Mini-Lesson 2 Reflection

I’ve just finished my second mini-lesson!  My students were initially excited to go back out in the hallway with me, and Katie pointed out that I picked exactly the same group of kids to work with.  Once I asked what we’d learned last week, all three of their hands shot in the air to tell me that (Katie) “we shouldn’t read like this” and took several seconds to say a two syllable word, (Zack) “that reading like that is boring” and general agreement from James.  Katie told us that pictures can help readers figure out what books are about.  I asked them what reading with emotion and speed was called, and they thought for 30 seconds.  I gave them the hint, “fl...” and they all shouted “fluidez!”  They all were extremely excited to learn the new vocabulary, and practicing saying all of the syllables fast.  I had to remind them not to be so noisy!  When they all had an opportunity to read to themselves, James and Katie took the task very seriously, understanding that it was practice for them to read to the group, but Zack whipped through the book.  I specifically told him that he had another minute, to maybe concentrate on saying the new words, but he said that we’d already gone over them.  James skimmed them, whereas Katie went back over them, mumbling them to herself.

    This book was definitely much harder for them to read than the last one, because there were so many new (and long) words.  I assessed the students recognition, and all of the students “stopped to decode the unfamiliar words.”  For this reason, I actually think the book may have been too difficult for them, so that would be a weakness of my teaching: I was not able to pick a book that was at the correct level of the students.  At the same time, the book was easy to understand: each page featured a different animal telling the audience where he lived.  The students were able to tell me, correctly, in general terms, that the book was about this.  Their slow reading and decoding, therefore, did not interfere with comprehension.  This, therefore, was a strength of the lesson, but another one would have been that I as a teacher recognized their struggle with this book, so opened the discussion for them to talk about it.  They said that “no one” in the class could read those words quickly, but that they knew that they all could read them slowly when they tried.  They understood that new vocabulary words take some decoding, and hopefully understood that to mean that focusing upon these new words, and gaining familiarity with new words that may come up in texts certainly helps fluidity/prosody!

    It was also very difficult to score each of the students’ reading ability with the either/or assessment that I suggested.  I learned that I, as a teacher, could probably use such an assessment, but that I absolutely need a “comment” box, because I want to reach each of my students at exactly the level that they are at, and not one that a book necessarily pinpoints.  It was really hard to categorize them, but I’m sure that I’ll get better with time.  I wonder if first grade is too early to teach fluency, as so many of my students are still decoding words, although decoding them absolutely accurately.  I suppose that exposure to English-speaking classes next year may answer this inquiry!

Mini-Lesson 1 Reflection

I just taught my quick mini-lesson, and I’m really pleased with the outcome!  When I’d initially talked to my mentor teacher about doing prosody, she liked the idea, but did not indicate that the students had done any work with it.  I opened the lesson by saying that we were going to work on reading as though we were talking and with expression, being “fluidez,” Katie chimed in right away by explaining what it was in English.  They were very attentive, and kept scooting closer to me in order to hear what I was saying, and see the pictures of the few pages that I shared of Taky, el pinguino.  They were all very open to sharing their ideas about the differences in the ways in which I read the passage: once with fluidity, once without.  Zack said reading without fluidity, or prosody, was “boring,” Katie said reading with fluidity was easy for a friend to understand, and James said that reading without fluency was hard to understand.  They were also very excited to read aloud to the group, and did not get nervous.  I added an additional part at the last second, telling them to pretend to be the teacher, and hold the book up to read to the class while reading it.  This put them in the mindset of an experienced reader who’d already gained prosody, and they couldn’t wait to do it!

I am limited by the fact that I cannot use English in order to teach my lessons, so that the children can understand the meaning of the Spanish vocabulary word fluidez, but may not equate that word to English fluency or prosody.  My strength in teaching, though, is eliciting the growing bilingualism of my students, and asking them to rephrase what I’ve said for the rest of the group, just to ensure understanding.  Katie did this well after I’d explained what fluency was the first time, and she took a stab at defining it in English. I also believe that I help my students by restating a good point they’ve made in Spanish, so that they can both feel validated at what they have just said, as well as introduce vocabulary they might see later on in the lesson.  I also believe that my enthusiasm for the topic helped my students shake any fears of reading aloud to the group, and that my reminders to be respectful caused the students to want to help each other when they got stuck, instead of laugh at a mistake.  This would be good to use in a future classroom in order to promote collaboration!

I learned that I can adapt a lesson very quickly!  I was planning on working with the kids earlier in the day, when their focus is at prime, and when I could stretch the lesson longer.  I was told right before centers that I needed to quickly grab the kids and do the lesson within fifteen minutes.  I managed to cover all of the material, and the students told me exactly what they had learned at the end of the lesson, being that “reading with fluency makes it easier to understand.”  I’m better on-the-fly than I had originally thought!  I am also glad that I used a book that the students were familiar with in order to help them gain prosody, but I am curious as to how much of the book was memorized.  Katie and James read the last sentence as “me encanta la ciudad” whereas Zack read it as “me gusta la ciudad.”  Both of these sentences have the same meaning, but this lead me to wonder about their memorization.  I guess we’ll see next week when they get to read new books! 

Reading Lesson Plan 2

Reading Lesson Plan # 2 Rationale: (Same as last lesson) My students are able to read and sound-out unknown words by syllabic analysis, but they do not chunk sentences by words or phrases, and would be difficult to be understood by a peer.  They need help with prosody, an element of fluency, so that they may understand how the syllables connect into words, which connect into meaningful sentences.  In this lesson, however, the students will be forced to practice prosody on a brand new text, as prosody does not only encompass fluency and inflection with known texts. Objective for this lesson (performance, condition, criteria): Student will integrate what they’ve learned from my prosody reading in the last lesson, as well as their experiences with prosody reading their familiar book to read a brand new text, Donde vivo, with prosody, in a small group setting. o    Performance: States what a learner is expected to be able to do to demonstrate learning o    Conditions: Describes the conditions under which a student is able to do or perform the task (when/where or during what activity will the student display the performance?) o    Criterion: Clarifies how well the student must perform the task in order for the performance to be acceptable Materials & supplies needed: -each student’s copy of Donde vivo book

Procedures and approximate time allocated for each event • Introduction to the lesson  (2 minutes) “Last time we met in this group, we worked on reading with expression, and by words and phrases, instead of syllables.  We are going to do the same thing today with a brand new book!     • OUTLINE of key events during the lesson  (15 minutes)   “Remember how you all read En la ciudad?  I want you to do the same thing with this book.   The name of this book is Donde vivo.  What do you think it is about?   Notice how I read the title and author.  How did I do that?  What did it sound like?   We are going to read the first page, one at a time, and practice reading quickly and with expression, like we’re talking.”   Each student will read the first page.   “Some of the vocabulary in this book is new.  Let’s go through these words so that they are easy to read when we come upon them”  We will go through the new vocabulary, consisting of the terms of where various animals live (cave, nest, etc.)   Afterward, each student will read the book out loud, with prosody. • Closing summary for the lesson (3 minutes) After each one of them have read, I will  recap on the importance of prosody, like the last lesson. “Why do you think it is important to learn how to read like this?” “Was it more difficult to read this book with prosody than En la ciudad?  Why do you think that is?” I will make sure to thank them for their hard work and time. Ongoing-Assessment: I will be sure to listen to the students reading during reading time, if they are reading out loud, and possibly ask my mentor teacher to pull them aside just to get a little flavor of what it is they are reading, and how they are reading. Formal assessment:  I’ve adapted Tompkins’ assessment on page 215.  When each of my students is reading during the lesson, I will circle what my students are doing.   Recognition Do students a)  read most words automatically, or b)  do they stop to decode many unfamiliar words? Speed Do students a)  read quickly enough to understand what they’re reading, or b)  do they read too slowly or too fast? Chunking Do students a) chunk words into phrases, or b) do they read word by word? Expression Do students a) read expressively, or b) do they read in a monotone? If students do the “a” option, then they have mastered that aspect of prosody.  If they do the “b” option, then that is something we need to work on in future lessons.

Adaptations: Based on what you know about your focus students, what Academic, Social and/or Linguistic Support will be needed during the lesson? The instruction on vocabulary right before reading will help the students identify the word better once they come upon it, since it will be a brand new word for all of them! The students need to be reminded to be patient and wait their turn to read, as other classmates are reading.  They also need to be reminded to be respectful while others are practicing reading in front of the group.

The Writing Process (El Proceso de Escritura)

   In my kindergarten/1st grade Spanish Immersion classroom, I do see quite a bit of writing instruction, done primarily by the MSU Student Teacher.  Many of her techniques are similar to what both Gibbons and Tompkins suggest, and I have seen significant improvement in the writing of both the class as a whole, and individual students.  I am elated to not only see this improvement, but also a more holistic approach, in that the student teacher places instruction on writing in every subject, instead of teaching writing as a separate-and-distinct entity.  The students journal about their math and science experiences, and during Black History Month, they had the opportunity to work with a teacher during social studies to construct a mini-report book upon an influential figure of history.  I helped the Kindergartners write their report on Harriet Tubman, and I learned a lot of patience!  Getting students to write in their second language is difficult, but can be done!

    Gibbons’ section on learning to write in a second language really rang true to the techniques I see in my classroom.  Gibbons mentions that “many young writers rely on and then for sequencing accounts and narratives” and suggests that teachers scaffold the use of language for second-language learners (69).  Much earlier in the year, the student teacher taught a unit on this sequencing, using the words primero (first), despues (after), luego (later) and al final (finally).  She included these words on a word bank in the classroom, and had students do centers for a few days so that they could understand how to use these words in place of “and and and.”  Her first mini-unit was on “how-to’s” and was “how to brush your teeth,” since her step-dad was a dentist.  The students got to put the words in order, and discuss the steps, as well as read a book and discuss the steps using the words.  My center, however, was highly authentic, as it was a video of her father giving the directions to the children in his dentist uniform.  The video was in English, so I was able to pause the video, and discuss the words in Spanish, to help the students make the connections.  At the end of this mini-unit, the students came up with the how-to sequencing to brush their teeth, and acted it out with free toothbrushes provided by her dad.  Super cute.

    This was all part of the “pre-writing” stage cited by Tompkins, in which students “choose a topic, consider purpose and form, and gather and organize ideas for writing” (53).  Since kindergartners and first graders are in the very early stages of physically writing, many times, the teacher will have them organize their thoughts and talk as a form of writing.  They were very focused upon what genre they were writing: a how-to instead of a story, as well as the organization and form by using the four sequencing words.  Their discussions using these sequencing words to come up with a how-to was their writing.  After other lessons on sequencing and how-to’s, the children were off and running on their own how-to’s, and this time, they got to write them down!

    I was lucky enough to be there to see this unfold.  The students thought of something they knew how to do really well, and used draft sheets with the words on them to organize their ideas.  They re-used this draft sheet to make cohesive sentences.  I helped many students formulate sentences to write from our conversations.  From there, the students used these sheets to create a full draft, with lines, that they had the opportunity to revise and edit, with a blue pen.  After several conferences with teachers and revisions, the student teacher published their writing in books, which the students had the opportunity to illustrate.  It really was a great assignment, and I was happy to be able to catch glimpses of it, and talk with the student teacher about the unit as a whole, her concerns, and student progress.  

It was impressive for kindergartners and first graders.  And even more impressive that all of their writing was done in a second language!

First Mini-Lesson

Reading Lesson Plan # 1 Rationale: My students are able to read and sound-out unknown words by syllabic analysis, but they do not chunk sentences by words or phrases, and would be difficult to be understood by a peer.  They need help with prosody, an element of fluency, so that they may understand how the syllables connect into words, which connect into meaningful sentences. Objective for this lesson (performance, condition, criteria): Student will be able to read their familiar book, En la ciudad, with prosody, in a small group setting. o    Performance: States what a learner is expected to be able to do to demonstrate learning o    Conditions: Describes the conditions under which a student is able to do or perform the task (when/where or during what activity will the student display the performance?) o    Criterion: Clarifies how well the student must perform the task in order for the performance to be acceptable Materials & supplies needed: -Taky el pinguino book -each student’s copy of En la ciudad book

Procedures and approximate time allocated for each event • Introduction to the lesson  (2 minutes) “Today we are going to work on reading.  I know that you guys are excellent readers, because when you come to a word you have never seen before, you can figure out how to sound it out!  Part of being a good reader, though, is reading with fluency, or reading like how you talk.  I am going to read a passage from this book, Taky, el pinguino, in two ways, and I want you to think about what makes each time I read it different.      • OUTLINE of key events during the lesson  (15 minutes)     I will then read a section of Taky, el pinguino without prosody, and give the students a moment to think.  Then I will read the section again with prosody.      I will ask the students to discuss what made these two different readings different and why.  If they cannot come up with ideas, I will scaffold their thinking with questions like:   “Which was easier to understand?”   “Which sounded like I was talking to you?”   “Could you take a test on the story after just the first reading?”   I will then transition into their experimentation with prosody, handing them their books, and saying, “Here is En la ciudad.  I know that you’ve read this book before, but this time, I want you to read it with fluency, like I did.  Remember, reading with fluency is reading with emotion, like you’re talking, and reading words.  I’m going to have you practice a few times on your own, and then we’re each going to read it aloud to the group! • Closing summary for the lesson (3 minutes) After each one of them have read, I will  recap on the importance of prosody, I will ask “Did reading like this feel different?  How?” “Why do you think it is important to learn how to read like this?” I will make sure to thank them for reading with me. Ongoing-Assessment: The students will be assessed after the next lesson, but I will informally assess them by evaluating their reading aloud when they have the opportunity to do so in class, to see if they are showing signs of increased prosody.

Adaptations: Based on what you know about your focus students, what Academic, Social and/or Linguistic Support will be needed during the lesson? While all of these students are confident, they are likely to ask me for help right away.  In order to encourage them to try it themselves, I will not ever read their book aloud for them.   I will also encourage them to behave, and to listen to each other while they are reading.  They usually do not need the help, but everyone needs to be reminded to pay respect to their classmates, especially when they are excited and impatient to read!

The Crowd: Reading Lesson Overview

For my upcoming reading mini-lessons, my MT and I chose 3 students who would benefit from some additional instruction:

Katie - Katie is a first grader whose constant smile tells me that she likes school.  She has many friends in class, and likes working in pairs.  No Spanish is spoken in her home.

Zack - Zack is also a first grader, and he asks a lot of questions to expand his thinking.  He is incredibly well-behaved and often gets complimented in front of the classroom for his good behavior.  No Spanish is spoken in his home.

James - James is a first grader who likes interacting with the boys in class, especially his twin brother.  He is confident of his academic ability, and rarely gets frustrated in class.  No Spanish is spoken in his home.

I decided to pick these three students because they all share a few things in common: they do not hear Spanish being spoken or read in their homes, they are in first grade, and they struggle with prosody.  I conducted an informal preassessment, which involved my walking around the room and listening to these three students read aloud.  They are what Tompkins calls “dysfluent readers,” reading “slowly,” reading “without expression” and reading “in a word-by-word manner” (208).  Despite the fact that the books they choose to read out of their book boxes are very familiar to them, and they have read them several times, they still approach each word syllable-by-syllable, and do not have a flowing tone when reading a single page or two.  Because each Spanish letter is assigned one sound (how lucky!), my students have syllabic analysis completely down, and “break a multisyllabic word into syllables and then use their knowledge of phonics and phonograms to decode the word, syllable by syllable” (Tompkins, 197).  They do, however, attack these words very slowly.
Their reading is choppy, and they struggle to understand what they have said by the time they get to the end of the sentence.  For this reason, I would like to teach these students two mini-lessons on fluency, and what it means to read with prosody.  I will specifically focus upon Tompkins’ areas  in which they struggle: reading slowly, without expression, and in a word-by-word manner.

I talked with my MT, and she agreed that these students would benefit from a lesson in prosody, agreeing with my observations of their sounding-out the words by syllable, and reading out loud in a way that would be hard for a peer to understand.  We believe that modeling what prosody sounds like, allowing students to practice with a familiar passage, and then having students attempt prosody with an unfamiliar passage will be a good way to expose them to reading with more fluency.

Emotional Literacy Through Scrapblog

1) YOUR CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING:

How has your conceptual understanding of literacy changed since beginning this class?  How does your research on a new literacy and development of your own digital literacy (using your new technology) inform your thinking? What new knowledge, skills, strategies and dispositions are you now aware of, and how do these compare/contrast with more traditional literacies?

When I entered college, I believed that literacy could only refer to, as I’d originally stated on our ‘literacy definitions page,’ the gaining and manipulating of language.  Literacy had everything to do with reading and writing: a literate person could read and write, and an illiterate person could not do either.  To me, literacy, back then, was black and white.  In my consideration of becoming a high school English teacher, I took a class (ENG408) that helped gray-ify literacy, and caused me to see that literacy is more a synonym for mastery or discovery... of any area, be it football, working a desk job, reading another language, or understanding the nuances and production of a technology!  So my UNDERSTANDING of literacy had already been changed prior to this class, but I now was fortunate enough to develop this understanding more with my experimentation of two new literacies: emotional literacy, and scrapblog literacy!

I had tweeted that learning how to use scrapblog was like learning how to read all over again, and I could not second that statement any more!  Just as I had to master my letter-sounds, my comprehension, my vocabulary, etc. in order to gain ELA literacy, scrapblog required a knowledge of text tools, inserting photos and stickers, creating a cohesive design from slide to slide that did not clash, etc.  I am proud of the product that I put forth, but know that I have a long way to go in order to gain full literacy of scrapblog, particularly with the “blog” aspect.  Scrapblogs can be shared, reviewed, etc., and so far, my scrapblog experience has been concentrated upon finishing the product, and not with the social interaction that it can bring.  Maybe in my future teacher endeavors, I will have scrapblog literacy, and will use scrapblog in this way, and collaborate and bounce ideas off of others in the field, to give my students the best instruction!

Researching emotional literacy gave me an ability to reflect upon the learning that I had already done, with the lens of a teacher.  With every positive statistic, every idea that emotional literacy brought to the classroom, I couldn’t help but wonder why my schools had not implemented such a program.  As I’d stated in my new literacies proposal, I was bullied in elementary school, and struggled to have control, or literacy, over my own emotions.  I somehow concentrated all of my efforts, then, on school, but I knew of so many other girls who were being picked on that did not have this ability.  I actually focused upon my ELA literacy, poring over books, writing stories (that may have been far higher than the level of my bullies).  And even with my ability to concentrate on school, my social skills and want and ability to make friends, aka my social literacy, truly fell by the wayside.  I knew that this kind of instruction, the ability to reflect upon my feelings, would absolutely have benefited me as a coping mechanism, but upon further research with emotional literacy and the success that it has with full school communities, I may not have had a reason to cope!  I found out that emotional literacy means both being able to handle your own emotions, as well as others, and an ability to reflect upon why we do the things we do, or think the things we think, and come up with a plan in order to deal with these feelings in a constructive manner.  My bullies would have benefited from this training, and maybe would have left me alone!  As a former victim of bullying, I have always considered myself to be an advocate of everything anti-bullying related, and a voice to the bullied, but I now see that the bullies need just as much help as the bullied.  With my newfound emotional literacy, I ask myself: Why do bullies need to act out?  What is going on with their emotional state?  How can I create a classroom atmosphere that eliminates bullying?  I believe the answer to these questions lies within instruction in social and emotional literacy.  Sure, the ELA literacy that I concentrated upon helped me as a student, but I would have been a much more well-rounded 4th grader if I had the opportunity to become literate in other areas.

2) EFFECTIVE LITERACY INSTRUCTION:

What does it mean to provide “effective literacy instruction” to diverse learners?  How does your research on a new literacy and development of your own digital literacy (using your new technology) inform your thinking?

Providing effective literacy instruction to diverse learners extends far past what I wrote on my concept map, which included “grammar” “spelling” “vocabulary” “reading” “writing” and other things that specifically described effective ELA literacy instruction.  Effective literacy instruction does indeed include these items, as students need mastery of such items in order to gain ELA literacy, but even within the guidelines of ELA literacy lie plenty of opportunity to teach other, new literacies.  For example, my GLCE for my kindergarten/1st grade literature lesson was “students will make text-to-self connections to the story by each sharing an example of how they can get along with one another and help their friends or siblings in a small group setting.”  The text-to-self connections, of course, is part of ELA literacy, but not ELA literacy alone.  Students with emotional literacy will make stronger emotional ties to the characters in the text, and be able to identify WHY they make these ties.  Students with cultural, political, numeracy, visual, etc. literacies will be able to reflect upon their own views of these literacies in relation to the cultural/political aspects, or the pictures, etc.  And students who may struggle with ELA literacy as a separate identity may find that when paired with other literacies, really shine.  I know that I have friends who struggle to write papers and comprehend passages, but could figure out how to work scrapblog in an instant.  Are their abilities with technology less valid than my ELA literacy?  Certainly not!  In this day and age, jobs require diverse sets of skills, and students need to be prepared with these skills!  If my learners are diverse, so must be my literacy instruction!

In order for my students to successfully create a scrapblog about emotional literacy, they would need to have some digital literacy, such as how to use a mouse, how to drag and drop items, how to save files, how to search for pictures on the internet, etc.  I know that some of my students have these things under control, but others need help with working a mouse.  In order to gain emotional literacy, my students would need to have an open mind, and would need to be able to speak and listen.  For this age group, I do not think that reading and writing would be the most important or most accessible skills for them to have in order to understand this literacy, especially since my instruction is done in Spanish, and the students know how to listen and speak, but cannot yet read and/or write with fluidity in Spanish OR English.  Forcing them to do so would turn the lesson into strictly an ELA lesson, when the material would, in fact, be either developing scrapblog literacy, or emotional literacy!  Students would need to listen to instruction as to what emotional literacy is, listen to directions of activities, and be able to express themselves in a healthy way.  They would then need to reflect upon these activities and emotions to represent them in a digital format.

I would want my students to deeply identify the emotions of a character in Tacky the Penguin, and represent this emotion in a 1-3 page scrapblog.  As previously stated, they would need to be able to have some kind of emotional literacy to identify the character’s emotions, and how they came to this identification, as well as an ability to use scrapblog’s sticker, design, photo features, and to express whether they would like help in constructing a way in which to write their thoughts on the scrapblog.  I would certainly have to provide them with the support they need to do this, if not direct instruction!

3) LESSON PLAN:

Outline a brief lesson plan that takes an integrated approach to helping students at your grade level learn something new that would help them be successful in using the new technology to teach their peers about a new literacy.

Target area and rationale: Emotional Literacy in Tacky the Penguin.  My students are currently very adept at being able to identify a character’s emotion with one word, usually based upon the pictures in the book.  Giving my students the experience with identifying emotions in themselves and peers, and working with emotion will give them the tools to really identify a character’s emotion, how they know the character has this emotion, and why the character may feel this way.  They will be encouraged to give more than one word responses, and will be asked to consider the text, instead of just the pictures.  This kind of instruction falls under the ELA literacy feature “comprehension,” as well.  Students will also be asked to use scrapblog in order to represent this emotion in a visual, digital realm.  Many of the students in my classroom, when asked to share, digress away from the story.  It is my hope that focusing their efforts upon emotion and scrapblog will allow them to keep their ideas within the confines of what relates to the story.  Why/how would this area be needed for your learners to learn to use the technology to teach peers about the new literacy?

List your objective(s): Students will identify the character’s emotion, how they know the character’s emotion and why the character feels this way, and represent and explore these ideas on a scrapblog page (or few scrapblog pages.)
List the materials and supplies needed: copy of Tacky the Penguin, scrapblog access, computers for each student, chalkboard, chalk
Outline of key events (use bullets):
-teacher will read Tacky the Penguin
-teacher will then ask students to consider a character, identify their emotion, and ask how they know they feel this way
-teacher will then show students an example (from a different book, one the students had already read together) of a scrapblog page that shows the character’s emotion, how we know, and why (s)he feels that way
-teacher will ask students to consider a character, and these three things
-students will go to their individual computers
-teacher will go through sign-in for scrapblog and a few basics (saving, text, photo, shapes) - because the students are in kindergarten, the teacher will have previously uploaded pictures for them to use, so they do not have to search the internet for them
-teacher will provide support to students while they explore the character’s emotions through this format
Closing summary:  The teacher will ask if the students think it is important to not only understand character’s emotions, but their own emotions and why.  The teacher will ask students to consider if the story were real life and their character understood his/her emotions more fully, if the result would have been different.
Ongoing assessment:  Challenge students to consider, in every text, HOW they know every character’s emotions, and WHY they may be feeling this way, instead of focusing upon solely identifying an emotion based upon a text’s picture.  If students are doing this, they are not only comprehending the text, but gaining their own emotional literacy as well!