informational text was read aloud, so next time I would use a book with pictures to hold their interest instead, then they would be more likely to pullout the information I was asking them about and realize for themselves they can learn from another source about a totally different book rather than just have to believe me when I tell them that. And next time I use a source without pictures, I would be sure to warn them they will have to see the pictures in their mind which I did not do this time. For students who need additional help finding information from additional sources, I can help them in smaller groups during centers, and because we did this lesson in centers this time I found that the group as a whole had very similar problems when they had them and so I can differentiate for the groups in the future.

Brianna Lesson Plan 1 Reflection

     My first lesson plan in my unit on comprehension in kindergarten was about questioning and modeling how good readers ask themselves questions as they read. When I asked all of my students if they wanted to be good readers they all yelled yes, and that was a good way to get them engaged in the beginning of the lesson. The biggest problem that I had during my lesson was students not understanding the difference between a question and a comment. I would ask for questions and when students would get called on then would tell me something that ad already happened in the story or a prediction. That led me to realize we need a lesson about what a question is and what words questions typically begin with so they know what I am asking for and how to ask a question. When I told students that good readers know questions don't always have an answer and and that is okay, they had a hard time believing that, and anytime I ask them many still think that a question must get answered in the text. We also talked about what other ways we can find answers to questions that are not answered in the text. Students were very adamant that the only way we could find information was to go and observe frogs to answer the question "what do frogs do in winter?" so I know that in future lessons I have to show student how I look up information on the internet, in books, and show them how we can also learn from videos a well.

I think that some students understood the lesson and those were the ones who are the highest in the class, the others paid attention but struggled with asking their own questions, they were more focused on retelling a part of the story to me or saying a comment while thinking that they were asking a question, so I will definitely be talking with the students during my next lesson about what a question is, what it sounds like and what words begin questions before continuing on to ask them about a story.The most important thing I learned outside of my objectives was how students might ask a lot of questions, but they don't necessarily know what they are asking are referred to as questions and what questions sound like an what their purpose is.Because there are so many students who need additional support, we will continue lessons that cover asking questions and as we practice more I think that most students will catch on to learning more about questions. However for those that continue to need additional support, because I know there will be some, it will be something that I work on in small groups during center time.Next time I would talk more about questions in general and introduce words that questions might begin with (who, what, where, when, why, how, etc.) and practice those more than distinguishing between "thick" and "thin" questions, which I would put off until later, because first students just need to be able to ask questions when they need to and know what they are.Next time I will be sure to assess as least a few students of different levels on whatever I will be teaching, even if it is very informally, even if I think that they all know the basics. Because my kindergarten students ask many, many questions does not mean they know they are doing it or can do it when asked, so next time I will be more prepared with the information they already know.

Allison's Week 7 Initial Post

For this week, I chose to read Chapters 11 and 12.  The "take home message" in Chapter 11 is students summarize and synthesize a text to better understand what they read, and to make what they read meaningful to them.  When students summarize, they retell what they read about by using their own words.  When students synthesize information, they combine what they already know with what they read to add more to what they already know, or to create new understandings about the topic.  This chapter got me thinking about authentic literacy instruction in my own classroom.  Currently, we have the students doing some summarizing, but not much synthesizing.  For example, each week we read a different Big Book as part of our Reading Street curriculum.  After we have read the story aloud a couple of times, we have the students draw and write about their favorite part of the story.  This involves summarizing because the students are pulling out what was the most important part of the story for them.  The only other bit of summarizing I have seen so far is in our Social Studies time.  We have an optional task students can work on at home entitled Very Important Person (VIP) Reports.  The students take home a book about a famous historical figure (e.g., John Chapman/"Johnny Appleseed"), and they read the book with an adult at home.  Then, they come to school with 3-4 facts to present to the class about that person.  In this case, students are summarizing what they read into 3-4 big ideas about what they learned about that person.  However, I would like to try teaching my students how to synthesize what they read (or what we read aloud) to better understand what is read.  The best way to do this in my classroom would be to teach the students through a lesson similar to "Synthesizing: How Reading Changes Thinking" in the textbook.  In this lesson, the teacher noted how reading changes/adds to our thinking, which is why we read in the first place.  One thing the teacher did in this lesson was to have her students discuss their thinking about the topic before reading, and then discuss their thinking about the topic after reading (Harvey & Goudvis, 2007, p. 183-184).  I would have students do this by turning and talking to their neighbors, both before reading and after reading.  Then, I would have the pairs share their ideas aloud, and I would record their thoughts on an anchor chart.

The "take home message" for Chapter 12 is to incorporate science and social studies learning into literacy time as much as possible becuase there is little time in the daily schedule dedicated to teaching these subjects.  This chapter got me thinking about science and social studies instruction in my classroom--we do not do much of this, except for the VIP reports in social studies.  One of the simplest ways to integrate science and social studies into literacy time is to have interactive read-alouds with picture books in these content areas.  For example, I could read my students a book about weather or a famous historical figure.  This would expose my students to science and social studies, while still staying in the realm of literacy (Harvey & Goudvis, 2007, p. 209).  Another technique I would like to try with my students in social studies is "Stop, Think, and React to Videos."  My students love watching learning videos, and they love to talk.  Therefore, watching videos about social studies concepts and talking about those videos would be right up my students' alleys (Harvey & Goudvis, 2007, p. 211).  For science, two techniques I would especially like to try are "Anchor Charts That Document Thinking and How it Evolves" and "Creating Posters, Projects, Murals, and Mobiles."  My students are very curious about everything, so giving them the ability to write their questions on a chart would give them an outlet to tap their natural curiosities about a science topic.  Also, my students love working on art projects, so they would enjoy displaying what they learn through a visual product (Harvey & Goudvis, 2007, p. 213, 216).