Literacy Lesson Implementation

Literacy Lesson Post-Reflection

            On Wednesday, April 23^rd, I implemented my formal literacy lesson. I created a small group lesson for a group of four students to work on their use of expression while reading. In this lesson, the students practiced reading a script that they had previously read in class from their large reading textbook.

I introduced the lesson by reading a line of the text in a monotone voice, ignoring punctuation, quietly, and slowly. I then re-read the line, changing the tone in my voice as I read, stopping at correct punctuation, etc. I asked the students to describe the difference in both of the ways I read. They responded saying things like the first way I read it sounded like a robot, I didn’t stop at the periods, etc. They also said that the second way I read it made it more fun and I read with feeling. I had the children tell me what they thought that expression meant. I then modeled the entire story, reading with expression. Next, I had the students partner up and look for places in the story that they could use expression, and to practice reading with expression. Finally, I gave each of the students a part to read out loud and practice reading their part with expression. As they read, I used a checklist to determine if the students were changing the tone of their voice throughout the story, if they changed their voice to reflect exclamation points, question marks, or to reflect the feelings the character was feeling. I wrapped up the lesson by having the students tell me the importance of using expression in reading, and they told me it was important to read with expression because it helps the reader know how the characters are feeling. I then told them that they need to practice reading with expression every time that they read from now on.

Overall, there were some great elements to this lesson, but there were some things that I could have changed to make it even stronger. I believe that the structure of my lesson was very solid. I had a great introduction to the lesson that really got the students involved in what I wanted to teach them. I also thought that the use of the “I do it, we do it, you do it” model was a great element of my lesson because it allowed the students to see the way that I use expression, then they were able to practice using expression in partners, and then they were able try doing it on their own. This model is very beneficial when teaching and re-teaching concepts because it uses scaffolding to help the students see how it’s done before doing it on their own. Another strong part of my lesson was the conclusion. The students were able to tell me why it’s important to use expression, and then I concluded it by telling them the importance of practicing it on their own every time they read after this lesson. Another important part of this lesson was the fact that I used a story that they have all previously read before. I specifically chose this story because this particular group of students struggles with comprehension. If I had given them a new story, they would have been caught up on what was going on in the story and they would not have been focused on their use of expression. I felt that it was more important that they had a story that they were familiar with because they were able to focus on how they read the story and not on what they were reading.

While my lesson was strong, there are always ways to improve it to make it stronger in the future. One thing that could have made it stronger was the use of visuals to help the students see what exactly expression is and the important components of expression. It would also have helped to have an explicit definition of what expression is so that they had a clear understanding of it. This visual would have helped support their learning of expression because they could have referenced it throughout the lesson. Another thing I should have done was to introduce the tough vocabulary before I started so that the students wouldn’t get tripped up on the words. A third thing that would have made my lesson stronger is the pre-planning of student roles. I should have had exactly who was going to be speaking what parts in the final reading of the story pre-planned. During this final reading, one of the students who really struggles with reading was given a part in the story with a lot of reading. She got caught on a lot of the words in the story and the other students struggled with waiting for her to read. In the future, it would be helpful to pre-plan the roles so that I could have given her a part with less reading to allow her to be successful, as well as for the lesson to go much smoother.

One thing that I really struggled with in this lesson was with one of the students. He was not engaged in the lesson, he was on the floor, looking through his textbook, making inappropriate comments, etc. I didn’t know how to approach him without making it difficult for the other children to learn. For the most part, I ignored his behaviors and continued with the lesson. Occasionally, when it was really bad, I tried to redirect him, but was unsuccessful. He was very defiant. I think that if I had had some visuals, it would have kept him more engaged. Also, the table that I used was not beneficial for learning because I was too far away from the students. I should have adjusted the table so that I sat in front of all the students. I also should have had this particular student sit directly beside me so that I could have more control over his behavior.

This project was very beneficial to my learning. It allowed me to pre-assess my students, and then create a lesson based off of those assessments to focus on something that they needed work on. Through the assessments that I chose, I was able to see that these students struggled with the use of expression. This project really helped me to see the purpose of pre-assessing the students because if I had not done those pre-assessments, I would not have known what would benefit these students the most and the lesson may not have been as beneficial for their learning. It is really important to do these assessments to know exactly where all of my students stand in their learning and how I can change my teaching in order to help each student progress. Overall, I really felt this was helpful for me to see and prepare for my future as a teacher. 

Bringing it all together

·         Review the course goals you wrote about in your first post at the beginning of the semester.

·         What progress have you made on them?

·         What does this do to inform your practice next semester in student teaching?

·         What goals do you still have moving forward?

·         Include overall reflections on what you have learned in this clinical course and on-site this semester.

My days here at ISU are dwindling down, sadly. I have one more clinical setting to experience left, and it is so sad! At the beginning of the semester, I made four goals for myself for this semester that I wanted to work on. My first goal was to increase my confidence in teaching. Overall, I feel 10x more confident this semester than I have in previous semesters. I still have a lot to work on, but I have definitely improved. I feel comfortable teaching a classroom full of students as well as confident that I am teaching them meaningful lessons and have the background knowledge to answer any questions that they may have.

Another goal that I had for myself was to expand upon my teaching abilities. In past semesters, we were only required to implement one math or literacy lesson. This semester we were required to implement a literacy lesson, a science lesson, and a social studies lesson. Holy moly! I did it, and having that experience not only helped me to think about how to plan for all of the different areas of learning, it also increased my confidence because I was able to plan it and implement it well! I know I came up with some creative, meaningful lessons for these students. While I still need a lot more experience before heading out into the teaching world, these lessons definitely helped me to prepare for student teaching next semester.

A third goal that I had was to increase bonds between colleagues. One way that this occurred was through the relationship that I had with my cooperating teacher this semester. Overall, I honestly could not have had a better cooperating teacher, and I wish so badly that she could be my cooperating teacher for student teaching! She believed in me and my abilities, probably more than I did, and this could not have been more helpful to me. She allowed me to take over certain aspects of the day that I was there because she knew that I could handle it. We had many meaningful conversations during our plan time that really helped me to form a bond with her. She trusted me, and her trust and confidence in me only made me realize that I can do it!

My final goal was to work on classroom management. This is something I still struggle with because I have yet to have the opportunity to find my own management skills that work for me; I am normally forced to have to adjust to the management that my CT’s use. Overall, I liked the PBIS system that my school used this semester; I felt it worked better than systems I have seen in the past. I still have a lot to learn when it comes to having my own classroom and managing my own group of students. My CT gave me some great advice though. She told me that I have to find a system that balances what works for me and what works for my students. I will have to change this system every year, because I will have a new group of students every year. However, if I don’t have my management system in place and implemented within the first week of school, I will struggle for the rest of the year; those first few days of school are the ones that mean the most. This really concerned me. At ISU we have learned a million different ways to accommodate for children who need it, to differentiate to reach all of the children in your classroom, different classroom management ideas, guided reading ideas, social studies, science, etc. We have a boatful of knowledge to help us be successful teachers. However, not one teacher has prepared us for what to expect on the first day of school. I went to my CT and asked her how she does it. She said the first days are tough, and you have to immediately inform your classroom about what you expect from them; inform them of the schedule and the ways things work in your classroom. You do a lot of getting to know you activities. She said it takes practice to figure it out, and she offered me a book entitled “The First Days of School,” by Harry and Rosemary Wong. I borrowed it from her and flipped through some of the pages, and wow it was so helpful. It gives me a better idea on how to lay out the first few weeks of school, which we have never really learned about. I think this will help me immensely when I enter student teaching because I am on the “off-track,” so I am teaching in the fall instead of the spring. This is kind of exciting for me because it allows me to get a feel for what the first day of school looks like instead of just kind of entering in the middle of the year.

Overall, I am still working on all four of my goals, and will probably continue to work on these goals even after student teaching comes to an end. I have learned so much this semester, and I am so happy. When I first began my education here at ISU, I planned to get my degree in ECE and business, and end up opening up my own daycare center. While these plans are somewhat still in my head, they have sort of been placed on the back burner for a while. After getting the chance to teach in the school system, I have sort of fallen in love with it. I am excited about getting up extra early on Wednesdays to get to the school; I feel elated walking into the school in my professional teacher clothes; I adore when I walk into the gym and my student’s faces light up to see me; I enjoy the looks of excitement and happiness when they achieve or learn something new. It is a feeling I never thought I would experience because I always had a different plan for myself. I absolutely loved my second grade class this year. They have definitely taught me the meaning of differentiating lessons. They are an interesting group of students who smile and laugh and love to learn. They were a very diverse group of learners, and sometimes it was tough I won’t lie! But every single day, no matter how tough the day was, I walked out of the school with a smile on my face and this feeling of appreciation for opportunity I had. I loved my experience this semester, and it makes me so unbelievably sad that it is coming to an end on Wednesday. I will take all of the knowledge from I have gained not only from my CT, but from my students as well, on to student teaching next semester. I just hope I get 2^nd grade again J

Here’s a peak at the book “The First Days of School” by Harry and Rosemary Wong. I strongly encourage all new teachers to check it out! (It’s selling for .45 at amazon!)

http://www.amazon.com/The-First-Days-School-Effective/dp/0962936065/ref=sr_1_2?

ie=UTF8&qid=1398123110&sr=8-2&keywords=wong+the+first+days+of+school

Science in my Clinical Classroom

SCIENCE FOCUS
Having spent eleven weeks in TCH 276, you have gained so much knowledge about science in the early childhood classroom. You will hopefully have also observed science instruction in your clinical classroom. Draw on this knowledge and these experiences in this discussion.

What have you noticed about science instruction and assessment in your setting?

·         When does it take place? Does it take place? Think critically.

·         What does it encompass?

·         During science instruction, what does your CT do/ say?

·         What do students do/ say? How do they respond?

·         What are your opinions/ feelings about this?

·         How does what you observe about science at this site connect with past clinical experiences/ early childhood theories/ and or science practices you have been learning about at ISU?

·         How does knowing this inform what you will do when teaching and assessing science (either this semester, next semester in student teaching, and/or next year)?

What other additional reflections/ concerns/ questions/ musings do you have after spending these last few weeks on the site? Use your own experiences, especially those from your activity log for the last few weeks.

So far in my clinical classroom, I haven’t really seen very much science, at least not the science that I remember doing as a child. What I have seen in relation to science is them working through packets. Each new unit in science they get a big booklet with different activities for them to work on. Right now they are transitioning from dinosaurs to their weather unit. I looked through their dinosaur booklet, and it seemed to mostly encompass informational texts about different dinosaurs that they can read about, connect the dot activities, coloring worksheets, math worksheets, vocabulary worksheets, etc. During instruction of other activities, such as during math, my CT will tell the students to work on their math activity, and to pull out their dinosaur packet when they have finished and work on whatever page they choose. This seems to be a good use of classroom management.

I have also seen a heavy integration with literacy. On their last unit of Penguins, they did a lot of informational readings with penguins; learning about the different kinds of penguins, what they do, where they live, how they live, what they eat, etc. The students really seemed to enjoy what they were learning. They would mostly focus on pulling important information from the text. Another way that literacy was integrated was through their read aloud. Every day after lunch, my CT would read a different story about penguins to the children. She would choose higher leveled texts to read aloud to them to help to challenge them. She has done the same thing during their dinosaur unit; she is reading a chapter book called The Dinosaur Egg to the children; she reads a chapter each day after lunch. I don’t know how well this is working because as I observe during the read aloud, many of the students aren’t paying attention to the story and when she stops to ask questions, only the higher leveled children are usually able to answer the questions.

In our literacy classes, we have learned that according to the common core, over 50% of what we introduce to the students must be non-fiction texts. I feel that I am definitely seeing this in this classroom because almost everything that they read in the classroom is non-fiction besides their books of choice. We have also learned in our literacy classes then when choosing classroom read-alouds to choose books that are a little bit out of their reading level because it does introduce them to new vocabulary that they may not get from the books that are at their level, as well as requires a higher level of thinking for them to learn and understand a longer more difficult story line. While I am seeing this, I think this story may even be a little bit too difficult for the students because they really don’t know what is happening during the story.

Overall, I really wish I did see more science. However, I am only there once a week, so there is a huge chance that a majority of their science lessons occur on different days than on the days that I am there. I am assuming that it is still highly integrated with literacy because most of their curriculum is heavily integrated with literacy. While I think this is important, I still believe that a more hands-on approach to science is important as well.

In my future classroom, I plan to dedicate at least one day a week to a hands-on science lesson. Students at this age really need that hands on experience for them to fully understand what is going on and to get a better comprehension of these science standards that we are trying to teach them. Just teaching them through literacy doesn’t necessarily reach all of the children in the classroom, and many of them will end up falling behind and not understand these crucial aspects of science.

This is a pinterest board that I found that has a lot of great ideas related to hands-on science that I found to be beneficial for a 2^nd grade classroom.

http://www.pinterest.com/jrosher/2nd-grade-science/

Enjoy your week J

Clinical Science Reflection

Clinical Science Reflection

            This week, I implemented my science lesson in my clinical classroom. This was very exciting for me, because I have seen very little science implementation in my class have experienced very little science throughout my courses here at ISU. My cooperating teacher and I decided that I should do a lesson on weather, because that is the new unit that the students are starting. She let me decide what kind of weather lesson that I would be doing. I decided to teach a lesson about clouds, because I felt that beginning a weather unit starting with clouds would be a very good beginning lesson to start their learning of clouds. I chose to do a mixture of a hand’s on lesson with direct instruction throughout.

            Before the lesson, my cooperating teacher asked that I include a Scholastic Weekly Reader about clouds, so I chose to begin my lesson with that because it had a lot of good introduction information about clouds, with some good vocabulary words. After we read the weekly reader, I began my lesson with a hook of a picture of clouds, and asked the students what they thought our next unit would be about. We talked about how we would be starting our weather unit, and I introduced the lesson of clouds. I talked about what clouds were, and then talked about four different kinds of clouds: cirrus, stratus, cumulus, and cumulonimbus. I had pictures of each type of cloud and definitions. We talked about where we may see these clouds and when.

            After the PowerPoint, we did a hand’s on activity. I gave them each a piece of construction paper, which they folded into four equal parts. With modeling and instruction, the students labeled the first part of the paper with the word cirrus clouds. I gave them each a cotton ball and instructed them to find a way to make their cotton ball look like a cirrus cloud. They ripped apart their cotton ball and glued it onto their papers. Then, we wrote a sentence about that type of cloud. The students did this for all four types of clouds. As an assessment, the children filled out the quick quiz on the back of their weekly readers. To wrap up the lesson, we talked about how clouds can help us determine the weather and how we can be safe during a thunderstorm.

            Overall, the lesson went extremely well. The children really enjoyed doing the activity, and they were engaged throughout the entire lesson. They had fun trying to find different ways to make their cotton balls look like the real clouds. I felt that my overall instruction of the lesson was strong, and my cooperating teacher felt the same way. The students had great comments to add to the lesson as well. My cooperating teacher felt that one of my strengths was my focus on vocabulary, especially with the word cumulonimbus. The children particularly struggled with actually saying the word, but were able to understand its definition with ease. We practiced the different vocabulary words several times throughout the lesson in different ways. I had them clap out the syllables of cumulonimbus as well as had them say it with me several times.

            Another strength my cooperating teacher said that I had was thinking on my feet. I ran out of cotton balls at the end, and I decided to bring this problem to the students asking what we should do. Many of them agreed to share their cotton balls with their neighbors if they had extra from previous clouds; others took extra pieces from their previous clouds, and others decided to just use crayons to draw in the lesson. Another way I thought on my feet, that my cooperating teacher was unaware of, was through my lesson closure. My original idea was to look out the window and give a description of the clouds outside and have them determine what kind of cloud it was. In the middle of teaching about stratus clouds, I asked where we might see those types of clouds, and one student raised her hand and said that we have those kinds of clouds outside right now. So, at the end of my lesson, I decided to relate my lesson back to safety and how clouds can help us determine when a storm is coming and when we should go inside instead of playing outside. My cooperating teacher said this was a great closure.

            My overall weakness was dealing with classroom management. My cooperating teacher gave me a few different tips on different ways to control the classroom environment during a hand’s on lesson like this. Since part of my lesson was to have the students write a sentence underneath their cloud picture. However, most of the students were so busy making their cloud, they completely missed the modeling of writing the sentence. She instructed me that next time I should not give them the cotton balls until we come up with a sentence together so I can keep their attention throughout the important aspects of the lesson. Another weakness was planning for time. I had only planned for this lesson to be about 30 minutes, but it again ended up lasting an hour. This is something I will definitely need to work on in the future because I need to be able to correctly time out my lessons in order to fit everything in to my day.

            The overall students learning of the objective was very successful. They were able to correctly identify the different clouds and when we may see them. The use of the Weekly Reader assessment tool was beneficial because it allowed me to see that they understood the information I had just taught. Through informal checks, I was also able to see that they were able to understand because, even though they had difficulties with the pronunciation of each of the cloud names, they were able to give me correct definitions and examples of these clouds.

            In general, I was thrilled with the way that my lesson was implemented in the classroom. The children had a blast doing the activity, and they were really able to get the knowledge through the hands on activity rather than strictly direct instruction. The modeling of each of the clouds was also very helpful because it was a type of differentiation that helped the children who may have been struggling with the vocabulary words. In the future, I would absolutely implement this lesson again, with better use of classroom management. I will also use Kira’s tip of “not giving away my goodies too early” because it can sometimes really affect the way the children pay attention during the lesson and they may miss out on the more important concepts.