In response to the Reading Rockets article handed out in class last Thursday, and the word study activity packet, a new thought came to mind. I think the changing view of spelling more as a word study correlates more with the common core's focus on critical thinking, and coming from a science standpoint, patterns and careful observation are key to success. This simple way of structuring spelling opens us students to more success in the traditionally "tougher" subjects like math and science. I have found in my own classroom that when I start math with a story, or a mini-story I came up with that has catchy lines and pictures, success is so much greater. My first graders light up when we are learning about math and they see a double consonant, or we are getting water at the water fountain and they see a sight word on a bulletin board. Those moments make me so thankful I am in the teaching profession.
While reading the teaching strategies section of Reading Rockets I realized that so much of the study spelling has become, also correlates with reading comprehension. The skill my class is working on this week is categorizing and classifying in stories. By having kids read the room, search in books, and comparing/contrasting words, that critical eye is being trained. From the word study examples packet I learned that a great way to introduce this skill in guided reading is through the simple sorting of shoes, mittens, coats, buttons, bottle caps, legos, blocks, toys, and food. To me it is an abstract skill, but it does help in figuring out other higher-level skills like author's perspective, and point of view when you can put different details into categories. This again reinforces the idea that reading skills such as categorizing can directly connect to the skill of classifying in science.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Blog 7-Effective Word Work
After the article discussion on Thursday I began to ponder how I could apply the details from the articles in my own practice. The discussion of my article entitled, Using Curriculum-Based Measurement for Struggling Beginning Writers made me think of how I could grade writing in my own classroom. As many things go in teaching, it is on my "later to do list" but I mentioned the CBM to my team and they said they have done things like that before and it really does work. They agreed that there really isn't a consistent, formal way to grade writing but there should be. Classmates said having work samples in the "Words Their Way" program is helpful, and giving a word bank to struggling writers is effective, so I can relay those messages to my team and try them out in my classroom! That was not enough to satisfy my need to reach my young readers and writers though, so I took some salient ideas from Jamie's article on word work.
Much talk of words their way came about during Jamie's article discussion, and I love the idea of doing a pretest with the spelling pattern, and whoever got 100% would get harder words. My team is re-working the way we differentiate reading by organizing differentiated homework and sight word testing, but spelling is still under debate. As a first grade teacher I could definitely see the pretest/posttest idea working because that is how math is structured, and it is a big motivator for growth. I was also intrigued by the article on word study.
Being it is my first year in first grade I knew I had to have a word wall, but I was unclear about exactly how to use it. In the start of the year I had every word we wrote down from our review of alphabet words, to words with the short vowels in it. I was using index cards but that got very messy-looking, so I color-coded the words based on their pattern, but kids were still not really using all the words in their writing. After the discussion in class I realized that all the words on the wall should be words kids can write and use, so I took down the words unused and only left up simple CVC words, and sight words. Now I can hold students more accountable, and I have taken a few minutes each day to advise students on how to use the word wall. Also, something else I incorporated from our discussion that worked was explicitly teaching writing during the morning message by having different kids write different sentences in the morning message while the other kids sounded out the words on their arm to help the writer. We could discuss invented spelling, finger spaces, and punctuation which has made a notable change in their awareness of the conventions of writing!
Much talk of words their way came about during Jamie's article discussion, and I love the idea of doing a pretest with the spelling pattern, and whoever got 100% would get harder words. My team is re-working the way we differentiate reading by organizing differentiated homework and sight word testing, but spelling is still under debate. As a first grade teacher I could definitely see the pretest/posttest idea working because that is how math is structured, and it is a big motivator for growth. I was also intrigued by the article on word study.
Being it is my first year in first grade I knew I had to have a word wall, but I was unclear about exactly how to use it. In the start of the year I had every word we wrote down from our review of alphabet words, to words with the short vowels in it. I was using index cards but that got very messy-looking, so I color-coded the words based on their pattern, but kids were still not really using all the words in their writing. After the discussion in class I realized that all the words on the wall should be words kids can write and use, so I took down the words unused and only left up simple CVC words, and sight words. Now I can hold students more accountable, and I have taken a few minutes each day to advise students on how to use the word wall. Also, something else I incorporated from our discussion that worked was explicitly teaching writing during the morning message by having different kids write different sentences in the morning message while the other kids sounded out the words on their arm to help the writer. We could discuss invented spelling, finger spaces, and punctuation which has made a notable change in their awareness of the conventions of writing!
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Blog 6-How Much Differentiation is Too Much
I am inspired to write this blog due to the recent flurry of activity at my school to differentiate homework. Based on research, differentiation is essential to the success of all learners at all levels, and I completely support doing that in my classroom. From the articles we read about grouping strategies it left me with many questions, but an overall consensus that I needed to do more to differentiate ability levels in my classroom.
Teaching in a charter school in Baltimore City, I have students who can barely read an A level book, all the way to kids reading at a Level N. Sometimes I feel I am chasing myself around all day trying to accomodate the vast ability levels, but I have found that as my classroom management has gotten better, with the help of classdojo.com, an AMAZING resource where you give positive and negative behavior points, and behaviors are broken down in graphs for parents to see in weekly reports, I can differentiate even more. I can pull kids to work with them in writing, and they love coming to meet with me. During reader's workshop it is quiet now without heistation so I can read with more students and see if they can move up a reading level or not. I have one parent though that has a child reading at a level N, and is absolutely brilliant at language (her mom is a French professor). She wanted to do more for the gifted and talented students, those that scored above a 100% on the sight word assessment given at the start of the year. I completely supported her, and began to pull chapter books and do more of a literature circle for my advanced readers. Once I felt I was differentiating that enough, the issue of homework came up. Some parents were saying the homework was too easy, and not enough for their child. I had mixed feelings about this because they are only in first grade, and homework is not meant to be a teaching tool, it should reinforce concepts, but I still understood where the mom with the child on a Level N reading level was coming from. Due to meetings with adminstration and push from this parent, we are now differentiating homework so much that each reading level is getting a baggie of worksheets each week which contain leveled readers, KWL charts and other various graphic organizers, and advanced math. It has been very difficult to organize all of this, and has left me questioning how effective this will be. Should homework be differentiated? Is it necessary to student success and how much of an impact will it have on student success? I am hopeful for the future, but am eager to hear responses to this situation.
Teaching in a charter school in Baltimore City, I have students who can barely read an A level book, all the way to kids reading at a Level N. Sometimes I feel I am chasing myself around all day trying to accomodate the vast ability levels, but I have found that as my classroom management has gotten better, with the help of classdojo.com, an AMAZING resource where you give positive and negative behavior points, and behaviors are broken down in graphs for parents to see in weekly reports, I can differentiate even more. I can pull kids to work with them in writing, and they love coming to meet with me. During reader's workshop it is quiet now without heistation so I can read with more students and see if they can move up a reading level or not. I have one parent though that has a child reading at a level N, and is absolutely brilliant at language (her mom is a French professor). She wanted to do more for the gifted and talented students, those that scored above a 100% on the sight word assessment given at the start of the year. I completely supported her, and began to pull chapter books and do more of a literature circle for my advanced readers. Once I felt I was differentiating that enough, the issue of homework came up. Some parents were saying the homework was too easy, and not enough for their child. I had mixed feelings about this because they are only in first grade, and homework is not meant to be a teaching tool, it should reinforce concepts, but I still understood where the mom with the child on a Level N reading level was coming from. Due to meetings with adminstration and push from this parent, we are now differentiating homework so much that each reading level is getting a baggie of worksheets each week which contain leveled readers, KWL charts and other various graphic organizers, and advanced math. It has been very difficult to organize all of this, and has left me questioning how effective this will be. Should homework be differentiated? Is it necessary to student success and how much of an impact will it have on student success? I am hopeful for the future, but am eager to hear responses to this situation.
Friday, November 2, 2012
Blog 5: Grouping--What to do or not do?
After the article discussion last night on differentiation and homogenous vs. heterogenous grouping, I began to reflect on my own experience, and the conclusions I drew from the discussion. In a classroom full of 6-7 year olds, who come from a multitude of backgrounds, structure is a necessity. The more routine a task is, the higher their success rate will be. As a long term substitute with virtually no guidance from the teacher on leave, I have done my best to make sure my practices are aligned with the research, and all I learned during my undergraduate degree, but grouping is one area that gives me grief. In the literature from the Massachusetts Literacy program literacy block outline in my other reading class it stated that guided reading should be 15-20 minutes, with 1-2 groups meeting each day 4-5 times per week. This is exactly what I do in my classroom, but I often wonder if it is the way I am grouping them that is not working.
I thought it was poignant to note that in the article entitled Ability Grouping Across Kindergarten Using an Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, low ability students did better in heterogenous groups, medium ability students did better in homogeneous groups, but for the high level students the grouping did not make a signficant difference. Comparing this article then to Differentiated Instruction to Support High-Risk Preschool Learners, DeBaryshe showed in the data that groups in the study were grouped homogeneously, and teachers employed best practices such as engaging phonocs instruction mixed with more whole-language activities like journal writing. I was befuddled that the data then said lower level kids were exposed to fewer activities than kids who were reading at a higher level, but then the lower level kids performed better. The article then goes on to state in its discussion that the project did not include a control group which makes the data, from a scientific standpoint, very inconclusive.
What I gather from the articles in our class, my other class, and personal experience, I feel that there needs to be a simpler solution. It is difficult as a new teacher to make informed decisions about grouping when kids require so much structure, but varying the grouping constantly would cause so many delays in understanding the flow. It is a specific pitfall I have as a new elementary teacher thrown into an unorganized classroom that belongs to another teacher, but I have found that homogeneous guided reading groups work best because the flow of skills and planning is more consistent, and easier to manage when the curriculum is changing from common core, Baltimore City has adopted a new math curriculum, and the kids are settling into the meaty part of the school year. I feel that more research needs to be conducted on which method works for students' academic success, and classroom management wise. I am starting to use class dojo, so data could be taken when switching up grouping styles and students, and then class dojo could be used keeping the groups homogeneous to compare the two. I am interested to see where this topic goes because I also sometimes wonder how I learned to read so well if I never had guided reading as a child the way it is structured today.
I thought it was poignant to note that in the article entitled Ability Grouping Across Kindergarten Using an Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, low ability students did better in heterogenous groups, medium ability students did better in homogeneous groups, but for the high level students the grouping did not make a signficant difference. Comparing this article then to Differentiated Instruction to Support High-Risk Preschool Learners, DeBaryshe showed in the data that groups in the study were grouped homogeneously, and teachers employed best practices such as engaging phonocs instruction mixed with more whole-language activities like journal writing. I was befuddled that the data then said lower level kids were exposed to fewer activities than kids who were reading at a higher level, but then the lower level kids performed better. The article then goes on to state in its discussion that the project did not include a control group which makes the data, from a scientific standpoint, very inconclusive.
What I gather from the articles in our class, my other class, and personal experience, I feel that there needs to be a simpler solution. It is difficult as a new teacher to make informed decisions about grouping when kids require so much structure, but varying the grouping constantly would cause so many delays in understanding the flow. It is a specific pitfall I have as a new elementary teacher thrown into an unorganized classroom that belongs to another teacher, but I have found that homogeneous guided reading groups work best because the flow of skills and planning is more consistent, and easier to manage when the curriculum is changing from common core, Baltimore City has adopted a new math curriculum, and the kids are settling into the meaty part of the school year. I feel that more research needs to be conducted on which method works for students' academic success, and classroom management wise. I am starting to use class dojo, so data could be taken when switching up grouping styles and students, and then class dojo could be used keeping the groups homogeneous to compare the two. I am interested to see where this topic goes because I also sometimes wonder how I learned to read so well if I never had guided reading as a child the way it is structured today.
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