Teaching Reading- Look CLoser

• On your Observational Checklist (PDF), note the Essential Components that are addressed during the first part of the shared reading activity. How does this activity engage students who are at different levels of literacy development?

o   The poem Ms. Perez uses is a fun cute poem about Hot Dogs that she feels the students find interesting and relatable .This fact alone begins to engage them. For shared reading activities, Ms. Perez chooses a new pome every week and when she chooses them, she makes sure it will appeal to students on various levels of literacy development. She makes sure there are sight words and catchy rhyming words and when the poem is read, it is done through choral reading, so students ,in essence, help each other through the poem.

• During her explicit phonics lesson, how does Ms. Perez support students' problem-solving skills?

o   Ms. Perez watches her students and notices when someone has something to share or may need prompting when asked something. She asks a lot of questions but helps students and prompts them to sort of extract the answer that she knows they understand but may need a little support on her end. For example, she has a student that confuses the letters ‘d’ and ‘b’. When he reads the word ‘dot’ as ‘bot’, she helps him come up with the right answer by saying ‘I know what you’re thinking… but ‘b’ goes this way and ‘d’ goes this way. So again, what do think it says?’ and the student answered correctly this time.

• Based on what you saw in the video, what are the different ways that shared reading can be used to promote literacy?

o   Regardless of grade level, shared reading should engage students in a discussion of the text. Ms. Perez supports her students and promotes literacy by having her students think deeply about their reading and discover and share things in the text, like where is the “o” sounds.  She also reads the text aloud while others read aloud at the same time, with periodic stops to discuss content. Shared reading is great for promoting literacy as it really engages the students and allows for explicit demonstration opportunities with shared text, allowing students to become more literate just by providing good examples.

Why does she think it's important for students to verbalize their strategies? What else do you notice about how she helps students build meaning in text? o   Ms. Perez says that the more kids verbalize, the more they internalize. In this case she notices them thinking things through when they got stuck by a certain word and she asked the students to explain what they did to read it properly. In order for them to have a balanced cueing system, she helps them develop the skills necessary for building meaning in text. She covered one of the words, in this case it was rainy, and by reading the rest of the sentences they had to figure out, with some prompting, what the missing word may be. This is great since if they ever stumble upon words they cant read or understand, they can now use clues from the rest of the text to try and develop stronger meaning.

• How does Ms. Perez organize her classroom to support a wide range of learners?

o   Ms. Perez has a student teacher work one-on-one with a student in a “making Words’ activity which helps to individualize learning so the student can get the proper support she may need. Since there is a wide range of learners, there are also students who are very independent readers and so Ms. Perez allows them to choose what they want to read about, in this case they chose bugs, and they took notes and Ms. Perez really got them to highlight and refer back to the text to create an mazing collection of facts and discoveries they’ve amassed while reading.

• How are reading and writing connected in classroom activities?

o   Ms. Perez, after allowing students to chose boos they want to read, incorporates writing into the activity by having them write notes. She has the students writing about what they read and they divide up their information by colored highlighters and all. Its really amazing to watch how in once class the levels of reading and writing are so varied and Ms. Perez really manages to reach every one.

• How does Ms. Perez use ongoing individual assessment to guide her instruction? How can the class profile be used to help group students and differentiate instruction?

o   Ms. Perez, during the first weeks of school, conducts assessment such as running records so she can see what level they’re at, what they can do independently, and in which areas they may need to work on. This is and ongoing assessment so she redoes it again in December to see how far they’ve gotten and what have they learned. Based on what she discovers, she can differentiate instruction and design activities according to areas they may need improvement in and more specific instruction.

• ·       How can ongoing assessment be integrated into your own classroom practice?

o   Aside from conducting ongoing running records to check progress, I really appreciated how Ms. Perez said, “Informal assessment is part of my everyday teaching. I'm always watching kids during the different activities and seeing how they're going about them ... what strategies they are using." These observations are constant and I can really learn a lot about my students just from watching and listening to them as opposed to them listening to my instructions and doing what I have ask them to do. If I see a child struggling while attempting to complete a certain activity, I know they may need extra assistance and so I can help them, but this only comes about because I observed them.