Week 7 : Assignment 1 Word Study and Fluency Chart

What text and materials do teachers have in their classroom that supports student development of fluent reading? : In the classroom I'm observing in, the students participate in a reading program called IRLA. There are colored bins with different reading levels and students choose from their designated level. Students read first to thems lives, then to a teacher,  and then at home with a parent or family member. This allows for repeated reading of the same text to help improve fluency. 

How to select vocabulary to teach in the classroom: The teacher I'm observing chooses vocabulary based on their unit of study. She does not cover words they already know, but focuses on words they may have seen before and will see in the text, but don't know the meaning. 

Time to allocate word study: In this particular class word study is woven into all aspects of the curriculum. Whether it is word recognition during morning meeting or reading time, vocabulary is strongly focused on throughout the day. There are also specific times when all the students focus on is vocabulary. 

Word study routines: One of the routines I like in this class is the news reporter activity. Students are responsible for finding local, national, and world news. The teacher uses the presentation of the news as a time to help students with working on deciding skills. Students work on sound to letter correspondence and chunking unfamiliar words to figure out meaning. The news gives them access to words they have seen before but may not know. 

Differentiate instruction: Based on student need in this class, the students are broken up into small groups based on ability. The teacher uses this time to focus on individual needs within the group. This teacher is differentiating instruction using a modification of process. Depending on the students she has, she will adjust the way she instructs. 

Week 7: Fluency and Word Study Assignment #3

Explain the three levels of words and how you can use word levels to decide which words to teach:
The first level of words are familiar words. These words are the ones students already know such as run, go, and bed. Because students already have a working knowledge of these words, we do not need to spend instruction time teaching them. The second tier of words are words that appear often in print. These words students may recognize from reading them in the newspaper or seeing them in a text, but may not necessarily know what they mean. Examples of these words are hurricane and democracy, and these are the words we need to be teaching students. The third tier of words are called highly technical words and they are unique to the different content areas such as chemistry and biology. These words we would not cover, the teaching of those words would be left to the domain specific teachers as students move up in grade levels.

How do you teach your students to "chunk" words as a strategy for decoding unfamiliar words. When do you provide this instruction?
Learning to chunk words is the process of breaking a word down to see if there is a part of the word that the students already know. The video we saw had students taking words strips and ripping off the beginning and end to see if they knew what the middle sound meant. If they didn't know that sound, they would rip it in half and see what they knew from there. Then the students would work backwards to put the words back together. After working on this for a few days students would then be able to use their thumb to cover portions of the words instead of ripping them up. After ten days or so, the students in the video were able to read the words without ripping a paper strip or covering with a thumb. They were able to look for root word and find meaning using the root and context clues in the sentence. I would provide this instruction in small group or one on one instruction when students were struggling with the tier 2 words related to the text.


Based on Professor Allington's coments and the classroom examples, what are some ways you might foster word study in your classroom?
Professor Allington discussed similar strategies to the ones in the video where teachers create word walls to give students visual cues. As students come across a word they don't know, they figure out the meaning and add it to the word wall for future reference. With students being active participants and adding the words to the wall themselves, they are more likely to remember the meaning of the word. Word walls are something I will definitely use in my classroom, but would also like to have flashcards with the word and an image on one side for students to use at their desk in case they are visual strength learners and would benefit from having the image as a clue.

Week 7: Fluency and Word Study Assignment #2

  How can you ensure that your struggling readers have access to texts that they can easily read? One of the most important things I took away from the video was a creation of a class library. Giving students access to a variety of texts helps them to find their “just right” books that will help them practice reading successfully before they move on to be challenged. By matching students level of reading proficiency to the books they can choose from, you are ensuring they will not struggle during reading but will get practice to improve fluency and comprehension. Our school district uses a system called IRLA where a running record is taken to determine a student’s reading level, and books are divided into colored bins based on that level. Students may then choose any book from their reading level or color to practice successful reading.

  How can you foster a learning environment in which students have many opportunities to practice reading? Instead of focusing primarily on whole group instruction, if a school day is broken up into whole group instruction, small groups, and side by side teaching or coaching, students have time throughout the day to practice those skills in different ways. Small groups and side by side allows for individualized attention for the students. Also, by having books that tie into different content areas, such as social studies and science, and encouraging students to read during down times or in between lessons, not only can students practice reading skills but can also be engaged and make connections to other topics that may interest them.

Describe ways in which you can model fluent reading in your classroom throughout the day: One way to model fluent reading in a classroom is to perform read alouds for the students. In one part of the video, the teacher read a part of a story with no expression and the students could recognize right away what he was missing. When you point out good and bad qualities of reading while modeling for students, they are more likely to notice these things in their own reading. For students who do not get an opportunity to hear fluent reading, this also provides a great example. While students are reading, it is best for teachers to take a non-interruptive approach which allows students to self-regulate their reading. If students are constantly stopped after each mistake, they miss out on the opportunity to understand sentences as a whole and to see where they made a mistake and how it changed the meaning of the sentence. It also appeared to be a good strategy in the video to point out strategies that students were successful at. One of the teachers commented on how well one of the students chunked the word to figure out what it was. If children are being given positive reinforcement they will be more likely to repeat that behavior.

Week 6: Assignment 3 Tumblebooks Phonic Lesson

Candidate’s Name: Brandy Blanchard

Grade Level: K-2

Title of the lesson: Red is Dragon: Rhyming Words, Colors, and Decoding

Length of the lesson: 50 minutes

Central focus: The central focus of this lesson is to assist students in recognizing rhyming words and patterns. Students will also affirm their knowledge of colors and learn about East Asian language terms. Not only will students identify parts of a book, but they will ask and answer questions to gauge understanding of the key details in the text. Lastly, students will use context clues to figure out the meaning of words they do not know.

Knowledge of students to inform teaching: For this lesson, students will use their prior knowledge of colors and asking questions to help understand main topics in a text. Students will use their decoding skills to look at context clues and figure out the meaning of tricky or unknown vocabulary words to help make meaning as they read.

Common Core State Standards: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.K.1 With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.K.10 Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.2 Recount stories, including fables and folktales from diverse cultures CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.K.5 Identify the front cover, back cover, and title page of a book.

Support literacy development through language (academic language): ● key learning task: students will have the opportunity predict what will happen in the story, before listening to and eventually reading the story independently ● language demands (oral): students will need to explain what happened in the text and summarize rhymes that they knew as well as describe how they came to figure out the meaning of words they did not know. Vocabulary: ●     General academic terms: describe, explain, interpret, predict, question, retell, summarize ●     Content specific vocabulary: colors, globe, culture, rhymes Sentence Level ●     repetitive phrasing and rhymes Discourse ●     conversation, discussion

Learning objectives: Students will be able to identify rhyming words and patterns Students will be able to independently read a color based story with rhyming words Students will be able to identify unfamiliar words using context clues

Assessment: Students will participate in an activity in which they re-read the text independently (after model and guided practice) and fill in a graphic organizer with the rhyming words they found. Students will also create index cards with the new words they learned from the story. With adult assistance, students will come up with the definition to share with the class. Finally, students will participate in a running record and miscue analysis to gauge the reading level of the students, and to help develop the basis for the next lesson. As an extension activity, I will have the students play an interactive memory game, where they have to match rhyming sounds by remembering where they saw a rhyming word when flipping other cards over.

Instructional procedure: To introduce the lesson, I will tell students we will be revisiting our colors and learning about a little girl from East Asia. At this point, I will bring up google earth to show the students what East Asia looks like. Next, I will display the ebook on the screen and have students identify the different parts of a book, what the author does, and what the illustrator does. I will then have students make predictions about what they think will happen in the story. I will explain to the students that there may be some words we don’t know in the text, but that we can use clues that are happening in the story to see what word makes sense to fill in for the word we do not know. First, the students will just listen to the reading of the story online. Next, students will listen again but this time they will write down words they thought rhymed, or words they did not know. For guided practice, students will listen to and read along with the story (will be broken up into pairs). I will circulate the room to offer any assistance that may be needed. Finally, students will re-read the story on their own without the recording. Students will then “think, pair, and share” what they learned from the story, rhyming words, and unknown words they came across. As a whole class, we will come back together and students will volunteer to share rhyming words they heard during the story, which we will put on a graphic organizer. Students will then get back into pairs and create flashcards with unknown words and the definition they came up with using context clues. When finished, the class will come back together again to share index cards and see if they were right in defining the words. Accommodations and modifications: To modify for students who are lower level readers, I will pair them with stronger readers during the think, pair share. I will also stay closer to these students during independent reading in case they need assistance. For students who are advanced, I will have them look up the definitions of the unknown words so they can share that information with the class.

Instructional resources and materials: Red is a Dragon ebook on tumblebooks.com ELMO or some form of an interactive whiteboard Student laptops or IPads Printout of graphic organizers Note cards Writing logs

Reflection: Questions to ask following the lesson ●     Did I provide enough differentiated instruction? ●     Were the students engage and focused throughout the lesson? ●   What improvement can I make to this lesson?

Week 6 :Assignment 1 Running Record Lesson

Candidate’s Name: Brandy Blanchard

Grade Level: 2nd/3rd

Title of the lesson: Word Accuracy Pairs

Length of the lesson: 30 minutes

Central focus of the lesson: The focus of this lesson is for the student to work on accurately identifying word pairs that are visually similar. This lesson will encourage students to distinguish words that look similar, to help contribute to the overall meaning and comprehension of a text.

Knowledge of students to inform teaching: The particular student in mind for this lesson is a student who is in the 3rd grade, but reading at a 2nd grade level. At numerous points during a running record, the student confused the words though, they, through, and the. The student also read mixed up the words “must” and “most”. Because this student has trouble with words that look visually similar, the student needs to work on distinguishing between these words to help aide in comprehension.

Common Core State Standards: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.3.4 Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.3.4.A Read grade-level text with purpose and understanding. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.3.4.C Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.

Support literacy development through language (academic language): Vocabulary ●     Most, must, though, they, the, through, thought Sentence Level ●     Sentence structure will contain verb, noun, adjective. Discourse ●     Student will identify and differentiate between similar looking words.

Learning objectives: Students will know difference between a list of visually similar grade level words. what letters make each of the words different from the other. that even though words looks similar, using the wrong word can change the meaning of a text.

Formal and informal assessment: Student will repeat running record to see if any improvement has been made following this lesson’s exercises. Student will also be responsible for creating sentences with the correct word choice to make sense for the passage.

Instructional procedure: To begin the lesson, I will work with the student on seeing the difference between the words she had difficulty with during the running record. As a model, on a dry erase board, I will write the the words through and thought. I will then proceed to circle the letters of the words that make them different from one another. The student and I will then work together to create short sentences using words that look alike. (I will provide a sample word bank that will include most, must, baby, babies, etc.) For guided practice, the student and I will work through a list of sentences and the student will highlight the different letters to distinguish between one word and the other. For independent practice, the student will first read a passage and fill in the blank with the word she believes makes the most sense. We will then go over this page together. FInally, for independent practice and as part of assessment the student will write sentences correctly using the different terms so that all of the sentences make sense.

Instructional resources and materials: Word bank of similar looking words (including those student struggled with during running record) Fill in the blank worksheets with terms Dry erase board Sentence paper sheets

Reflection: Questions to ask after instruction ●     Did my instruction target one of the issues during running record? ●     How could I have included other trouble areas into my lesson? ●     Did practice with the words improve her ability to distinguish similar looking words from one another?

Week 5: Running Record Practice

For this week’s practice running record, I worked with a fourth grade student named Anna. She read a passage about roller skating called “Let’s Go Skating”. I gave he a choice between two passages so that she could pick one she was interested in. My thought behind this was that she was more likely to comprehend and pay attention the passage if it was about something she found interesting. Per my running record calculations, Anna is currently reading at an error rate of 1:16. For every error she makes, she reads sixteen words correctly. He accuracy rate was at 94%, so this type of text would work for instruction in leveled reading, but wouldn’t be as appropriate for independent reading. However, she is right on the line of this text being easy enough for independent reading so I think with just a tad more practice, it would be appropriate for her independently. Where Anna struggles is with her self-monitoring. Her current rate is a ratio of 1:13, so Anna is not currently self-correcting or monitoring as she reads. As far as retelling goes, Anna was able to tell me the basics of the passage as well as provided specific things that were listed in the passage as what you need to roller skate.

For a mini lesson with this student, I would focus on self-monitoring while reading. I found that the scholastic website is a great resource that provides activity ideas for working with students on self-correction while reading. One activity I would contribute into a lesson would be following a discussion on how important it is to slow down and think about what you are reading. I would have the student read through the passage again, but this time stop and jot down notes, or things she wanted to remember, while reading. I would then have the student use a different passage and work through with sticky notes to mark down important information.

link to running record word passage: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7Tvmik0ICUlVUJhT1JFd1lvSjRvMkRFR1hJalV4ejZxWFA4/view?usp=sharing

Week 4: Student Reading Assessment

Assessment of Whales and Fish Reading:

According to the results of the data gathered from the student reading Whales and Fish, this particular student is reading at an accuracy rate of 95 percent. What this tells us, it that this passage is easy enough for the student to read independently. The student did not get frustrated while reading and was able to work through the words she was unsure about to correct herself while reading. This student is reading at an error rate where one out of every twenty words is an error. The student’s self-correct rate is 1:3 which means that for every error, the student corrects 1 out of 3 errors.  Throughout the reading, this student is able to self- monitor her mistakes and make corrections as she goes along. As far as fluency goes, the student is mostly fluent in the reading of the passage. There is some hesitation, pausing, and repetition but for the most part she is able to read the entire passage without too many revisions.

Retelling assessment:

During the retelling of the story, the student was able to describe the subject of the story using her own words. The student was able to articulate that the story was about fish and whales, and their differences and similarities. The student pulled specific examples from the story (the finding of food right away for fish vs whales drinking milk from their mother to start) and was able to describe similar and different physical characteristics of fish and whales. The student showed an adequate to detailed understanding of the passage.

Student strengths/needs:

The one weakness I noticed was the student having difficulty keeping her place while reading. Besides that, she was a strong reader. Her strengths include self-correcting and monitoring, and comprehending the major ideas in the passage. Overall, the student appears to be an efficient reader who does not struggle to read. 

Week 4: Running Record Link

Attached directly below is the link to my running record of a student reading the passage "Whales and Fish"

Whales and Fish Running Record