ED 345 Final Project

Fourth Grade
Comprehensive Literacy Plan
By Luz Renteria Gomez
December 8, 2014

May 6, 2014
Dear Interview Team,
Within the attached literacy plan, I believe I have demonstrated my beliefs and
knowledge about literacy learning at the fourth grade level. I would like to thank you all for
reviewing this plan and for considering me for this position. It is my hope that through this
literacy plan, you will take note of my understanding of literacy learning as well as what I
believe works best in terms of teaching fourth graders literacy. My beliefs on teaching literacy
come mostly from the three theorists, Lev Vygotsky, Louise Rosenblatt and Brian Cambourne.
In the following literacy plan, I discuss the data that was provided from the childrens
assessments taken at the end of their third grade year. From said data, I have designed a
developmentally appropriate comprehensive literacy plan that covers a lot of the knowledge I
have gained about how children learn; as well as the ways I feel it is best to teach. In my written
plan, I have included a set of goals that speak on what kinds of readers and writers I want the
children in this fourth grade class to become. Also in my written plan is where I have, analyzed
the data and diagnosed the literacy needs for this particular group of now fourth grade students.
class room. In the part following that is where I actually develop my comprehensive
instructional plan. This includes my ideas on how I believe children learn literacy best, my
theoretical frameworks, and how I will differentiate instruction in my classroom. Finally, at the
end of this literacy plan, you will find a Self Reflection as well as a set of goals I have made for
myself. In my Professional Development Plan, I will address areas of strengths and areas for
improvement in the future. Again, thank you very much for this opportunity, and I hope to speak
with you in person soon.
Sincerely,

Luz Renteria Gomez

TASK 1: WRITTEN PLAN

A. Set Goals

As a teacher, there are certain goals that we have for students when they enter our
classroom. Specifically for reading and writing, we have many expectations of where the
students should be by the end of fourth grade. Many of these expectations and goals are set by
the district and the curriculum standards that they choose to follow. However, a lot of the goal
setting ultimately falls to the teacher because she/he has to know the students and where they
need to get to in reading and writing from where they currently are when they enter the fourth
grade. In general, aside from specific goals that I would set according to the specific classroom
that I would be in, I do have an idea of what kinds of readers and writers I would want the
children in my fourth grade classroom to become.
One of my main goals for my readers and writers would be that they enjoy literacy. A
long time ago, this seemed like a crazy idea to me; that I could get all of my students to enjoy
reading and writing. Now, I believe that by getting students to connect to the text and by doing it
often enough, they can really begin to enjoy reading and writing. Students begin to connect to a
text when they read it and realize that no one will ever read it the same way as they did. By
comprehending the story and responding to it in their own way, students begin to connect to the
text in a different way than when they are just reading for the plot or the information.

This brings me to my next goal for my fourth graders. In order for students to be able to
connect with a text that they read or write, they have to be able to understand what it is saying. I
want my students to practice using their comprehension strategiescognitive and meta cognitive
that will allow them to gather meaning from the text rather than just decoding words. Along
with that of course, students also need a good amount of time working with the reading and
writing processes in order to really understand what they are reading and writing, they need to
understand how it is done when it is done well. Also, word knowledge and vocabulary
development are a huge part of what all learners should know and be able to do. While that is
important and will be an important part of the phonics/word study time, it will not be the bulk of
their work. Through the understanding of comprehension strategies, students will not only
understand the text better, but they will also be more aware of their understanding and their
thinking while they are reading. In other words, I would want my students to use a variety of
strategies and prior knowledge skills in order to decode words and then construct meaning from
those words.
For a student to become a better reader and writer, their vocabulary is always expanding.
Vocabulary is a huge part of reading and writing in the fourth grade. Learning new words
through word study, through reading and through listening to the language being spoken is a
huge part of becoming a better reader and a better writer as well. Students that learn new words
and can fully understand their meaning are more likely to use those vocabulary words in their
own writing. That is why having a good basis of word knowledge and vocabulary development is
one of the things that I would want my learners to know and be able to show by the end of fourth
grade.

Learning the reading and writing processes is something else that just like the word study,
is essential to a students understanding of how words work. In order for students to understand
what good reading looks like, they have to know how it works and how it would look like when
they did it themselves. The same goes for writing of course. My goal for this group of students
specifically having to do with learning the reading and writing processis that through their
understanding of this process, they will be able to apply it to their own work. This kind of metacognitive teaching is what really gets the students engaged in their own learning. When they are
thinking about their own thinking, they are always trying to think about why they are using a
certain strategy, how to use it, and when they have to use it in order for it to be effective. This is
more beneficial for a students success than just practicing skimming as a strategy to gather
information more quickly.
Finally of course, my goal for Reading Comprehension Strategies is that students will be
able to use their cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies to do all that thinking that was just
mentioned above. I want my students to know those very important comprehension and reading
strategies that they need to know, but I also want them to understand when it is helpful for them
to use them. Students should be flexible in their use of the strategies in reading, writing, speaking
and listening. This includes moving the things that they learn through their readings into their
writing and speaking (meaning, structure conventions) craft and apply it across all content areas.
As the teacher, it is my job to put my students into situations that real readers and writers
are put into. This includes things like talking about the things that we read, sharing our writing
with one another, and discussing that as well. Sometimes, this includes making lists of other
books we want to read or stories we want to write. Other times, a real reader/writer situation

might just be trying to think deeper about what we are trying to do in our work. Other times, a
real reader/writer situation might just be going back into our books to reread or going back into
our writing to revise what we have written. I really want my students to be able to think deeply
not only about what they are doing in their work, but also about their own thinking. Using metacognitive strategies, I want my students to really question why they are using a strategy or
technique and how it is effective to them at that point in time. This way, they find more meaning
in their work.

B. Analysis of Data/Diagnosis of Literary Needs

I would first like to start off by saying that as much information as these data results give
me about this group of students, I still do not fully know them or their actual skills in reading,
writing and word study behaviors. Since all I have to go off of is the scores on that data, I can do
my best to capture an idea of what this class needs in terms of literacy instruction. However I
cannot give specific, accurate instruction suggestions for students based only on these scores
alone. As a teacher, it is important to remember that although we do these assessments to plan
instruction and to assess progress, for many of these assessments, we also have to be present in
order to gather the full understanding of how a student is doing in that tested area.
Even still, according to the data given for this class, I would say that the main problem
that the students have is in comprehension. Many of the students are doing fairly well in their
reading and word study assessments. It is in their comprehension and reading scores where there
is a bit of a problem. We can see these things through the assessments that the students have
taken throughout the year and their compiled scores. The most helpful scores are the ones that
are done individually with an assessor to assess strategy usage by the student as opposed to the

WKCE, or MAPS tests which are compiled scores related more to the skills of reading and
writing themselves and which are used for comparisons across local and national school districts.
The students instructional reading level, accuracy rate, comprehension level, fluency,
words per minute, and also writing are tested through the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark
Assessment. This is an assessment that is given formally at this school three times a year
students are assessed on informational and narrative reading and writing through this assessment.
In the data shown, the teacher chose not to assess many of the students near the end of the year,
for many, we can only assume that they were doing well and so the teacher chose not to do it.
The rest of the assessments are done separate from the benchmark test. The Words Their Way
assessments are used in order to determine a students level of word knowledge development.
These are done using the Words Their Way Elementary Spelling Inventory and/or Primary
Spelling Inventory. The Writing Assessment that is scored in this data is also done separately
from the benchmark assessment. This is done through extended writing samples that the teacher
collects, scores, and gives feedback with a rubric. In this data, the teacher used Scaled Scores
from a Teachers College Rubric on the narrative, informational and opinion pieces separately.
Specifically for reading, according to the OASD (Oconomowoc Area School District)
Instructional Guided Reading Levels Proficiency Benchmarks chart, students should be at about
a level P instructional reading level by the end of third grade. The students in this specific third
grade classroom range from Levels I to Q at the beginning of the year, and by the end of the year,
they are ranging from levels L through T. Both times, the students would have been reading
narrative material. Just here, we can begin to see the wide range of readers that are in the class.
There are many that are above where they should be even at the beginning of the year while there

are also students that are very behind at the end of the year, though as a whole, they were able to
show progress through these benchmark assessments. Through their accuracy rates, we can see
that many of these students are reading at an independent or instructional level. Their accuracy
scores range from 93-100% at the beginning of the year and from 96-100% by the second
assessment. Due to the scores of the second assessment and by the few scores seen in the end of
the year assessment, we can tell that all of the students are reading at an instructional or
independent level.
Their fluency scores, which can range from a 0-3, get very much improved on by the
second assessment where they are ranging 0-3, with only one student at a zero fluency score and
sixteen out of the twenty-four students reading with a fluency score of three. There is also a very
wide range in the students words per minute scores. At the beginning of the year, they range
from 29 to 147 words per minute, and then get to 37 to 164 by the second assessment. By the
third assessment, some of the students (out of the six that were tested for the last assessment) that
had had the lowest words per minute scores got to an average words per minute score of about
70. Again, the OASD (Oconomowoc Area School District) Instructional Guided Reading Levels
Proficiency Benchmarks says that students in third grade should be reading at a range of M
through P by the end of the year. And according to the Teachers College Reading and Writing
Project Benchmarks for Oral Reading RateWords per Minute, For students to be meeting
standards, they should be reading at least 75-105 wpm at a level M and 90-125 wpm at a level P.
This means that within our class of fourth graders, even with the average scored of wpm, they
are still approaching the standards.

As I had mentioned before, a lot of the students did a good job on their technical skills
such as reading with fluency and accuracy in their instructional level. However, when we look at
their comprehension scores, we see that though they were reading the words well, they did not
seem to comprehend a lot of it. The scores for comprehension can range from 0-10 on the
Fountas and Pinnell benchmark assessment. In this classroom of third graders, by the end of the
year, their comprehension scores did not vary very much from those in the beginning of the year
with scores that ranged from fours to sevens with one nine at the end of the year on the narrative
readings. We can also see this lack of comprehension in the students writing assessments that
were part of the benchmark assessment. For the writing part of the benchmark assessment, which
can be scored 0-3 according to the students understanding and explanation of their reading, they
continuously ranged from 1-3. By the second assessment, only two studentsthat were tested
had a score of one, while eleven scored a two and the other nine had threes. With these scores,
we can see that the students had a hard time comprehending the stories they were reading.
There were two different kinds of writing assessment samples that were taken throughout
the yeartotaling in 5-6 different samples (it looks like the third F&P writing part was not done
for everyone). The first was the Fountas and Pinnell Writing portion of the Benchmark
Assessment which was writing in response to the text that the students read for the rest of the
benchmark. In this case, the two different scores that we have on the data are for a narrative and
instructional book response. This writing is assessed mostly by reflecting on what the students
understood from the text and what they were able to talk about in their writing. The Extended
Writing Sample assessment on the other hand, was another performance based assessment, but
that required a lot more complex thinking on the part of the student. This writing sample is also
given three times a year and the pieces are narrative, informational, and opinion based writing

samples that are scored though rubrics. This school uses the Teachers College Scales Scores
rubrics that view all of the different traits of writing.
We can see through the students writing assessment scores that it was not their writing
itself that got them the lower scores in the benchmark writing assignment. According to the
writing samples that were scored, many of the students were at their grade level writing score at
the beginning of the year. Though as a whole, they did not show much improvement, there was
not a lowering of their writing scores. Therefore, we can see that it was the comprehension part
of their writing that lowered their scores on the benchmark assessment.
Finally, for their Words Their Way assessment, the teacher chose not to collect students
sort numbers in the middle of the year for any of the students. Instead, she only collected them at
the beginning of the year and at the end to determine level of work knowledge/orthographic
development and to make instructional decisions. At the beginning of the year, there were many
students who were in the Within Word Patterns sorts--these ranged themselves between middle
and late. There were also a few students doing Letter Name Alphabetic sorts and even some
within the Syllables and Affixes stage. At the end of the year, the stage numbers ranged from
Letter Name Alphabetic sort 27 through Syllables and Affixes sort number 21. According to the
data, some of the students went up in their stages while others, went backwards. For example,
students number 21 and 22 went from sort LN40 to LN27. Unfortunately, that is all the
information we know, so it is difficult to make an informed decision on instruction when we
dont know why or how they ended up going back in their word study sort when in the rest of the
assessments, students 21 and 22 showed a fairly general improvement.

In order to plan instruction for these students, we need a lot more information about them
and why they got the scores that they got. For example, it would be nice to do the benchmark
assessments with them in order to really get a sense of what it was that tripped them up during
their assessments. With a benchmark assessment, you are able to see which reading cues,
strategies, and skills students are using and lacking while they are reading. This would be a good
assessment to find out what kinds of individual skills students need to learn. Another good type
of assessment that I could use throughout the year to assess students on their reading and writing
would be a daily reading journal. Through the journal, I could see how the students are writing
and what they are choosing to write about. If they are comprehending a book, it will show in
their writing as much as it does when they dont understand it. Then, I could use a rubric to give
feedback on their writing and on their reading of the book. In their feedback or during a
conference, I could bring up their work in their journal and mention what kinds of strategies
would be beneficial to them as they read. Aside from the informal journal and observations that
are done all the time in the classroom, I would say that the benchmark assessment is probably the
assessment that gives the most information about the students current reading level. By doing a
simple running record as a benchmark, you can get a lot of the information--even without the
writing section. They are quick and beneficial to the student who can get direct feedback from
me and obviously they help me in planning my instruction for that child as well as for the group.
As for the writing instruction, aside from the journal that will give me a good glimpse at
what the children are choosing to write about and how they are choosing to organize their
writing, I would say that the extended writing samples are a very good assessment of writing
skills. Through the rubrics that I have seen (from the Teachers College), they are a wonderful
way to look at a students writing through more than one lens. You can see what the structure is

like and what kinds of conventions the class might need more support with, but you can also look
at what the childs voice is like in their writing. It is important to help children realize that their
writing voice and style will be different from other peoples and that even though it can be
assessed to see if it is there, it is something that they have to improve on their own by getting
better at the other conventions of writing. Through a students writing, you can assess so many
things; fluent processing skills, their comprehension, the amount, kind of, and quality of the text
they are reading, their level of text reading, their attitudes and interests, and also their response to
literature and the world around them.
For the future instruction of this class, I would say in general, that the students need to
continue in their word study to help them in their reading and understanding. It seems that they
are able to decode words well according to their fluency and accuracy rates, but seeing their
comprehension scores, it seems that they are not grasping the full meaning or key ideas in the
story. Therefore, helping with word study in small groups and also teaching how to use cognitive
and metacognitive strategies while reading and writing would be my main focus during reader's
workshop.
Like mentioned above, I really believe that the benchmark assessments are a good way to
assess students on all levels quickly and accurately. Not only that, but also the reading journals
are a good way to see that the students are reading, what they are understanding, the kinds of
books that they enjoy, how they are translating their newfound vocabulary and word knowledge
into their everyday writing, and also how to help them become stronger readers/writers through
that information. Along with informal observations during lessons and workshop times, I would
say that those two would be my main sources of assessments for students throughout the year

aside from the formal ones in terms of reading and writing. For word study, I think that the word
sorts are a good way of keeping track of where students are in their orthographic development.
Looking at the data is definitely not enough to understand the kind of knowledge that these
students have about words, but it gives us a good sense of the kinds of things that they are able to
do and understand due to what we know about those levels of work knowledge development.

C.

Developing a Comprehensive Instructional Plan

In terms of literacy learning, my belief is that a student is not supposed to learn on their

own. If you give a child a book, teach him what the letters look like and what they sound like, he
will learn the letters and the sounds, but not how to read them. Or even less, how to comprehend
what he is reading. It takes time, patience, and a lot of support for students to learn not only
how to read well, but to be able to enjoy it as well. Through this frame of mind, I began to think
about my own philosophy of teaching literacy to children. In my classroom, I do not wish to be
the hand that does all the work for the students. Nor do I want to sit back and watch as the
student does all the work alone. Instead, I want to be a teacher whom is available to give
instruction, demonstrations, facilitate practice, and give support when necessary. I would also
create an environment that is open to social interaction between the students and me; allowing
for room to share ideas and organize thoughts. It is my belief that this is how children learn
literacy best.
Being an effective teacher is a difficult job, and as we know, it includes many different
things. The same goes for being an effective teacher of literacy. I believe that understanding how
children learn is one of the most important things we as teachers can do in order to effectively
teach literacy. As teachers, we wouldnt be able to do our jobs right without knowing how it is

that children grasp the information that we are teaching. Every teacher has a different idea or
theory in mind when they think of how children learn literacy bestthis is their philosophy.
My philosophy of teaching literacy is based mostly on the student centered
Sociolinguistic Theory, the Reader Response Theory, and the Cognitive/Information Processing
Theory of learning. As I mentioned before, understanding how children learnespecially how
they learn to read and writeinfluences the instructional approaches that teachers use. The five
learning theories that are most widely used in education include: Sociolinguistics, Behaviorism,
Constructivism, Reader Response and Cognitive/Information Processing. Each theory has its
own unique set of characteristics and applications in a classroom. Behaviorism is the only one of
the four theories that is Teacher-Centered. The rest are Student-Centered, meaning that the work
revolves around the students needs rather than the teachers.
The theory of Behaviorism really focuses on observable changes in behavior.
Behaviorists believe that behavior can be learned or unlearned and that the teacher is more of a
supervisor and provider of information; making it teacher centered that way. Through incentives
and rewards, students are able to show some kind of response actions to the teaching. Some of
the most common applications of Behaviorism include Basal readers, minilessons, and repeated
readings (Tompkins, Figure 1-1 Overview of the Learning Theories , 2010). Teachers use explicit
teaching of skills in a preset order; each skill meant to build off the last one learned. Information
is presented in small steps and reinforced until students master each step and are able to continue
onto the next one (Tompkins, 2010).
The Cognitive/Information Processing Theory compares the mind to a computer
specifically in the way that information moves through different processing units (Tompkins,
Becoming an Effective Teacher of Reading, 2010, p. 11). One of the theorists who did a lot of

great work with the cognitive psychology of the theory was David Rumelhart. He and other
theorists viewed reading and writing as a meaning making processes; also recommending
integrating the two parts of literacy. Through the Cognitive/Information Processing Theory,
teachers understand that each students reading interpretations are individualized and that they
are strategic in their reading and writing. Most of the instruction that goes into teaching through
this theory includes graphic organizers, guided reading, grand conversations, interactive writing,
and reciprocal questions (Tompkins, Figure 1-1 Overview of the Learning Theories, 2010). It is
through these kinds of activities and instruction that students are able to build on their own
knowledge and continue to grow and learn. It is in this theory that the cognitive and metacognitive strategies are put into play so much. This theorys definition of reading includes:
explaining unobservable mental processes, including reading and writing; that readers and
writers are active learners, and that they use knowledge and strategies to solve problems; that
there is a two way flow of information between the readers/writers and the text and finally that
reading and writing are meaning making processes.
Another theory that is based a lot on students interpretations of their reading is the
Reader Response (Trans-active/Transactional) Theory. This theory is not so commonly
referenced but is also quite popular and in my opinion, extremely useful in its approach; which is
why I have based part of my philosophy on it. Many people trace the beginning of this theory
back to Louise Roseonblatt. She believed that the reading of any work of literature is, of
necessity, an individual and unique occurrence involving the mind and emotions of some
particular reader and a particular text at a particular time under particular circumstances. This
theory has become widely accepted--especially the notion that learning is a constructive and
dynamic process rather than a memorization process. Through this process of reading, students

extract meaning from texts through experiencing, hypothesizing, exploring, and synthesizing.
This theory really encourages students to be aware of what they bring to the text as readers--they
can begin to acknowledge their own background that is being brought into their interpretation of
the story. Through reader response, students begin to become active learners because their
personal responses are valued; they begin to see themselves as having both authority and
responsibility to make judgments about what they are reading. Working with other students and
hearing their perspectives and responses is also extremely important to this theorys main goal of
creating independent, active, lifelong readers. Working with others and hearing their perspectives
and responses allows students to move past their own initial reaction and take into account
different ideas and interpretations--broadening their perspective.
According to Rosenblatt, there are two stances that a reader can take when they are
reading any kind of text. You can take an efferent or an aesthetic stance to reading any kind of
material. When taking an efferent stance, the reader is reading in order to take away specific
parts of information. There is little interest in the rhythm of the language or the prose style. The
main focus of the reading is for what will stick after the reading is overwhat information will
the reader have gathered? (Moore) The Aesthetic stance on the other hand is reading to explore
the work and oneself. When taking this stance readers attention is centered on what he/she is
going through during the reading of the text. Rosenblatt believed that the meaning making
process done while reading takes place in the readers mind and is different from person to
person.
The Sociolinguistic Theory is one of the three theories that I have based many of my
beliefs on. This theory is based on the belief that oral language provides the foundation for
learning to read and write (Tompkins, Becoming an Effective Teacher of Reading, 2010, p. 8).

This theory really emphasizes the importance of language and social interaction on learning.
Specifically viewing reading and writing as social and cultural activities. This means that the
activities are authentic and meaningful to students in the context of school and in their
community as well. The teachers role in the sociolinguistic theory is to scaffold students
learning through culturally responsive teaching practices. Some of the most common
applications for this theory include literature circles, shared reading, buddy reading, reading and
writing workshops, and author chair (Tompkins, Figure 1-1 Overview of the Learning Theories,
2010).
Lev Vygotsky is one of the best known sociolinguists that believed that students use
language to learn as well as to communicate and share experiences with others (Tompkins,
Becoming an Effective Teacher of Reading, 2010, p. 8). Perhaps it is because throughout my
experience as a student, I was able to get the most out of a lesson when it involved social
interaction that I have based much of my philosophy on Vygotskys ideas on teaching literacy.
Even as a shy person myself, hearing others discuss the material that was being taught was
helpful in getting my thoughts clear and focused. For that reason and for Vygotskys many ideas
on scaffolding and the zone of proximal development, I would say that I really support Vygotsky
and his theory when it comes to teaching literacy. I believe as Vygotsky does that language helps
to organize thought and is the first real connection we have as people to literacy.
One of the main parts of the sociolinguistic theory is the idea of scaffolding a child to
help them reach their Zone of Proximal Development. Scaffolding is a support given during the
learning process which is built to support the needs of the students. Instructional scaffolding is a
process rather than a tool that is designed to promote a deeper level of understanding (Tompkins,
2010). Scaffolding is the provision of specific supporting tools and resources to help a student

grasp a new concept or skill. Things like templates, guides, resources, receiving advice from a
teacher, having a new skill modeled, or even being coached through something are all scaffolds
that are used to support a student in his learning. Once a student finds himself in a position to
continue without the scaffold, it is taken away. If a student is able to develop their own way to
use the learning strategies, come up with their own ideas, and demonstrate that they understand
the skill being taught, and then the scaffolds become less and less useful to the student. This type
of support can take many different forms other than templates and guidelines. It could be key
questions asked by the teacher, documents from students, or even outlines done together.
Scaffolding is one of the ideas that the sociolinguistic theory really centers itself on (Tompkins,
Figure 1-1 Overview of the Learning Theories , 2010). Scaffolding learning is meant to move a
child from assisted performance to independent performance. This is done because the teacher
has to know when and how to provide scaffolds as well as how to remove the scaffold to create
independence. Some kinds of scaffolding methods that are seen in fourth grade include external
mediators, private speech and written language, and shared activities. External mediators are
temporary reminders that should trigger mental processes. For example, different objects,
physical actions, or verbal cues. A more specific example would be in word study, scaffolds
might be anchor charts as an object, clapping or hand signals as a physical action, or sounding
out words as a verbal cue. Private speech refers to the little voice in a students head that is
telling them what to do. Generally, it is the teachers voice in their head rather than their own
that doesnt come in until they start doing private internal speech. Written language means using
it to represent learning on paper to enhance the learning. An example would be as a follow up
lesson; the teacher might have the students write in their journals about what they learned.
Finally, shared activities are a great scaffold for children because they allow memories and

experiences to be shared with one another. Paired word sorts or interactive read alouds are good
examples of shared activities that enhance a students learning. Later on, when they become more
independent, then they wont need those scaffolds any longer; and that is how you get students
working in their own ZPD.
Vygotskys idea of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is another part of his theory
that I found interesting. If the student is doing work way above his level, then he is struggling
alone and is not learning. A students Zone of Proximal Development is right at the area where
they are doing a challenging but manageable task (Tompkins, 2010, p. 8). If it is something they
understand, but still need some help from a more expert other, than they are in their zone. In the
case of a student in a classroom, the more expert other is someone within their community of
learners that has more knowledge on a subject than them. Generally, a teacher is the more expert
other in a classroom. However, other students may take on that role the more that they are
engaged with the material. Therefore, even another student can be a scaffold for a child if talking
things through helps. More challenging tasks done with the teachers scaffolding are more
conducive to learning, (Tompkins, 2010, p. 8).
Through assessments, guided reading and writing groups, and word study, it is possible to
get each student working in their own ZPD. I have come to find through different experiences
and through my own research that assessments are a fantastic way to lead instruction in a
classroom with students of all different ranges in reading and writing. Through assessments, it
becomes clear what the group as a whole needs help on as well as what could be a manageable
but challenging task for each of the individual students. Then in this way, the teacher knows what
needs to built on to the students knowledge next and how to do so through literacy.

As a teacher, I will definitely be incorporating a lot of the Sociolinguistic Theory into my

classroom in many different forms that will be talked about later. I support this theory for its
belief that language is a way to organize our thoughts and our first connection to written
language. The ideas of scaffolding and the Zone of Proximal Development make it easier to
differentiate instruction when it comes to the wide range of students that one could have in a
fourth grade classroom.
The other educational theory that I mentioned prior is the theory of Constructivism. This
theory describes students as active and engaged learners who construct their own knowledge
(Tompkins, 2010, p. 5). In this theory, there is a lot of emphasis placed on prior knowledge and
being able to build off of that. Constructivists believe that learning is something that the brain
just does naturally. Unlike in the behaviorists, constructivists believe that the teacher is not a
dispenser of knowledge, but instead they engage their students in experiences that allow them to
construct their own knowledge. Through this theory, students are seen as curious and generally
the more motivated students are more successful (Tompkins, 2010, p. 6). The theory of
constructivism also gives more chances for collaboration rather than competition since the
students are working off one another to create their newfound knowledge. The main applications
that are seen with constructivism include: literature focus units, K-W-L charts, reading logs,
thematic units, and word sorts (Tompkins, Figure 1-1 Overview of the Learning Theories , 2010).
These are all activities that allow for students to engage in their own curiosities.
Like I mentioned before, my philosophy for how to teach fourth grade literacy best is
based on the Sociolinguistic, Reader Response, and Cognitive/Information Processing theories.
My personal philosophy for teaching literacy is that a student is not supposed to learn on their
own. They are also not supposed to have everything done for them. In my classroom, I want to

be the teacher that is there to give instruction, give examples, facilitate practice, create
opportunities for connections with the material, and scaffold students in a way that is beneficial
to them. Going along with that as well, I believe in creating a social environment in the
classroom where everyone is free to express their thoughts on the material to help organize their
thoughts. My philosophy is based on the sociolinguistic, reader response, and
cognitive/informational processing theories of Vygotsky, Rosenblatt, and Rumelhart. Through
social interaction and guidance, I believe that I can maximize the amount of students whom I can
help in their learning process. By creating authentic opportunities for students to create their own
connections and understandings of the text, I will be helping students to connect to the material
in a more personal and hopefully enjoyable way. I believe that by incorporating all of these parts
into my teaching, I will be helping students to gain a better understanding and love of literacy
which in turn will make them lifelong learners.
By incorporating all of these different theories in my classroom, it might seem a little bit
complicated to think about the kind of instruction that I will be doing. However, in this section of
my literacy plan, I will inform you better on what my plans are for incorporating these theories
and ideas into the following areas of instruction: assessments, concepts/strategies, instructional
strategies, materials, classroom management, student motivation, classroom environment and
design, differentiated instruction.
Assessment and Feedback
Although I already talked about this quite a bit in part B, I would just like to reiterate the
kinds of assessments I would be using in the literacy curriculum in my fourth grade classroom
specifically with this group of kids. As I mentioned before, I really think that the benchmark
assessment is a great formal assessment to get to know a students level in the many different

aspects of reading through one assessment. It is fairly quick for the amount of information that is
being gathered. It also obviously gives you a good benchmark to go off of when you are
comparing how the students did at the beginning and end of the year.
For informal reading assessments, I definitely believe that guided reading groups and
readers workshop are a great time to go around and read with students one on one during
conferences. That way you get a chance to listen in on their oral reading but you also get a
chance to ask questions and check for comprehension and good readers strategies that they
should be using as they read. Taking informal notes and collecting artifacts is a good way to keep
track of all of the students thoughts and teaching points that you might have done as you were
conferencing with them. Artifacts are small pieces of students work that can be put into a
portfolio or into your own notes as the teacher to be used later to asses a students progress.
These along with reading logs or readers journals are a good way to keep track of what kinds of
books the kids are reading, what their reactions to them are, and how much they are reading
outside of class.
For writing assessment, as I mentioned before, I believe that the extended writing
samples are a fantastic way of getting to know how a student is doing in their writing. You assess
these samples with a rubric. The teachers at the Oconomowoc School were using the Scaled
Score rubric from the Teachers College. There are different rubrics created to score narrative,
informative, and opinion/persuasive writing (Calkins, Rubric for Narrative Writing--Fourth
Grade, 2013). Through these rubrics, the teacher gets to take a closer look at the students use of
structure, language development, and language conventions while the students get to do the same
with a checklist. Lucy Calkins, author of the Teachers College curriculum for literacy created
these rubrics for the teachers and the checklists for the students to know the criteria that they

should be meeting as well. This way, the students are not left out of what they are being graded
on and the teachers have something to give feedback to students off of. This is a great way to
give formal feedback on a students writing.
Informal writing assessment on the other hand does not necessarily need to include such
an in depth rubric if you are just assessing a journal entry. The students should be able to
understand that there are different functions for writing. When you are writing a piece that is
going to be assessed on, you might write it differently than when you are writing in a journal and
that is okay. Students should feel comfortable to write in their journals with their own voice
about their own interests and teachers should give feedback that reflects that type of writing as
well. This would include giving feedback that is extending their thinking or asking for more
detail in the story just because you want to hear more. I firmly believe that students do better
when they are getting extensive feedback that is constructive to their learning as opposed to a
letter grade that says nothing about the content of the assessment.
For word knowledge assessment, I would continue to use the spelling inventories that
were used for the data in third grade as they are a good indicator the students orthographic
knowledge. Aside from that formal assessment, there are a lot of other informal assessments that
can be used when talking about word study/knowledge. For example, listening to a students oral
language in social and academic settings is extremely important. Children need to be encouraged
to use their academic language in an academic settingusing their new found vocabulary. It is
also important to look at the books that the students are reading to make sure that they are at their
orthographic level because their vocabulary is represented in there and we want to make sure that
it is being represented well and also that it is being understood. Of course, writing is another
great way to check up on a students word knowledge. Are they using their new vocabulary

words? Are they confused with any of them? Is the reading and writing level matching? Are they
word conscious? Meaning are they trying to find out meanings to new words and using them in
their own works? All of these kinds of assessments are available and easy to use to check on
students vocabulary knowledge.
Instruction
The instruction of Literacy in fourth grade I best taught through the Three-Block
Framework. This framework covers three different important blocks of the day that should be
covered in order to create good literacy learners. There is the Reading workshop Block, the
Language and Word Study Block, and the Writing Workshop Block. Each block has its own
important components that make it efficient and that get the students engaged in reading whole
texts and writing for authentic purposes.
Starting with the Reading Workshop Block, this block has three main components to it.
There is the Mini-lesson, the Guided Reading/Literature Circles, and the Independent Reading
time which includes conferencing with the teacher. A minilessons is just what it sounds like; it is
a lesson with one or two focus objectives that last about ten to fifteen minutes. Modeled, shared,
and interactive reading and writing could all be minilessons throughout the day. They could also
be minilessons within a reading or writing workshop to give students a focus.
The general architecture of a minilessons should almost always be the same. There
should be some kind of connection to either a past lesson, some ongoing unit of study, a students
work, or an experience outside of school. After the connection has been made and explored, then
there should be the teaching point. This should always be presented verbally as well as visually if
that is the case of the lesson. Along with the verbal presentation, there should be some kind of

demonstration or model of the teaching point. The following part is extremely important. This is
where you add in the active engagement. There could be time to try out the skill or strategy with
a text, or there could be time to plan their work out loud. Even imagining trying the skill or
strategy is engaging. Once that is over, then the teacher makes a final link to ongoing work
whether that is the following activity or not. In terms of the sociolinguistic theory, a minilesson is
usually where students are getting the most support from the teacher because the lesson is
probably something new. From there, the teacher begins to release the responsibility to the
students by allowing them to practice on their own in guided reading or readers workshop.
A guided reading group is so important to the reading workshop framework. It is during
this time that the teacher is doing her most explicit and differentiated instruction. The teacher is
the one who chooses who goes in which group. This means that the teacher gets to decide what
the group is going to focus on. If there is a group of students of all different levels who are all
struggling with making predictions, then she might group them together. While there might also
be another group at a different time of the year made up of students of similar levels that area all
working on fluency within their level. It all depends on what the teacher feels the students need
the most at that time. For the students in our data, I feel as though at least in the beginningand
this is going completely off of the datathe students should be split up into leveled groups to
focus on reading comprehensions strategies. This way when they are reading a book, they will
begin to think about the strategies that they should be thinking about during their reading of a
story or book.
The structure of a guided reading group is generally always going to be the same. The
teacher will introduce the text before the reading begins. In general, guided reading group
introductions show children how the book workshow its organized, give the student an idea of

what the book is about, draw attention to language structures and vocabulary that children will
need help on, builds interest in the story, help students make connections with their own
background knowledge, point out new and important words points out aspect of print or layout
that are important, or show how illustrations support the meaning of the story.
Then after finishing the introduction, the teacher will ask the students to start reading
quietly to themselves from a certain page number to another. During the reading, the teacher is
supporting effective reading by taking notes, and listening in on students reading orally by asking
them to turn their voices on and off as they read. If there is a chance, the teacher might make a
short teaching point for the student as they are reading.
After the reading is over, then the group summarized and revisits the text through a
discussion that goes over the plot and opinions of the books as well. The teacher is prompting
students by asking questions during this time. It is also during this part of the guided reading
time that the teacher picked up on the different points that the students needed the most
assistance on. If more than one student needed help on something, then the teacher will point it
out as a general teaching point to pay attention to in the reading. There is more than likely
already a teaching point that she will want to get acrosshence the group that is put together
but if there was not, then she might pick one of the teaching points she did individually with the
students. Some ideas for teaching points include good reader strategies. Such as strategies for
operating on print, self monitoring, searching for cues, cross checking, and self correction. As an
extension after the reading, there could also be a writing option afterwards, but that is not
necessary. There could also be word work that is done that is connected to the reading and some
of the issues that the teacher might have noticed during the reading.

Finally, the last component of the Reading Workshop Block is the independent reading
time. This is the time for students to go back to their areas and practice whatever was taught in
the minilesson of the day or other reading strategies that they would like to practice. It is also
during this time that the teacherif not running a guided reading groupshould be
conferencing with students. The structure of a good conference includes the teacher doing
research when she first sits down to talk with a student. She might ask the student about their
thoughts on the book, to summarize, or just what kind of strategy the student is trying out. After
talking to the student and finding out what they are reading, practicing, and thinking about, then
the teacher will make her diagnosis. This is where she will pick out one good teaching point to
make for the conference. The Instruction comes next when the teacher does the teaching point by
talking to the student and then setting an expectation for the next time that they get to meet up.
Altogether, those three componentsthe minilesson, the guided reading, and the
independent readingmake up the Reading Workshop Block. The Writing workshop block has
the exact same components to it, but obviously they are done with writing. So just like with the
reading block, in the Writing Workshop Block, the teacher starts out with a minilesson. The
things that are covered in writers workshop are those things that we want the students to know
and be able to do. We want them to know the different types of writing that they can do and we
want them to understand the writing process. This includes understanding the decisions that good
writers make. Minilessons that might be seen during a writers workshop include lessons about
the writing characteristics/traits: voice, conventions, organization, ideas, word choice, and
sentence fluency. We want the students to be able to recognize good writing traits and use them
in their own writing. The other thing that would be taught and that for the kids in our data I
would probably focus on as well is the writing process itself. It is hard to tell from the data

whether the students had a hard time with the process since all we get is a final number result,
but knowing the writing process well can help students to pull up their prior and new knowledge
and organize it in a way that makes more sense to them than some book does.
The writing process can be shown through the minilesson or in the guided writing group.
In this group, there might be more of a focus on the writing process itself since the students are
with a teacher who is available to help them with that process and to include all of those writing
traits. The writing process that we want the students to learn and be able to show is organized
like so:
Good Writers think BEFORE they write (Pre-Writing) by
Doing research
Brainstorming
Thinking about their audience
Pulling up their prior knowledge
Thinking about their purpose for writing
Considering the structure they are going to use
Finding out if they have criteria they need to cover
Good Writers also think DURING their writing time (Drafting) about
Their word choice/tone
How they are going to organize the paper
How they are going to elaborate on their ideas
The conventions of writing
Their formatting, transitions, references, sentence structure
What else they need to research
Revisiting their planning
Good Writers also think AFTER they finish writing (Revise) about
Proofreading-checking for conventions
Rereading-editing
Revising-checking content

Finally, they publish their Final Draft

The guided writing group runs just like the guided reading group in that the students
bring their work with them to the group and then revise or edit there while the teacher does short
conferences with everyone to see what needs to be touched on in the teaching point. The teacher
would probably already have a teaching point ready knowing the kids that she has in the group,
but she might also still throw in some another teaching point, or an extension, or even some word
work. Word work in a guided writing group would most likely be about the different kind of
vocabulary that can be used for a certain kind of story.
For independent writing time, students are writing stories all the time. They could be
writing pieces for an assessment like the students in the data didthey have to do one
informational, one narrative, and one opinion piece throughout the year. Or they could be writing
something else based on a prompt, or juts a regular story that they chose to write. Either way, just
like with the reading workshop, Writing workshop is the time for students to take the things the
learned in the minilesson or in their guided writing groups and put it into their writing.
Finally, within the Three-Block Framework, there is the Language and Word Study
Block. Within this block there are the Interactive Read Aloud, Modeled/Shared Reading/Writing,
Word Study, Interactive Edit, and Interactive Vocabulary components. There are direct and
indirect approaches to effective vocabulary instruction. The main form of indirect instruction is
getting students to read on their own. This is also done through Interactive Read Alouds and
Modeled/Shared Reading/Writing lessonswhich are most likely done through the reading or
writing workshop block. By doing indirect instruction, students are gathering information about
unknown words through context clues and their own prior knowledge of word structure. On the

other hand, direct vocabulary instruction is looking at those tiers 2 and 3 words specifically with
the classroom. Tier 2 words are words that can be found in text as opposed to in everyday
speech. Tier 3 words are more content based words. For example, the word proclaimed is more
likely to be found in a book than heard on the street or in a regular conversation. Even though it
is not a word used very commonly outside of books, it is important for students to know the
meaning of the word and what it could mean in a book.
Vocabulary instruction is obviously very important to students reading and writing in the
fourth grade. There are eight important characteristics of effective direct vocabulary instruction
that I would like to implement in my classroom in order to assist my students in their vocabulary
development. Like I mentioned, in teaching effective vocabulary it is important to teach from
those tier 2 or tier 3 words, but not only in definitions. Students should be able to express their
current knowledge of the word in linguistic and nonlinguistic ways. Being able to draw a picture
or symbol of what a word means could help solidify the idea of it for students who find visuals
easier to remember. Also, knowing that a students understanding of a word can change over time
as they gather more information and exposure to the word. For example, a child will know the
word dog from the first time it learns the word, but when they meet a new dog later on, they will
add to their knowledge of the word dog that they can be mean, or nice, or different colors. Their
meaning of the word can change gradually as they acquire more background knowledge.
Teaching students vocabulary words in parts rather than as a whole can also be extremely
beneficial to them. This way they are better understanding terms that can be used in different
words that they might come across in their readings. Students should be allowed to play with
these parts of words not only by themselves, but also with their peers whom they are discussing

terms with as they are learning them. Playing with words allows students to solidify their own
understanding of the vocabulary. Just like there are different words that students will be learning,
there are also different kinds of instruction for different types of words. There will be more
personal exploring with certain words than with others. Some words, students will just learn on
their own through the indirect approach. This direct kind of instruction should be more focused
on terms that have a high probability of enhancing academic success.
Some other important instructional principles about teaching Vocabulary (Calkins,
Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, 2008): words need to be taught in context. This is
what I mentioned a while back during my goal settingthat students need to be put in situations
that real readers and writers are put into. That means no vocabulary lists with definitions and
sentences without context or repeating words over and over. Another principle is that students
should work with words in a variety of contexts (reading, writing, speaking, listening). It is
through this kind of work that students will be able to move what they learn into their own
writing and speaking as craft and move across the content areas with their language. Playing with
words themselves is also a very important part of vocabulary instruction. Students should be able
to see a word and think of more than just lettersthey should see images, different connotations,
symbols, something that makes the word meaningful to them. Finally, teachers should be
strategic with the words that we choose to teachmostly using those Tier 2 words that the
students will encounter over and over in multiple contexts (Calkins, Teachers College Reading
and Writing Project, 2008). These are the instructional strategies that I am going to se to respond
to the literacy needs of the children in my classroom. This is what I believe will work to help
them create a wider vocabulary and through the reading and writing workshops and small group

meetings, there will be so much vocabulary instruction, that the students will begin to make
connections between the words and their meanings and the way they are used in real life.
Thanks to the guided reading groups, and the conferencing, there is a lot of different ways
to differentiate instruction in the classroom. Though it might be a little difficult to keep track of,
thanks to the flexible groups for guided reading and writing, groups can be split up in any way
that will best serve the students. Even though there is already this kind of differentiation
happening within the three-block framework itself, there is also a Three-Tiered Model for the
Response to Intervention (RTI) that might sometimes be necessary for some children (National
Association of State Directors of Special Eductaion , 2009). This model says that RTI should
have different levels of intensity with instruction provided based on students individual needs.
The first level includes 75-80 percent of students: Universal classroom interventions. This is
what should be provided to all students as it is preventive and proactive. The idea being that all
students get this level of response to intervention before they necessarily need it in order to
prevent their needing any more intense intervention. The second tier includes 10-15 percent of
students: Targeted very small group interventions. These are probably going to be about 2-3 at
risk students. This type of RTI is supposed to be highly efficient and have a rapid response so as
not to get to the third tier. Which includes 5-10 percent of students: Intensive, individualized
tutorial interventions. This is RTI for individual students. It is a high intensity, assessment based
level of intervention that is meant to be a lot longer lasting. This is the kind of differentiation that
could be done in extreme cases where the student needs a very close and individual level of
instruction. But outside of those cases, the block framework itself allows for a lot of
differentiation within the groups and the conferences.
Materials

Materials are a huge part of the classroom setting and environment. They are also greatly
affected by the kind of theories that a teacher chooses to implement in his/her classroom. For my
classroom, I will have literature everywhere. As part of the sociolinguistic theory, it is important
for students to talk to one another about anything and everything that they are learning. Having
literature on the walls, on desks, obviously having all different genres of books, it gives them so
much more to talk about. Even though I do believe in having all kinds of literature up on the
walls and around the room, I also want it to be meaningful because there is no point in having a
bunch or random posters up all the time if that is all the students re going to get to see. That is
why, one of the biggest materials that I need in my room is poster paper to make anchor charts
with. It is so important to not only have anchor charts up that have to do with lessons that you are
covering, but to make sure that the students are/were a part of the creation of the chart.
Technology is another important part of classrooms today because it is everywhere. From
my experiences, there have been many teachers that are very against technology in the classroom
and while sometimes it can become a distraction, I also think that it can be extremely engaging
and beneficial to the students to use technology. If possible, a smart board would be fantastic to
have in the room. It is so engaging and beneficial for the students to have something to work off
of when it is connected to a lesson. There are times when having a whole group lesson is a lot
more interesting when everybody is involved. I think that small white boards serve that purpose
very well. They are cheap and everybody can have one to respond to questions or to share their
thinking. Especially with vocabulary instructionwhen the class works on symbols for words,
this kind of white board would be very beneficial.
Other obvious materials such as pencils, paper, post its, crayons, markers, all of those
would hopefully be provided by either the families or the school. The math, science, and history

manipulatives and tools that would be used in the classroom are also extremely important. As
important as literacy is, we always have to remember that the other subjects should hold equal
status. It is important to have different kinds of narrative and informative literature that touches
on those other content areas as well; not only for their instruction, but also to show students how
to enjoy literature in all different content areas.
In my ideal classroom, there are two different book areas. One side of shelves is full of
leveled books that are used during readers workshop or for benchmark tests. These books include
both narrative and informative books for all of the levels. On the other side of the room (you can
see this in my classroom set up), there is a literacy corner. In this area, my idea is that there are
books of interest here. That includes informative, narrative, and all other genres. There are also
clipboards and the reading journals are on the side so that students can read and then right in
their journals right away. That or they can write about anything they want since it is the literacy
corner. I believe that these materials are what are going to be the most beneficial for the students.
Anchor charts that are created by them for them, reading materials on all different kinds of
subjects, technology available for certain lessons and reasons, and other important math, science
and social studies manipulatives and tools.
Student Motivation
I think that the Readers Response Theory really has a lot of play in this part of
Instruction. When I think of an enjoyable lesson or activity that I did in class, I can always think
of the things that were ultimately very personal. Even with the reading of different books, the
ones that were somehow related to me always made the biggest impact and kept me hooked. I
think thats what I would say that I would do for the students in my class firsthelp them make
connections with the material that they are working on. This helped the students not only find the

work that they are doing all that more engaging, but it also teaches them empathy and gives them
an opportunity to care for others when they share or tell a story. The Readers Response theory
talks about when you take the Aesthetic stance in reading and you read for the enjoyment of the
literature rather than just to get the information quickly (efferent stance). If students take this
stance more often when readingespecially if they have been doing it from early onthey will
most likely be more inclined to read for pleasure rather than solely for informational purposes.
Another way that I would like to get students motivated to engage in literacy would be
through literature study. I have talked a lot about readers and writers workshops and also guided
reading and writing groups. However, literature studyalso known as book clubs, lit circles, or
reading clubsare a way to enable students to help one another learn. The goal of a literature
study is active participation that results in increased comprehension. Literature study is generally
started by having the students or the teacher select the reading material. Students will then read
the same or different books (depending on how the teacher wants to split up groups), the whole
class could be reading the same books but having different discussions and then come together to
have one whole discussion. Or there could be different books all around having discussions on
similar themes. There are a lot of options when it comes to literature study. Even the groups are
very flexible and are meant to change. Group meetings are scheduled by the members of the
groups and sometimes tasks are assigned. If there are no tasks, then students are always taking
notes on their readings so that they have something to bring to the group discussion. The groups
will usually meet several times to discuss the same books and depending on their level of
independence, the teacher might be an active facilitator of the discussion or just a participant.
The group discussions may lead to further reading or writing projects depending on the depth of
the conversations (Fountas & Pinnell, 2001). This is really great way to get students to be

engaged in their reading and in their own learning. Many times the students themselves are doing
research on different aspects of the book to bring to the discussion. It is a great way to keep
students motivated to keep learningeven without a teacher present.
Classroom Environment and Design
I would first like to start off by showing the design for my fourth grade classroom.
(Classroom Architect)

< door

This is my
design

for a fourth

grade classroom that I feel will bring about the best literacy learning for my students. Just to pick
a place to start talking, I will talk about the seating arrangements. Just because the chairs were
not working when I put them in the program, I did not add them. However, there would be four
students seated per table (5 if necessary to handle class size). Each table would have a bucket in
the middle with communal supplies. This is a choice I made to fit with the sharing and

empathetic environment and atmosphere of the classroom. It becomes easier to work with other
people who you are in close proximity to when you have to be kind to one another and share
tools. It is my hope that through that design, the students will learn to work well with one
another.
On the bottom left corner, there is the meeting area where I plan to hold whole group
meetings and mini lessons. This area will most likely have a wall covered with anchor charts that
we have created as a class behind me. The easel is there next to my chair for easy access to a
paper and marker. On the other side of the room (in the bottom right hand corner) there is the
literacy corner that I mentioned before when I talked about materials. In this corner, there seems
to be a lot going on, but it is really just a sofa, a bean bag chair, two book stands and a wall of
book shelves. This is where all of the interest books would be housed so that students could
choose their own reading books to read during independent reading time. Since this is the
literacy corner, there is also going to be a basket full of the readers journals and writing utensils
available for writing time for students if they wish to do that as well.
In between the meeting area and the literacy corner is what I would probably consider the
front of the room. This is where the smart board is housed. This could be another big group
meeting area for when there was a big lesson having to use the smart board or if we had a guest
speaker. The reason that this is separate from the meeting area is just because of the idea of
separating those two trains of thought. In my plans, the meeting rug would be used for
announcements, minilessons, readings and official class talk where the front of the room would
be used more for guest speakers and larger lessons. Another technology area in the room is on
the right wall of the room. My hope is that I would have at least two computer in the classroom
so that students couldwhen they are readybegin typing up papers and maybe using the

computer programs as rewards for getting work done. On the back wall of the room is the wall of
shelves. Those would be the leveled texts that are also available for students to read at any time,
but when we are doing a readers workshop and we need leveled texts, those are the only books
that they will be able to use.
On the top left hand corner of the design is the sink and my desk. I wanted to keep it far
away from where I would be doing my teaching because I do not want to be a teacher who just
sits behind my desk the whole day. I want to walk around and get a chance to talk to all of my
students at least once a day. This is another way that I am creating the atmosphere in the room.
By making myself more approachable, I am allowing the students to talk to me and ask me
questions when they have them.
On the far left hand side of the picture are the two group meeting tables. The round table I
put there for when groups want to meet or if there is some kind of art project going on and we
dont want ot use up the entire kidney table. The round table will serve many purposes while the
kidney table will hopefully only serve one. I want to use the kidney table solely for small group
meetings with my students. This includes guided reading and writing groups, conferences,
literature circle meetings, or other intervention groups that need to meet. By keeping the one
table to that kind of activity only, then there is a preset idea/expectation when you sit down at
that table that you are there to have a small group meeting with the teacher and that the
expectations are the same each timeexactly how the students and the teacher made them up at
the beginning of the year.
Finally, there are a few storage areas that are shown and though the dont seem like a lot,
my idea was that a lot of the shelves would also include storage space on too of them and that the
actual boxes on the design that say storage would be large cabinets to fit stuff inside of.

Through this classroom layout, I think that the students of the class will be able to do
their best learning. There are different spaces set up for different kinds of activities and the tables
are set up so that students will be interacting with one another which fits in well with the
sociolinguistic and reader response theories. By sharing ideas about what they are learning,
students are able to better construct their knowledge based on their own and others ideas.
In my mind, the atmosphere in my classroom is calming and yet enthusiastic at the same
time. I want students to feel comfortable in the classroom and excited to get to learn more each
day. I think that this kind of environment can be brought about by my own enthusiasm and those
routines and classroom management rules that run the classroom. When students are able to be
independent in their work, then the classroom runs a lot more smoothly and the children end up
getting a lot more work done every day. It is my goal to have this kind of classroom.

D.

Evaluate the Implications of your Plan on Student Learning

If I were to follow through on my literacy plan with this particular group of children, I

can only hope that they will improve from the stages, levels and scores that they have now on
these assessments. I only talk about the assessments first because coming their fifth grade year,
that is mostly likely the kind of information that their fifth grade teacher would get and so it
would be good if the children could show improvement from the end of their third grade year to
the end of their fourth grade year.
Going past the assessments, if I were to implement my literacy plan with this group of
children, I would hope that I would see improvement in all aspects, but since I would focus so
heavily on word study and comprehension, I would hope to see substantial improvement in those
areas. My goals at the beginning of the literacy plan were that my learn to: enjoy literacy,

practice and be able to use their comprehension strategiescognitive and meta-cognitive, that
they will learn and understand the reading and writing processes, and that their vocabulary will
continue to expand so that they can use it in a flexible way through their reading, writing, and
speaking.
Through my instructional strategies, different theoretical frameworks and assessments, I
think that my students will be able to do those things at least a little bit better by the end of the
fourth grade. It will be mostly due to the group work that allows for differentiated instruction, the
assessments that give enough information to plan for future instruction, the routines and
environment that allows students to learn creatively and with curiosity. Also, being able to put
kids into real reader/writer situations will be a big help to them as well when they become life
long learners because they wont always b learners in a classroom. At one point, everybody
begins to become a learner outside of school and because these kids will already have experience
discussing literature and sharing information with one another, I think that the world will be a
little bit more full of enthusiastic learners.
I would say that the strengths of this plan are that it involves almost all of the aspects of a
fourth grade literacy classroom and that the goals that I chose to focus on for the class as a whole
will really affect these specific group of students who need help on specific areas of literacy. One
area that I know I should have developed a little bit more is the interweaving of all content areas
in literacy. That is such an important part of literacy for fourth graders and I feel as though I
barely touched on at all. Besides that area, I would say that my literacy plan covers all of the
aspects of a regular fourth grade classroom and is fit to work with the students in the data. Since
they area a unique group of kids, they deserve a unique comprehensive literacy plan that will
work best for them. Which I honestly believe that I have provided.

E.

Reflect on Your Own Future Development Goals

1) Developmental Goals
Three areas that I would target for my own further development to become a stronger
teacher of literacy at the fourth grade level would be to focus more on assessment, diagnosis, and
instruction. Now this might seem a bit alarming seeing as those are probably the three biggest
areas of teaching a group of students. I have had experience in all of these areas, and I am
confident that I can do these things in a classroom well enough to teach the students. However, I
want to be able to say that I am confident enough in doing these things to really be able to
support the students in the best ways possible.
With assessment, I can do formal assessments and I can do informal observations,
however taking informal notes is something that I have yet to have much practice with. Yet I
know that it is a huge part of the curriculumespecially when doing guided groups and
readers/writers workshop. It is important to have those notes to go off of when doing conferences
with students and even to base instruction on. That is the one aspect of assessment that I feel like
I can further develop on.
The diagnosing of a students needs themselves is not a big problem for me, I have the
hardest time diagnosing what needs to be done for the student afterwards to support him/her. As
of now, I go off of what has been done in the past by other teachers or I look at where exactly
they should be and what will help them get to that point, but that takes me a while. I want to see
a need and be able to assist the student quickly and effectively.
For instruction, I am confident in being able to teach lessons to students and having them
understand; that is not the part that I would like to develop. Instead, I feel as though I really need
to work on my on-the-spot-teaching. Meaning that when I am conferencing with a student or I

have a guided group for reading or writing and I see that two or more students have made the
same mistake, I want to be able to make that a teaching point that is clear and concise enough to
be helpful. Generally, I am a much better speaker if I have time to write something up ahead of
time. That is probably why being able to speak on my feet in a concise way like that is a little bit
difficult for me. But this is something that I really want to and need to develop because on-thespot-teaching is such a big part of the instructional strategies that I need to use in the classroom.
All of these areas of development require a lot of practice in a real classroom where I am
with the students every day and where I will get a chance to do not only ongoing assessments,
but also ongoing projects and ways of knowing where my students are to give me a better view
of how to assess informally, or teach-on-the-spot more easily based on my diagnosis of the
students needs.
2) Self Reflection
The process I used to approach this problem was a slow and time consuming one. First, I
looked back at another literacy plan I had made to see what parts I could use to start as a base
and build off of. Then, I tried to find the information that I was missing and that I wanted to add
on to the prior knowledge of literacy that I had already built up. To do this, I went back into my
notes from class, my reading logs, and the class PowerPoint notes that I took during the semester.
This gave me a pretty clear picture of what I wanted the literacy plan to look like and how I was
going to organize it. After that, I went through all of the information that we received during our
time in ED 345 and picked out what I felt was the most important information that I wanted to
add to my literacy plan and that I would ultimately add into my classroom as a teacher working
with the group or students that we got the data for. This included materials like writing rubrics,
benchmark charts, strategy prompts and the sort that we did about the different theories.

The parts of this process that worked well for me were the notes that I took during class.
While I was taking the notes, I remember being very specific about what I put down and where
because I knew that I was going to need it for this plan now. Thankfully, I had all of my notes on
the PowerPoints that talked about that subject as well, so I was able to get a lot of information at
once about what we talked about in class and also what was presented by Robin.
An area of the process that I struggle with was going back through the piece that I had
written for mid semester and incorporating the feedback that was given to me about it. I always
go back and edit anything I write way too much. It was difficult for me to have to go back and
only change the things that were talked about in the feedback instead of going back and
rewording the entire plan. Not only that, but I also found it difficult to find a way to naturally add
in whole other parts into the literacy plan without having to change the entire thing. It felt like an
extremely delicate project even though it really was not.
When I approach a similar problem in the future, I will look back on my experiences
from this literacy plan. I will hopefully be able to use this information as well as the information
from my other two literacy plans to create an even better informed opinion on teaching literacy
in any elementary grade classroom. This being my third literacy plan, I think that I thought I was
going to be a little bit more prepared for what I was supposed to cover and do, but I felt just as
challenged as I had been with the first one. This is of course just an observation about the fact
that the next time that I am confronted with this kind of problem; I will not make any
assumptions about the complexity of the project before I begin. In the event that this were a real
situation, I do believe that I would have the upper hand from other candidates thanks to the many
experiences that I have had with having to write down my ideas and organize my plans into this
format. I hope you have enjoyed reading my comprehensive literacy plan for this now fourth

grade group of students. I am confident that by implementing the theories, framework and
instructional strategies that I have talked about in this plan, that I could be an effective teacher of
literacy. Thank you for your consideration.

References
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Comprehension, Genre, and Content Literacy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

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