CI 475 Teaching Elementary Reading and Language Arts Individual Child Project Katy Rehus

October 17, 2011

Observation of Classroom Literacy Environment Background Information: About 440 students at Westview elementary school Grades K-5 Terre Braun - K y 2 years substitute teaching, 12 years teaching full-time after that y Taught all grades and subjects except PE while subbing, but has been with kindergarten her entire full-time teaching career y Part Italian, part Jewish y Has been at Westview for 12 years was hired after subbing for the district y Became a teacher when she decided she was at home watching her own kids and she could make a living doing the same thing in schools. When she went back to school she could enter the psychology or social work programs or elementary education. Teaching was more in-demand, so she got her masters in teaching from U of I. y Literacy is Mrs. Braun s favorite thing to teach it s the area where she feels she is having the most impact on her students. She said it makes you feel like you re doing something useful with your life, especially when you see non-readers transform. It takes a long time to learn to teach literacy and she feels confident with it now after all these years. Teaching literacy means as a teacher you are always learning and trying to figure out what to do with meets and exceeds groups. Conversation is valuable and is significant to students when you relate it to your own life. Getting on board with low and special education kids is a challenge every year, but mostly because of managing the adults and specialists. About 40% of the class qualifies for reduced price lunch The class is represented by Hispanics, African-Americans, Koreans, and Caucasians, including some first-generation Americans. 1. The Classroom Environment The physical space of the classroom is open with four main tables for students to sit at. There are a few other group tables, and a carpet that is divided into 25 spaces, one for each student. The tables are close to the board, and no students have their backs to the front of the room. On the walls there are picture cards with letters of the alphabet, basic words, the daily schedule in typed cards, and other posters with book characters or letter combinations. During breaks in the day, free reading happens individually on the carpet. During read-aloud and reading lessons, students sit in these same carpet spots. During reading workshops, students read either on the rug or at the orange center, which is set up at one of the four tables where students have assigned seats. Writing workshops happen at two of the group tables located on opposite sides of the room, and students can use the two computers and listening station when it is their group s turn to rotate to those workshops. Overall, skills that students may practice include reading to self, reading to others, specific handwriting

principals, free writing or drawing, listening, computer skills, puzzles, and phonics manipulatives. Students rotate to all five workshops by the end of each day s designated hour for daily five . The classroom library is stored on shelves in the open classroom. Books are sorted into bins based on thematic literary unit or month. Books in the month bins go out onto the students bookshelf for free reading. They have the same collection of books available to them for free reading time for the entire month. The other books are read-aloud or PAWS program books. Children also have a collection of leveled readers in their individual book boxes, and they use these leveled readers during workshops time. Students have time to utilize the school library once each week, too. The free choice books offer students a variety of topics and skill levels to select from. There are about 50 books on the shelf for the month, and many of the books are relevant to the month and its events. Most of the books are fiction illustrated picture books. There are not really any bilingual books that I have seen so far, but some of the books are relevant to the non-mainstream. There were a few books mixed in with the October library about Rosh Hashanah and Da de Los Muertes. Besides that, much of the texts have animals and don t have too many people characters for evaluating multicultural value. The classroom is an overall positive environment. Mrs. Braun uses positive reinforcement of good behavior to motivate other students to perform well. There are negative climate aspects, too, that are used when it is appropriate to deal with a particularly disruptive student. Students are given lots of choices, and most activities are instructed so that students can be independent and guide their own activities. They have options at each workshop to decide what they would like to do and they have creative freedoms in all of the choice activities. Students are allowed to take risks because the teacher will generally let them do as they please as long as they are following rules, and she will occasionally wander around and give positive feedback to those who are behaving well. She does not criticize their work, but rather looks for on-track behavior. 2. Describe how reading is taught in the classroom. About 120 min. per day are devoted specifically to reading. The daily five , which is primarily small group or individual reading, constitutes 75 of those minutes. Independent reading is 15 minutes and PAWS is 30 minutes. Phonics practice is a listening and reciting activity that takes up about 10 minutes each day. During writing, students are also given activities to help them with phonemic awareness. Fluency is covered during individual lit circle groups that meet during the daily five with Mrs. Braun, and vocabulary is taught then, too. In writing, new writing vocabulary is put up on the smart board, and a new writing word is added each week. Comprehension is emphasized during the morning reading mini lesson. Reading is taught using a basal reader for the morning mini lesson and phonics, and daily five is a readers and writers workshop. Read-aloud is teacher-selected and is usually a book from the Junie B. Jones series if not a book relevant to another lesson. During small group and independent reading the teacher is usually preparing things for other lessons, working with a small lit circle, or walking around checking to see that students

are on task. During these times, students are either listening quietly, taking part in a discussion, or working at a workshop. Students have pencils, crayons, and notebooks for writing, there are handwriting worksheets, students have leveled readers for their book boxes, and they keep all of these materials in their plastic book bins. Students are grouped in their rotating workshop groups heterogeneously, and when Mrs. Braun pulls students out of their rotation to do small lit groups they are grouped by reading ability level. PAWS reading is based off of three different skill levels: below, meets, exceeds. 3. Describe how writing is taught in the classroom. Writing is taught out of the Lucy Caukins unit planning series. Writing is based off of lessons from the series and taught casually on the carpet. Students then go to their seats at the table and are given their writing folders. Students must initially draw a picture in the designated space taking up about three-quarters of the workseet and use the remaining one-fourth to write. Then students must go back and add details to their drawing and consequently add details to their writing. The folder is split up into two pockets: green and red. The green pocket is blank writing worksheets and pieces that are still in progress. The red folder pocket is for finished product pieces that have been worked on and revised more than once. Students also do daily handwriting worksheets and free journal writing during daily five . Students must complete the handwriting worksheet while at the green workshop, however their journals are their own creative domain and most students draw in their journals rather than write. A select few of the highly skilled students can fill up an entire page of neat, logical, fullsentence writing. About 40 minutes is spent on writing each day. 4. Meeting Diverse Needs Mrs. Braun takes much consideration into differentiating instruction and classroom protocol for students with special needs. English language learners are generally seated close to the center of the room, close to instruction, and seated near kids who will not talk during instruction. Students with aids are seated on the outside of the carpet and at the ends of group tables for easy access. Our student with a sever vision impairment sits close to the chalkboard and at the front of the carpet. His worksheets are all enlarged and bolded, and he uses a marker rather than a pencil when writing. He has Braille labels on his book box, seat at the table, spot on the carpet, locker, and on other belongings of his that might get confused with other students possessions. Squirmy or distracting children are placed near the back of the carpet and the outsides of the room so that their behavior is not the center of attention for the other kids and they have room to move if they so need. The school offers vision and hearing specialists, pull-out ESL instruction, individual aid time, social services, and specialized reading and speech for students who need and whose parents so chose to have them utilize these services. Free or discounted lunch is offered to families who are eligible for the service, and students may eat breakfast at school for a reduced fare, too. Field trips and other classroom costs may be aided by the PTA for those who cannot afford these extras for their student. School

supplies are shared by the entire class and are donated by students and their families rather than demanded. Students bring in snack for their classmates, too, and if it is not doable for a family to provide snack for the class the schocol has extra snacks available for all classes. The school supports diversity in its generally fair ways of splitting up classes and students who are in special services and skilled reading groups. ESL specialists speak a variety of languages, including Korean and Polish, which offer instruction that other ESL programs lack. The school is decorated with international flags and posters that encourage friendship and caring to all.

Teacher Interview Questions: y y y y Letter recognition reading assessments have been administered Writing assessments are not a factor in kindergarten He often writes his name and draws pictures of a television set. Exauce is good at speaking. He has trouble listening to directions sometimes. He is very loud and has close personal proximity. He can recognize all of his letters and knows their sounds and can sound out words with help. He has not shown that he can read a book on his own. He has strong writing skills and does well in writers workshop. He writes out the first letter sound and can use words from the board. Exauce needs to be better at listening. He could also afford to talk less and do his work more. He is constantly talking through directions and chatting, distracting his classmates and not getting his own work done. Sometimes there is no way to tell he understands how to do something because he barely gets past starting it. His word and letter recognition is on level but he will work on comprehension more than the other students when in individual ELL pull-out time. Watch for interaction with peers and reading to a peer or reading to self. Much of what he knows will be reflected more in a setting where he is comfortable and not under pressure. Being a fly on the wall can offer more information than a child will directly say to your face.

Observing Focal Student September 21, 2011 Student knows names of other children. Lead table in naming each child s name and clapped out sounds of names. Asked each child how to spell his or her name. I didn t saw you. Did you see me? Initiated learning colors strong emphasis on learning correct pronunciation. No need to recite alphabet in connect-the-dot alphabet activity. Could perform silently and accurately. Most other students needed to verbalize the alphabet to perform the task. Did very well at following directions at the table and on the carpet. Raises hand and waits to be called on. Does not shout out answers. Excited to be at the listening center. Likes to hear stories and music from the earphones. September 28, 2011 Wrote name on morning work quickly and correctly. Had to be reminded to start working on content of paper. Never got past touching pencil to paper. Wrote nothing because of talking to peers at group table. Pulled out of class for ESL small group session. Is part of group of about ten kindergarteners in their gathering. Came back in room during reading lesson on guessing words inside a book based on the cover art and title. Raised hand for question and answered correctly. Went to first reading center and drew colorful pictures in notebook and took up several pages writing name. Flipped through many leveled readers quickly at next workshop. Showed pictures to peers in workshop group. Pointed to pictures and said Look at this. It s red. , etc. Snack break. Justin Bieber is hot! Miss Yo is hot too. Miss Yo, you hot.

Interviewing Focal Student

Reading Conferences

Collecting Data on Reading Exauce did a good job of getting through the text and being confident in his answers. His score of 10/26 on the Stones reading assessment would give the impression that his reading skills are on the low side, however he was able to read the text very fluently. He lost points for not knowing the meaning of punctuation symbols such as quotation marks and the comma. Also, he lost points for acknowledging that one of the pages text was up-sidedown but not changing the location on the page where he said he would begin and end reading. He was unable to read this specific page as well. When Exauce was unable to answer my questions or was unable to read a page in the book, he did not become discouraged right away. After several pages of not knowing how to answer my questions, he shut down and got quiet, but for the most part he remained confident and optimistic in his abilities to complete the activity.

Analyzing Student Data Exauce should focus on selecting books at an appropriate reading level for himself and begin to practice reading the words of a book. During my first reading conference with Exauce, he identified several of the words in the S book, but was unable to identify words on pages where he could not identify the subject of the photograph on the page. During my second reading conference with Exauce, he selected a very challenging book and was did not read a majority of the text. When prompted to read a line of the text, he was able to sound out a few words, but it appeared that an entire page of the small, elaborate text was too daunting for him. He has the ability to read letters and words, sound out words, and even give the meaning of a word, demonstrating great comprehension, but the text he selected cripples his abilities to practice these skills. With the correct literature selections, he could read alone for comprehension rather than simply look at the pictures. Exauce should use at least two of the word wall words in each writing piece and work to write at least two other full words in each writing piece. He knows how to sound out words when prompted and can create a letter based on what sound he used when pronouncing a word, but he does not initially write full words without teacher help. Exauce knows to use the word wall when asked by the teacher where to look for those words. He knows how to write his letters well and he should begin to start attempting to form full sentences or thoughts.