Placement

In my placement I have had a lot of difficulty seeing literacy development. Between substitute teachers, snow days, my own personal lessons, and other activities, I feel that I have not been able to see enough of the same type of literacy to watch students grow.

I have seen that a lot of my students are struggling with literacy and are noticeably below grade level. There are also a handful of proficient readers, but I feel that the majority of the class struggles with reading aloud and spelling. Their comprehension, especially when reading aloud, is surprisingly high for the difficulty they seem to encounter, but they still seem to struggle with the basics.

I am not sure where it is coming from, but many students seem to skip words or replace them with words they are more comfortable using while reading aloud.

I have seen several of my best 5th grade readers struggle with writing. This surprises me as well, as I have always thought that the two went hand in hand. For the most part, these students seem to lack detail in their writing. They cover the basics, and they tend to repeat these basic ideas in different words several times in order to cover a length requirement. I have yet to see a particular high achieving student use detail and elaborate in his writing.

On the other hand, I was absolutely blown away by a girl that struggles in reading. When reading some of her writing samples I found that she was a great writer. She used details, emotions, and higher level thinking. Her paper was by far the best when I read through the writing response to my lesson.

Literature Circles/ Book Club

I am excited to present literature circles and book club to the class! I've always enjoyed reading novels and other books, but I can understand how it can become frustrating. I know what it is like to get partway through a book and feel like you cannot finish it. I feel that literature circles personally motivated me to finish books so that I could be part of class discussions.

I can also see the downside to this. If students feel like the only reason they are reading a book is because they don't want to be left behind, then they are not very intrinsically motivated to read. This can lead to a negative attitude towards reading, which is something I do not want to create!

I have a lot of personal experience as a student with literature circles, but only some brief interaction with my 5th grade class as a teacher. It is hard to find books that a whole group of very different students will all enjoy and at the same time give them good content.

April 17th Post - Placement Reflection

There is one student at Bath that I have been particularly worried about lately. I have noticed that he pretty much wears the same dirty shirt and holey jeans everyday. His jeans are so holy and dirty that I can see most of his dirt stained legs. He has a temper that is ignited with the simplest thing. For example he had brought his empty take home book bag to the carpet with him one day. My CT told him that if he could not hold onto it quietly that it would be taken away. In a few minutes he had it swinging around his neck and playing with it. My CT told him she had warned him and took it away from him. He growled at her and yelled, “This is stupid!” He has had other outbursts where he crumples or rips up his papers he is working with.

Any time I or anyone else says something he doesn't like he growls at us like he is a dog. On Wednesday this past week the class was working on a pet catalog. They were able to choose items in the catalog which they had to write what animal it would be good for, two reasons why that animal would like it, and how much it would cost. This boy choose not to work very hard on his and therefore was asked by my CT to stay in at recess to finish it. I worked with him during this time. At first he was getting frustrated and being difficult, but after awhile he started working really well with me. In a matter of minutes he had finished two ads and was allowed to go outside for the rest of recess time. This shows that he can do his work but just needs to get rid of the attitude and get more motivation to do it.

April 10th Post - Balanced Literacy

I put into the balanced literacy group for our presentations. To tell you the truth I wasn't sure I knew much about it. To take an educated guess I would have said that balanced literacy is being able to balance and incorporate all types of the education spectrum into the literacy realm. What I found out is that balanced literacy is a framework designed to help all students learn to read and write effectively. The program was created and makes the statement that all students can learn to read and write. This balance between reading and writing allows students to receive the teaching needed in order to read grade level status, while allowing students to work at a level that is not frustrating for them. There are several different models currently in schools today.

I read about a study done in 1998, I believe, about the improvements that the students showed after having a full year of balanced literacy instruction. The students had more fluent reading and writing skills and they were more confident in their work as a whole. They com paired these students to the students which did not have this literacy instruction and the differences were outstanding. All in all balanced literacy is something I would use in my classroom, but one that I would use as a resource and a helpful aide, but not the only source of literacy in my classroom.

Word Activity, Basal Reader

I found the Basal Readers to be a mediocre resource. It had some good ideas and stories, and seemed to be laid out well. It also had some disadvantages. I found it to be somewhat difficult to navigate through the teacher's edition, however the student edition seemed fairly straightforward. Another disadvantage was that they are expensive! There are a lot of cheaper resources out there. With that being said, I would probably use the Basal Readers if a school district had them, but I would not use every part of them. I would still want to incorporate my own ideas and activities into my lessons.

I REALLY enjoyed the homograph and homonym riddles. Whenever I solved one that I found difficult, I had a great sense of achievement. I know it is rather silly, because I didn't really "achieve" that much with these riddles, but nevertheless it was fun. I think activities like these might be great for some kids, but frustrating for others. I think having some easy ones mixed in may help alleviate this problem for kids that struggle with these riddles.

Guest Speaker - Autism

I thought the guest speaker had some great ideas and tricks that will really work in the classroom. I wasn't sure exactly what to expect. I have an autistic cousin and I felt like the speaker even helped me gain insight into what was going on with his life. My cousin loves football, and could tell you absolutely anything about any player on his favorite teams. He is really enthusiastic professional athletes in general. It always seemed odd to me that he was about to recall obscure facts about individual football players, and all their statistics, yet he struggled with some things that are very basic to me.

If you are interested in learning more about Autism, I found the documentary "Autism is a World" to be very profound. I watched it about a year ago after finding it on a library shelf. It was the story of an autistic girl, written and "narrated" by herself. She had an excellent way with words on paper, but she could hardly speak or otherwise express herself verbally or physically, so she wrote much of the documentary, and had someone narrate it.

April 3rd Post - Basal and Vocabulary

I have to admit that I had always had bad ideas and feelings about the Basal reading programs. After reading Tompkins chapter 10 about them and discussing them in class I have a little more positive outlook on them. As Natasha and I looked at our first grade program book we were amazed at the amount of detail that was in them and all the ideas they give you to do a whole week of lessons on. After seeing this we realized that you wouldn't have to be an actual teacher to follow and teach the basal programs. They spell out everything for you, it's almost like, as a teacher, you wouldn't even have to think or put in any of your own creativity. In Tompkins it says, “commercial publishers tout basal reading programs as complete literacy programs, but most teachers adapt them to meet their students' needs and use them in conjunction with other instructional approaches” (Tompkins 344). This eased my nerves to know that a lot of teachers don't just rely on the basals, they use other resources and tailor them to the students in their classroom. I think that the basal is a wonderful tool and resource to have in your classroom, but I would never encourage anyone to just do the basal and follow it religiously.

We don't use the basal reading program in my CT's classroom, but she does do a lot of work on vocabulary. One of the activities that she does, which I really enjoy, is word scrambles. When they learn a new word, usually one that has to do with a theme (they learned president on president's day) they get each individual letter in that word and try to make new words out of it. For example, when they were learning about animals and their characteristics they learned the word habitat. They were given each individual letter in habitat and then had to think of as many words that they could make from it. Like: at, hat, bat, it, bit, hit, etc. The students really get into it and then as a large group my CT calls on the students and writes on the board all the words that they came up with.