Alicia Collard

EDUC 342
Spring 2014
Final Written Response
Think of one of the lessons you planned and taught during the EDUC 342
Developmental Reading practicum. Next, respond to the following prompts.

1. Describe the theories that guide the effective teaching of reading? What
evidence of these theories was present in your setting? (Ch. 1)

The theories that guide effective teaching can be either teacher
centered or student centered. I have experienced both ways of
teaching and learning environments for students and there are
benefits that come of each. However I believe strongly in the student
centered approach for not only effective teaching but for effective
learning from students at the ages that I am inspired to teach. The
techniques and the ways students learn are part of what should be
important in guiding effective learning through reading. I strongly
believe that reading strategies should be taught in a fun and exciting
learning environment in kindergarten and first grade and heavily
focused upon in every lesson and in every content area. Reading
strategies can be taught using different teacher and student centered
lessons and stations. In my lessons I tend to use a bit of a combination
between the constructivism approach and the sociolinguistics
approach. For example, in my lessons, I make sure the students are
using a generous combination of both active and engaged learning
where they can discover and make connections based on their own
personal background knowledge and build their self-efficacy, as well
as a sociolinguistic approach where students are using their creative
thoughts and collaboration with one another in groups to build on
their new and existing knowledge and share with their peers to help
each other grow. In my case students used a combination of
independent reading and writing and creating, as well as group work,
group whisper and echo reading, and cooperative learning games that
involved the phonics element being studied.

2. Describe the lesson in depth. What reading concepts were taught? How did
you help the students connect this to their reading in everyday life?

The lesson that I would like to focus on involved beginning and
ending digraphs and this was the third and most recent time I had
presented this lesson to my group of students I had been working
with for the duration of this practicum experience. I was able to
connect this reading to their every day life by involving games and
engaging movement activities that illustrated the skills that were
being taught in the lesson such as reviewing the beginning and ending
digraphs that I knew they were having trouble recognizing in the
leveled books. I decided to choose a decodable book for the students
Alicia Collard
EDUC 342
Spring 2014
Final Written Response
to read that focused on the wh digraph. The students took a picture
walk through this book and discovered and shared any beginning or
ending digraphs that they might have recognized from the previous
lessons. We were able to make connections with this book through the
pictures and the words we recognized and shared our real life
applications with the group in discussions, being sure to involve one
or more of the beginning or ending digraph words we recognized.

3. What instructional activities were used? Describe the use of technology.

When learning about digraphs we couldnt just use a
book to teach these important concepts from, I had to make
this lesson authentic and engaging for these students that
would otherwise skip over these important letter
combinations when read in a story or seen together in a word
on a sign or something. My goal was to get these students to be
able to recognize these common beginning and ending
digraphs just as well as they could recognize their sight words.
My theory was that if I could get these students that were still
struggling with concentrating too much of their time on
sounding out each letter in each word, to recognize the
common digraphs such as ch, sh, wh, th, qu, ph, and ck, then
the students would be able to read through their leveled books
much quicker and be able to spend more time on
comprehension and enjoy reading much more. At the end of
the three-week lesson on beginning and ending digraphs, the
students were able to recognize, read, and recall all of these
digraphs when prompted with a picture of the word or
presented with a word within a text or on a board game. To
appeal to these students interests and their attention span
with reading, I used various instructional activities such as
board games, movement games, puzzles, and fun and colorful
literature. There was very little time focused on lecture or mini
lessons that were teacher led. I spent some time explaining
expectations or guiding the student led activities while the
students were engaged and using my guidance only to further
their learning or to clear up confusion. I focused most of my
time prompting, modeling, and guiding during the lessons and
activities to provide my students with plenty of opportunities
to learn from each other and learning by discovery trial and
error rather than learning directly from me. By providing the
students with games and puzzles the learning came from their
own collaboration and did not take much lecture from me the
instructor after a brief explanation or introduction for the
Alicia Collard
EDUC 342
Spring 2014
Final Written Response
students to learn and build on knowledge they already have
from each growing week.

4. Describe how you were able to differentiate instruction for the students in
your group. What was changed to meet individual abilities, prior
learning/experiences, language and/or culture? (ch. 11)

With my group of students I was able to work with in
this practicum, I noticed a few commonalities between them
and their attitudes toward reading. It was clear that both male
students did not participate in much reading outside of school
in their homes or with their parents. When I asked why they do
not read at home they both separately replied that they, did
not need to know how to read well to do what they like to do
outside of school, and also they would rather die than have to
be forced to read because it was not fun and is the worst thing
ever. I knew I had a challenging bunch but I also knew how to
appeal to these students after meeting them for the first time.
Their common despise for reading, their common love for
activeness and sports, and their mostly common reading level
abilities made it easy for me to accommodate my lesson to fit
their needs in different ways. For one lesson I chose to use the
same text but at two different levels for the students to read on
their own in a whisper before we came together to discuss,
write about, and respond to. Different levels of inquiry
questions were used as well as adaptations such as the quality
of sentences that would be written about the text involving the
new digraph word learned or otherwise summary of the text.
Another way I would differentiate my lessons was within the
sorting digraph puzzle games. One student was instructed to
sort only words that had the beginning digraphs of qu, ph, and
wh. Equally difficult digraphs such as ch, sh, and th however
the second student was told to focus on these digraphs in their
beginning and ending forms. So this student had to decipher if
the sound of the digraph was coming from the beginning of the
word or the end of the word, rather than being given the
location of the digraph to match.

5. Describe the variety of instructional materials, technological resources,
and/or teaching strategies used during the lesson.

I used a variety of instructional materials, resources, and
teaching strategies within my lessons. Examples of
instructional materials I used in my three-week digraph lesson
Alicia Collard
EDUC 342
Spring 2014
Final Written Response
study include decodable books, puzzles, digraph words
reference chart, picture cards, digraph letter floor cards, and
digraph game boards. As well as a variety of materials and
resources, I provided the students with different activities and
tasks to complete using a combination of comprehension
strategies and decoding strategies. Some activities involved
doing a picture walk through the story before reading the text,
making and discussing inferences or predictions, then writing
about predictions and comparing and contrasting the
conclusion of the book after reading. Another way students
were experiencing different teaching strategies was when the
students were invited to use whisper and echo reading (like
readers theatre) to read, discuss, and collaborate on learning
and decoding new words and comprehending the story.
Students also used group collaboration and teamwork to put
together a digraph letter puzzle in the beginning of each lesson
to remind them of each digraph that matches the correct
digraph picture card, as well as learn mistakes or progression
from their peers. In this particular situation, peer teaching
proved to be extremely effective for student growth and
learning because the students were able to learn from each
other and work together to get the digraph puzzle to fit
correctly in all places. The students knew they would have to
go through and check their work and make sure each piece
matched the correct beginning or ending digraph in order to
move on to the next game- like activity. This rule alone was
enough to motivate the students to work together to figure out
the correct placement of the picture card, and they way they
helped each other with things they had remembered from the
previous weeks guided their learning development and
achievement by adding on and helping each other from
previously learned experiences and by giving each other tips
they were able to learn from them to be quicker and commit
them to memory in order to complete the game together.

6. Describe how you encouraged active engagement during the lesson. What
techniques were used to encourage appropriate communication?

I was able to facilitate active engagement during my lessons
because they involved some sort of friendly competition or
collaboration. Each lesson involved each student to play a part
in order for everyone to move on in the lesson, discussion, or
activity that would come next. Students also got into a routine
of always reading first, discussing comprehension and making
Alicia Collard
EDUC 342
Spring 2014
Final Written Response
connections, and then playing games came at the end. The
students knew up front what was going to be covered that day
in the particular lesson, and had a tentative schedule to go by. I
had previous thought out classroom management plans in any
case that a student was struggling to pay attention or
participate in the lesson, but in my case this situation actually
never came up and I did not have an issue of lack of student
participation or engagement. It was hard for any one student to
see an option of sitting out or becoming bored or disengaged
because there was too many things that had to be done that
required their help as a teammate or as an opponent! Keeping
the students excited and engaged in my lessons required me to
use prompting and excitement in my scaffolding techniques as
I guided my students through the activities. Students were
prompted with encouraging words, close and encouraging
proximity, and the excitement in my voice to promote
endurance in reading and the reassuring self-efficacy to try
again when completing individual or group activities.


7. Describe the form of assessment used to monitor student learning. How were
you able to determine if students met the learning targets?

I used many ways of monitoring my students learning progress
throughout the weeks in the mini lessons and focused reading
concepts. One way I stayed consistent with my assessment was
to use the same materials and resources but creatively use
them in different ways and for different and more challenging
forms of activities. This way I would always start with the same
activity and the students would have to use the knowledge
they acquired from the previous lesson first and then build on
that for the next activity. I was able to see them use the
strategies they learned from the previous weeks to figure out
the puzzle and provided them the opportunity to work
together to combine these learning strategies and discuss them
in order to complete the task. It was easy for me to monitor
this progress each week using the same materials and I was
able to see the progression by how quickly the students were
able to complete each task together as it grew more and more
challenging. I also used various forms of formal written and
verbal comprehension checks after reading the text to
determine how well each student was understanding the text
after discussion and writing about their predictions and
conclusions. The depth of the grand conversation that was held
Alicia Collard
EDUC 342
Spring 2014
Final Written Response
at the end of the stories was a great way to be able to tell
weather the student had grasped the main idea and
importance of the text.