Birnkrant Lesson Plan Overviews

Lesson 1:

I will be working with two female students who both are fluent readers.  One of them is not where she is supposed to be fluency wise for her age, however she is very fluent while reading compared to her other classmates.  She does not need any special support while reading.  The other student is an ELL student, but happens to be one of the most fluent readers in the class.  She only needs help pronouncing words that she is unfamiliar with.  I chose to use these two students as my focus students, because I want to see if they are not only good readers, but if they can comprehend the text as well.  I have also seen my mentor teacher pair these two students together before for partner reads.  For the lesson I will be using a short story called "Kesha's Wish" that is from a set of comprehension cards that my mentor teacher has in her classroom.  The students will be answering teacher-generated questions at the end of the lesson for the assessment and each student will take turns reading during the story. 

Lesson 2:

The two focus students that I am going to be working with for this lesson are two ELL students.  One student is from Burma and prior to starting school at the elementary school this year, he did not know any English.  He has been working on learning sight words throughout the year and playing games online that help him practice identifying simple and frequent words.  The other student that I will work with is a refugee who is also from Burma who just started attending the school about two weeks ago.  Supposedly, he learned a little bit of English back home, but I have yet to hear him read.  I have read a few times with the first student and have noticed some progress.  However, he is still at the kindergarten reading level.  I decided to choose these two students because they both speak a minimal amount of English and I thought it would be interesting to observe as well as help them read a story together.

The students will read Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss with me.  I will read a sentence or phrase and then one student will repeat after me.  I will alternate reading phrases with each student.  I will also allow wait time to see if the students can identify and recognize words on their own and pronounce them to the best of their abilities.  I will have a point system to tally up how many words each student identifies and reads correctly during the assessment part of my lesson.  During the assessment, I will point to random words throughout the book and see if the student can read that word to me.

Lesson Reflections:

Both lessons went well!  There were some pros and cons, but I was able to improvise when needed.  For instance, for the second lesson I decided to be fairly lenient on assessing the students' pronunciations since it is hard to understand them sometimes with their native dialects.  Also, for the first lesson I had to define certain vocabulary words that I thought the students would probably already know in the passage.  I made sure that the students understood each of these new vocabulary words before proceeding with the lesson.  Overall, I think each lesson was a success and I am glad I had the opportunity to complete them! 

Final Self Assessment-Kassab

Overall both of my reading lessons went well. I think the students did gain at least some of the points of both of the objectives. I did this lesson as a whole class so there were more students that succeeded in the areas I wanted them to of semantics and comprehension. There are some areas that I see that I need to work on not only for the topic of language arts but as a teacher as a whole. I need to do a better job of facilitating the classroom and making sure that each student is on the same page. It got a little difficult when students are pulled aside for help rooms. I think my focus students did grow a little from both of the lessons. They both learned new descriptive vocabulary to use as well as comprehended two chapters in a book to reflect on onto a worksheet. My teacher gave me feedback and hopefully that will help for my future as a teacher on these types of lessons.

Peel Reading Lesson Overview

For a majority of this semester I have been doing a special reading program with 6 particular students that have the lowest reading levels of the class. Through this program, we divide them up into two groups and work individually with the groups for a half hour each everyday with the hopes of improving their reading skills all around.

With this being said, for my reading lessons I've decided I wanted to focus on 4 of these 6 students. With one group of 2  I would like to work on their phonemic awareness (chapter 5) and with the other group of 2 I would like to focus on their comprehension.

For the first group of students, I will refer to as Mat and Lisa, I know it's appropriate if I work on 'fluency' with them because as I observed them the past couple of weeks I've noticed they have difficulty breaking apart words, looking for patterns, identifying letter sequences, and identifying sounds in words.I have come up with some hand gestures to help them improve their phonemic awareness and I am hoping by using these gestures repetitively with the students that it will help build their phonemic knowledge. 
Vowel strategy sounds that I know they have difficulty with:
"u"- Umbrella, act like your lifting up and opening up an umbrella using hands
"i"- Run finger up throat and dot nose (formation of an i)
"o"-circular motion around mouth using finger
"ou"-OUch, Pinch arm while saying "OUch"

For the second group of kids, I will refer to as Julie and Cameron, I've decided to work on their comprehension skills (Stahl and Nuefeld). When these students were given their DRA they struggling with retelling events or main ideas that happened in the story. I've now realized when we work together in groups this is something we haven't been doing very often. It's almost as if the students seem to just be focusing on the words they are reading, rather than what the story entails.

Letter to parents

To the guardians of Cheyenne,

        I have been observing Cheyenne's reading lately and I have noticed some situations that need to be addressed with her performance and I have a solution. First of all, I've noticed a large struggle in her fluency, as she has a tendency to omit or substitute a lot of words while reading. Also when it comes to her decoding skills, I have noticed she struggles to identify multisyllabic words and consonant and vowel sounds. She has progressed a lot when it comes to her comprehension as I've noticed her being able to retell evens that happened during our reading and she has successfully been answering the follow-up questions I've been asking. Also, I would like to add I like how she uses a lot of expression while reading; she can differentiate between an exclamation point, question mark, and period, which is great!
       With all of this being said, I was wondering if you would allow me to place her into our literacy group that meets every day during reading time for 30 minutes?  Right now there is 7 students, divided into a group of 3 and a group of 4 that meet separately. During this half hour time period we focus and work on all off the topics (issues for Cheyenne) that I listed above. We read at least three books together each week, based on their reading levels, and we use these books as references to improve our skills. To improve her fluency this would help because the students first read the book separately, before reading it aloud. This literacy group would also help improve her decoding skills because removing prefixes and suffixes from words of the books we're reading is a very common exercise we do together. For vowels, I have come up with several different hand motions, sayings, phonic games, etc, to help remember vowel sounds. The nice thing about this group is that it is small, meaning the students get my undivided attention to help their needs. This is also nice because the students in their groups are at the same level, so therefore the students are all struggling with relatively the same concepts of reading. I am able to focus strictly on them to help them improve, and thus far it has been working out great. Let me know what you think!

Thank you,

Ms. Peel 

Mini Lesson Overview

For my mini lesson I think I am going to focus on comprehension of stories. Since the first semester I have not seen a lot of language arts so I am going to double check this week if this is okay with my mentor teacher. My plan is to have the student read a book aloud and than have them retell the story by using the QRI stories and check lists of comprehension. From that lesson I plan to reflect and alter the next activity based on how well the first mini lesson goes.

Post for April 1-Vocabulary

While reading pages 237-240 in Tompkins (chapter 7) I was trying to think of ways that the students that I work with discussed/reviewed different vocabulary words as a class and I realized they rarely do! Last week was actually the first time I saw the students work in a group to go over and discuss words that were challenging from a book the teacher was reading aloud. They used a white board with a line down the middle, one side was the words beginning with "Sh" and the other side were the words beginning with "Ch". They were working on differentiating between the two starting letters/sounds. I could tell by observing them that they were enjoying the activity as they were able to write the words out on the whiteboard and work together. This was fun to see.

I also got to thinking about the reading program that their Internship Teacher (Ms. Showerman) and I do with the students. This program is designed to help the lowest leveled readers of our class. There are 7 students who are still at a first grade reading level so we work with them in 2 groups (be level), once a day, for a 1/2 hour in order to help them improve. During this time we read a short book alone, then together, and then we go through and review the vocabulary words we struggled with on at each page. While they are reading, I will have a white board in front of me and I will write down the words that they struggle with to remember which ones we for sure need to go over.
A lot of the time I notice the students struggle with the ending words such as "ing" or "ed", however when we break them apart and read them in different pieces, they do just fine. I think they have the mindset while reading that if the word looks longer, it is harder, so they struggle with words that have ending words. I have also noticed this program we've been doing with the students is helping them a lot. We have given them ways to recognize different sounds, like pinching your arm and saying "OUch" for "o" vowels, and we've taught them how to cover up the ending words in order to help them sound out each word, and overall they have grasped onto these quickly. I am excited to see how much they will progress by the end of the year! :)

I plan to use vocab for one of my reading instruction lessons, however I have not yet discussed with my mentor teacher what to do just yet.

New Literacies Project-Birnkrant

Originally, I thought the term literacy meant “being able to read and write" or "versed in literature or creative writing and having knowledge or competence.”  However, over the past few weeks and from our new literacy projects I realized that there are many different definitions of the word literacy.  For instance, cultural literacy refers to being able to understand different cultures.  Someone might be culturally literate if he or she can speak or translate a culture’s language or distinguish similarities and differences between certain cultures.  I think it is vital that teachers educate students on how everyone comes from a unique background and culture and that each culture is special in its own way.  Teachers can have discussions, read books that cover different cultures or learn and celebrate certain holidays or rituals from different cultures in the classroom. 

This project also helped me explore a new type of technology that I can envision myself using when I begin my teaching career.  The website that my group used was storybird.com, which allows students or teachers to create digital stories that can be viewed by anyone online.  The website also lets you record your voice telling the story if you choose to do so.  This technology is an easy and engaging way to teach certain lessons to students and it can also be used to test students’ knowledge about material learned in the classroom or make reflections in the form of stories. 

An important thing that teachers should consider is that classrooms tend to be made up of many diverse students and it is important that teachers cater to each of these students and their needs.  I think that trial and error is key when beginning to teach students from diverse backgrounds so that the teacher can determine what methods of teaching work best for his or her students overall.  Teachers should be familiar with various resources and means of technology to aid them in their lessons and effectively teach literacy to students. 

According to one of the Common Core Standards for third grade students should be able to “Recount stories, including fables, folktales, and myths from diverse cultures; determine the central message, lesson, or moral and explain how it is conveyed through key details in the text” (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.2).  One way that students can use digital literacy to reach this goal is to be given class time to research the history of a story, fable, folktale or myth and then recount the story by making their own mini stories on the storybird website.  They could be told to incorporate a page that includes facts about the culture that they found on the Internet.  The teacher would have to make sure that the students first know how to use the Internet and how to search for different information on it.  They would have to understand the format of the website that they use and how to read it from left to right among other simple tasks.  By giving a brief discussion and/or review prior to having students use computers and the Internet would most likely be helpful for the students.  This project was really beneficial, because I now better understand what the word literacy means and can define it in different contexts.  I also now know how to use the website Storybird and look forward to using it in the future! 

(Sorry I originally posted this on the main New Literacies website so it is a little late on here)

New Literacies Project -Peel

Before beginning this project on Visual Literacy, I honestly was not aware of how important this concept of literacy is. When I first begin looking over my options to explore, visual literacy is what caught my interest and was something I knew I wanted to look farther into. However when exploring definitions of literacy, like the one I posted on February 11th, I was shocked to see how rarely the definitions included visual literacy. Because of this, I knew I wanted to explore this concept of Visual Literacy, to get a better understanding of how this topic fits into the definition of literacy. 
Visual learning is something we do from the day we are born as we watch those around us and learn from their actions. As time goes on we learn to recognize symbols, images, and objects, and we begin to understand their meanings and soon can recognize that they go hand-in-hand with communication. I now will know as a teacher, that if my students do not understand the meaning of what they see, then they will not be able to express their emotions or feelings through writing. I also learned the importance of having and using visuals all throughout the classroom and classwork. When students are taught both visually and verbally, they are much more likely to remember it. For instance, using graphs and charts allows students to show relationships between concepts and data, while also allowing them to make informed decision based on the material presented to them on the graph or chart. It's proven that most students need to see the information in order to learn it and as teachers this is important for us to know because now days we tend to stick to the text-book way of teaching and expect our students to read the information by themselves and then to understand everything.

After learning how important this topic of literacy is, it is important for me as a teacher to also remember and incorporate all the other concepts that go along with literacy into my planning, to provide 'effective literacy instruction'. When doing so, because of this project we had to do for TE402, I am now aware of several ways to complete these instructions using several of the technology examples provided by my classmates.

The cool thing about this project is that we were able to visually present our information on the topic of Visual Literacy using sliderocket. This is an intriguing way to capture the audiences attention, as they learn new information. Sliderocket also allowed us to incorporate a video into the project. This video is full of images that trigger our mind with thoughts, feelings, emotions, ideas, stories, etc. as we "read" the pictures full of symbols and objects. We also used pictures to represent what was being said through text in the project. For example, on slide 5 we placed a guy with a bright light bulb above his head. This can represent a new idea or can be a representation of the guy understanding whats being communicated to him. (An "ah-ha" moment!)

If the students in my placement were to be presented this information with this digital technology I used, they would first have to understand how to read the text given on the slides. They would also have to see a connection between the photos and that text given. Understanding that the information is presented in a "slide show" meaning they have to click the mouse to continue onto the next page to receive more information is also important according to their digital literacy skills. This idea of it being in a slide show is good for the students because the information that is presented is done so on their time, meaning they decide when they understand what is being presented and can go onto the next slide at their own pace. This gives the students time. The images presented on the last slide are set up in a way that tells a small story with the use of arrows between each image. With this being said, the students will need to use their visual literacy knowledge to comprehend the story these images are telling.
Along with the idea of digital literacy, in order for my students to develop visual literacy they will need to understand that they are visually learning all the time. When they see something, they communicate the message it's saying in their mind. For instance, a Starbucks symbol will relate to coffee, while a person facial expression can represent a feeling; sad, happy, angry, etc. To provide this support, it's important that a lot of visual are present in the classroom. This can range from classroom instructions, to flags, or to images of different cultures and places around the world. It's important that these images teach the students something.

March 18 New Lit Post-Kassab

My Understanding of literacy has changed since the beginning of the class because I did not realize that there are so many different types of literacy that need to be covered. All of them are so important to implement into your curriculum as a teacher because they affect a lot of apects inside and outside of the classroom that are significant to the student as a whole. The research on the new literacy and digital literacy informs my thinking because it makes you think openly about literacy and there are so many options and ways to incorporate it into your classroom. I learned a lot about different technologies that I previously didn’t know like aspects of certain websites or even learning completely new technologies that I have never even heard of. It is important to be able to recognize these different types of technologies because how advanced classrooms are becoming in the upcoming generations. Technology is a large part of it, and I was not well informed about a lot of these unique websites before that I would now consider using in my own classroom. My growth of what I understood and literacy and what I understand it as now has been significant. I normally thought of literacy as straight forward but there are so many levels and types of literacy that need to be taught and learned. They are also so important to ESL students to understand too. I see this as incorporating all of the literacies into one big idea of discussions. It seemed like a pretty common theme throughout and now I can see the importance of a good effective discussion.

Providing effective literacy instruction to diverse learners means to cover all areas of literacy, from reading, phonology, writing, encoding and decoding as well as comprehension. I think it is so important to provide a wide variety of literacy instruction so it is unique to all students because not one student is alike. I now know there is so much more to cover than in traditional literacies since we have the option of all types of technologies to help us provide students with. The skills expected for my students at my field placement grade level they should be able to: demonstrate and understand key details in text, recount stories from diverse cultures to determine a central theme, describe structure of a story, acknowledge different points of view from different characters, and overall by the end of the year read and comprehend literature as well as write opinions, informative/ explanatory texts, write narratives, revise and edit, use a variety of different digital tools to write and publish, and research and writing projects. There are so many different things that students need to be able to do in order to develop their digital literacy, for example just for starting knowing how to properly use a computer or a technology as well as the given program to get the full advantage from the technology. The support they need is proper instruction. Making sure the students are able to follow along and keep up with the given technology is important. For my new literacy of emotional literacy students need to know and understand what emotions are and which types go with what types of feelings. I think it is pretty straight forward, but students need to know how to properly describe and deal with the types of feelings they are having. The support they need would be to know that certain feelings are okay to have. There is no right or wrong feeling and students need to know this because sometimes they feel like it isn’t right to feel something like sadness. To provide this support I think that there are many different lessons and activities that could be done to show certain emotions and know how to properly express those feelings.

March 11th post

Noelle and I are working on Visual Literacy and we've decided to use SlideRocket to present the information we learn about! Until this project, I had honestly never explored or even heard of this type of digital technology. It's very similar to a powerpoint style, however it has a much different layout and thus far seems more interesting to use. This is a good source to use for teaching because it's not the standard textbook way, rather it's fun and enjoyable and can include images/videos/fun effects and designs. Sliderocket could be used as a good guide when presenting material. Meaning we could show each page and use the text provided as notes and include more information on the topic verbally.
On our topic of visual literacy I personally have learned a lot of new things. Besides realizing how important this concept is in literacy, I've learned ways to incorporate it into my classroom. Such as several visuals; charts, graphs, posters, pictures, text, font, etc. I also have learned that if students do not understand the meaning of what they see, then they are unable to write down their feelings and thoughts (visual literacy).

March 11th Post

My groups new literacy is emotional literacy. To show this type of new literacy our new technology is Prezi. It is some what like powerpoint but much more interactive. I really like this idea of new technology for the classroom because it is unique to anything I have seen before, and I can realistically see my students now in my second grade placement enjoying this. It is a very accessible tool and one of the easiest sights to use. I am not very technology savvy so this website is pretty awesome and the fact that I can manage it and work with it is very useful for me and my future classrooms. I am sure to find out more about my new literacy as we go on.

Blog Post for Feb 25

From the readings I can make some connections with my own reading comprehension process. I have always been a very visual learner, and I like to write things out to get them out of my head. So the use of the visual posters that help map out thinking were very appealing to me. The strategy poster, connections chart, and the triple thinking entry journal are all things that I would like to do when I was younger, now I do some of the same things while writing just not as literal. The use of multiple literacy strategies I think always kept me engaged as well, so the information was not presented in the same way over and over again. I can see this problem happening in my own classroom where they are constantly doing the same thing and I can see the kids getting bored and not interested in it. The Profiles in Comprehension Table has a unique table breaking up the types of profiles, I can say I have at least one in each category, literalist, fuzzy thinker, left fielders, quiz contestant, politician, dodger, author, and minimalist. I realize that you can not label each kid with one but it helps guide what types of reading comprehensions work best for those individuals. I can make connections as well as group up children and  combine different profiles together to see the interventions that might work for them and be able to incorporate them into my classroom. It helps you understand how those individual students do think instead of seeing it as how you think which I find hard to do a lot not only in this Language Arts focused TE but Math as well. These readings helped me understand that I need to consider all types of reading comprehension processes since there isn't just one way.

Blog post for Feb. 18

What should Mrs. Potter do:

Lupita:
When reading about Mrs. Potter's concerns with Lupita I would have to say I'm a little confused as to where exactly she is concerned with her academic performance. Does she believe her lack of academic skills is due to her being quiet and shy? Or because she is a migrant student unfamiliar with several tools available in the classroom? To help with her shyness I think Mrs. Potter should allow some in-group activities to be present in the classroom, and done so often. Working in groups takes away the anxiety some students get to participate in front of the whole class, and this way Lupita may become more familiar and open with her fellow classmates. It also explained how Lupita was good at working with puzzles, which means she could be a 'visual' or 'hands-on' learner. With this being said, Mrs. Potter should give the students an assignment that includes using materials or visuals. Also Mrs. Potter said that she rarely calls on Lupita because of her lack in academics and I do not think this is the right thing for her to do. Students all around struggle with things and sometimes calling on them and putting them on the spot (every once in a while) can help children learn the material and become better at participating in the long run.
Jonathan:
In one of the readings assigned for us to read it mentioned that visuals in a classroom; such as photographs, hand-drawn pictures, graphics, or computer generated tasks, often benefit children who have trouble reading. With this being said, I think putting up visuals around the classroom would help Jonathan and his reading progress. Mrs. Potter says that Jonathan just keeps doing the same thing over and over again, which involves him sitting at his desk while not reading nor asking for help. However, maybe if Mrs. Potter changed up her assignment for Jonathan this would help him. Maybe in order for him to change his ways, she may need to change hers (and that doesn't mean just reminding him to ask for help). Maybe she could have Jonathan working at a computer using a program that guides him through his reading and helps him better understand things. He may get easily distracted/bored and using a computer gives visuals, which makes assignments more enjoyable, while allowing the students to learn.
Eddie:
When reading about Eddie, I immediately thought back to myself as a student because I am one who suffers from ADHD. Now, I am not saying Eddie is a child with ADD or ADHD, however I have several of the same symptoms; the restless legs, constant movement, tapping of pencil, etc. As a student today because of my ADHD, I love hands-on activities or ones that involve movement, and I think these types of things are something for Mrs. Potter to consider when dealing with or teaching Eddie in the classroom. He likes to be up and moving so it's best if she assigns some things that allow him to do so. Another idea would be to allow the students to get up and move freely around the classroom for 2 minutes every 30 minutes or so. This allows their blood to get moving and will allow Eddie to get his anxiety out from sitting so long out.

Blog post for Feb 11th

Although I was unable to collect some writing samples from my students this past week (due to the snow day) I wanted to post a blog talking about what I do know about their literacy skills involving reading, writing, and spelling.
Each week my students do a spelling test on Friday afternoon. They are divided up into three different groups depending on their educational level; high, medium, low. At the beginning of the test, the students grab a piece of cardboard (used as a blind to prevent cheating) with a specific color; blue, red or green which represents what level they are at and what list of words they need to be tested on. My teacher will read one word from the blue list, then one word from the red, then one from the green and the students with that colored cardboard will spell out the word on their sheet of paper. This is done until about 15-20 words are completed.
While this is going on, the students who got a 100% on the previous weeks test get to enjoy silent play time which can involve reading a book, playing a game, or playing in the sand box. Although I think this can be a distraction to some of the students taking the test, I feel its my mentors way of motivating them to do better.
I got to thinking that this would be a good time for me to to design a literacy center (in another room) for the students that got a 100% (which mostly ranges from 3-8 students) and get to enjoy free time while the others are testing. I feel it would be best to have them doing something fun, yet productive so that they can have more time to improve their educational development.
Since the students who did get 100% could be from the blue green or red group I think it would be best to do an activity that is at all of their levels and one that certain students (lower leveled) wont feel it is too challenging for them.
I know the students enjoy read aloud stories so I've come up with a center that focuses on a story I would read aloud and spelling.
-Prior to class, I would read the book and come up with main ideas/parts in the story, place them on strips of paper then cut them out.
-On the strips of paper, I would leave a blank space for them to fill in the blank by spelling the word correctly. For example; "When Jimmy went to the _____ he lost his dog". If the correct word was "park" they would have to remember it and spell it out.
-Then during the center I would read the book to the students and tell them to pay close attention because they will have to recall some events that take place.
-Afterwards I would explain that I put important parts of the story on all the strips of paper and we as a group were going to rearrange the strips to make the story complete again. I would also explain the spelling they had to do on the blanks located on each strip.
This would allow them to work on their spelling, sequencing of events, and comprehension as they would have to remember exactly how the story went.
(or I could have two sets of strips and divide them into two groups and have them work in their groups to put the story back together, then we could come together as a whole) 
I believe the kids would really enjoy this because it seems like a game, yet they would be learning a great deal at the same time.

Literacy Centers

Currently in looking over my students work, I have noticed that they have a difficulty with their blends. Overall it seems like they have a difficulty sounding them out and decoding them as well as hearing them and encoding them. A literacy center that I think would help be beneficial to the classroom would be to have a listening and writing center to hear and write down different types of blends as well as a wide variety of the different words that have those blends. I think it helps for students to hear them so they can become familiar with the sounds.

Classroom Talk

 

In my third grade classroom, each of the classroom talks discussed in the readings are used.  However, some are used more than others.  Everyday, my mentor teacher uses text talk and book talk with the students when performing read alouds.  Before lunchtime, my mentor teacher will read a chapter from the book “Because of Winn-Dixie” and use text and book talk to discuss the story.  She will occasionally pause after different sentences and prompt questions relating to the text.  One question that she asked a few weeks ago was if the students knew what the Civil War was.  After the students made it clear that they did not know what it was, my mentor teacher explained that it was a war fought between the North and the South and how it impacted the U.S.  She then prompted questions that related to how someone fighting in the war might have felt at the time.  Even though the students did not know what the Civil War was at first, after listening to “Because of Winn-Dixie” being read aloud they were able to expand on how characters in the book may have felt and also make better sense of some southerner phrases that the characters in the story used.

Response-centered talk is also used regularly in the classroom.  Last time I was helping out in the classroom my mentor teacher was evaluating student’s reading comprehension levels.  She had the students read short stories aloud and then asked them questions based off of the stories.  The stories were really basic and allowed the students to expand on them however they wanted to.  The teacher prompted questions to a group of students she was evaluating and had them explain why certain characters did what they did.

            For this type of classroom talk, my mentor teacher encourages students to think beyond what is going on in the story by prompting questions and having them look deeper than what is written on the page in front of them.  She helps them expand on their thoughts and encourages the students’ ideas.  I think to successfully use classroom talk it is necessary to provide encouragement and positive reinforcement especially to help get the more quiet students involved.

             

Read Alouds

I read the jigsaw article about capturing the benefits of reading aloud experiences for young children. I can personally say that this is a very important thing in childrens literacy. From tutoring in our 301 class, when I would have my student retell the story she had a hard time. But if we read it aloud and or with voices and actions she got a better sense of the story. Reading the story aloud and trying to get meaning and sense from it for a student is much harder than it seems. When I read aloud for the first time in my placement I was shocked to see how hard it actually was. You need to engage the students. There are so many different components when choosing a book to read aloud, and whether to question the author or do text talks. I think when I become a teacher I want to try out the methods anad see which one works best for my kids and which I like the best myself. Therefore I will be able to properly engage my students and hopefully better their education. Have either of you encountered a situation where it was difficult to handle whild reading in the classroom? Or learned anything from your experiences the best way to approach read alouds.


Literature is included in the literacy curriculum in my classroom during most of the day. The students use centers at least once a day in the classroom in my school. The students do read alouds, read with a partner, and read to self. To incorporate more literature into the curriculum you can include it in not only langugage arts subjects, but all subjects throughout the day to make sure it is practiced over and over again.

Kelsey Kassab 1st Post Response

I would agree that my main goal is to become a successful teacher language arts, and be able to incorporate it throughout all curriculum. Language arts is also my focus topic at MSU. Since it is my focus topic I also would be to learn unique ways to form a passion in each child, or at least for them to understand why language arts is to important. I am also very focused and passionate about making my classroom a fun environment where students want to learn. It can be seen from numerous articles that exceling in reading and writing benefits students in other subject areas. That is definitely my goal for this class to become the best teacher I can be for my students.

Unlike Taylor I am not in UECP, however I think that being prepared for anything as a teacher is very important and not ruling out urban education. I would like to help any kids I can, so I do not like to specifically name what type of classroom or teaching I would like to be a part of. Commenting on Taylors quote that all children need to be given equal opportunity I can fully commit to saying I agree. Through this class I want to learn how to incorporate literacy into all areas and help students find a passion for it, not because they have to but because it is essential for life.

Taylor Peel-- 1st Blog, Goals For The Class/Future

 As most of us will probably say, my MAIN goal for this class is to learn how to become a successful teacher of language arts. Since language arts is my focus topic here at MSU it is something that I am more passionate about and I would like to learn how to express that passion in adequate ways to my future students. One thing I have learned throughout my teaching courses here at MSU is that you can be a "good" teacher however you can also be a dreary teacher at the same time, and that is something I would like to try to avoid. I want to not only be a good teacher but I also want my students to enjoy my teaching and to get exited about learning/class, because I believe this will help them become all around better students of reading and writing. With this being said, I am hoping this class will teach me skills and ideas to fulfill this. 

I am also in the UECP here, meaning I focus more on teaching in urban environments. Therefore the type of school and community context I want to teach in would be one in an urban area. In one of the Jigsaw articles from chapter 9, "Teaching All the Children", it says "Children who attend hard-to-staff city schools often have vastly unequal opportunities to develop literacy and other academic skills." This statement right here states exactly why I want to teach in urban settings; to give these children that equal opportunity. The article then goes on to discuss the importance of placing qualified and well trained teachers into urban setting schools to help the students succeed. One topic they stress/focus on is literacy and language arts as many of the students are struggling readers and teachers need to prepare for this. I am hoping this class will be one to better prepare and train me to teach literacy and language arts in all subjects for "the most challenging schools" aka inner city or urban schools.