Read AloudsThe article "Maximizing the Effectiveness of Reading Aloud" by Holly Lane and Tyran Wright discusses the benefits of reading aloud to students and explains how to effectively get the most out of your read aloud time. The article talks about how research shows that reading aloud to students increases vocabulary, increases listening comprehension, and promotes syntactic development. The article also examines how to get the most out of this time. To do this, the teacher must evaluate whether or not they are choosing quality literature and literature that aligns with what they are intending to teach. The authors also talk about how a read aloud should be done. Specifically, the author talks about immediate and nonimmediate talks. Immediate talk is specifically answering questions about the text and labeling pictures. Nonimmediate talk goes beyond the text and revolves around word meanings, predictions, and textual connections. The author suggests that both of these should be used. Fantasy TextIn chapter 5 of Children's Literature: A Brief Guide, the author discusses fantasy text. The overall theme of the chapter is that quality fantasy, while existing in imaginary worlds, still often speaks to real life difficulties that people face every day. The author describes each subgenre of fantasy and then explains how to evaluate fantasy. Fantasy should follow the rules of fiction. One of the main concerns is that the author makes the story believable to the reader. Additional detail has to be considered for the setting and to the logic that surrounds the story.
The assignment was to create a social media post about your chosen book. I chose Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling and to present it on Instagram.
Today, I worked collaboratively with Mrs. Fredette on coming up with lesson activities to do with Informational picture books who was dr. seuss? by Janet Pascal & Illustrated by Nancy HarrisonDuring Dr. Seuss week, the students will read this illustrated biography about Dr. Seuss. Afterward, they will collaboratively to create a Facebook Page based on the information they have gathered from the text using the provided template. Danger! Children at work By Sharon Franklin![]() Students will read the text and then create a cause and effect chart based on information found in the text. Titanic The story lives on! By laura Driscoll & Illustrated by Bob KayganichAfter reading the text, either cooperatively or to themselves, students will write a front page newspaper article about the Titanic sinking including important facts and an accurate timeline based on the text. Great Migrations: Elephants By Laura MarshFor this text, we would collectively read the text as a class, taking notes of key details in the text. The students would work in pairs to create a diorama of an elephant's environment accompanied with a paragraph describing what they have created. Then they would present them to the rest of the class.
I am still amazed at how quickly things move here in Kindergartenland, for not only the students but for me as well! The students are working on building read to self stamina and they are up to ten minutes! They are still working on learning their sight words and creating simple sentences using them and well as learning new reading strategies such as decoding pictures and key details. In math, the students are working on ordering numbers 1-10. I have taught a one-on-one lesson with Josh on letter identification, and a whole group lesson on hearing. I have also started doing our classes morning message and doing a morning read aloud. This week I will be doing a whole group science lesson on sorting by shapes.
I have administered a vocabulary assessment to Australia and was only able to get through half of it because she lost stamina. However, she is doing better during read to self time. Josh and Brittney are still struggling with letter identification and I'm excited to see if the lesson plans I've come up with will be helpful to them. Reflective Questions How can I create small group lesson plans that will support Josh and Brittney? How can I help Australia build stamina? Probably most important is the accuracy of the information stated in the books. Questioning the author's authority on the subject is important here too. The information presented should be up-to-date and should include all the significant facts. As always the text should avoid stereotypes. Content and perspective should consider the why's of they book and when evaluating the text, we should be questioning why the text is written, who the text is written for, and how the facts in the text interact with other perspectives. With regard to the style of the text, it is important that the text is clear and direct while also using vivid language and presenting strategies to catch the reader's attention. The text should be structured well and provide reference aids where it is thought they would be needed. Finally, the illustrations are an extension of the text and can drive home important facts about the topic being discussed. Additionally, the text needs to be aesthetically pleasing and appropriate for the target audience.
This is a picture of my group's Tableau from the book Marisol McDonald Doesn't Match: Marisol McDonald no combina by Monica Brown and illustrated by Sara Palacios. In this Tableau, we are depicting the transformation of Marisol starting with her happy being mismatched, to, after she was criticized by her peers, matching, to encouragement from her teacher to be herself, and finally Marisol's acceptance of mismatched self.
Reflection In the article "Critical Literacy: A questioning stance and possibility for change" by Cynthia McDaniel the author provokes the question, "do students learn to read or read to learn?" That is an important distinction. If students are just learning to read, most students wouldn't need to continue their education past the first grade. However, if students read to learn, really learn and not just to regurgitate facts found by skimming through the text, they will have the opportunity to develop their own thoughts and beliefs about society. McDaniel's article essentially breaks down into two parts. The first being allowing students to read text that goes against the status quo rather than having them read text that supports the dominant ideology. The second being having students respond to text in a meaningful way rather than having them just word vomit facts about the text. I've been in the classroom for almost a whole month and I still can't believe how much is changing and how much not only the students are learning, but how much I am too! Mrs. Lowry has asked me to take two students to work one-on-one with to work on letter identification and phoneme awareness. One of the students, Brittney, has no current ability to recognize letters and the other student, Josh, can recognize about half of the letters in the alphabet. I play letter games with them in order to help them make gains in this area. I'm really excited for this opportunity and I'm hoping that what we're doing together would help. As a class, we have been working on sight words and constructing sentences with those words. In math, we've been working on comparing numbers using greater than, less than, and equal to. In science, we have been working on senses and Mrs. Lowry has asked me to teach a lesson on hearing this week!
I have administered phoneme awareness and spelling assessments for Australia and my concerns are shifting to her lack of stamina, but I also know I need to collect more data. I can connect this to my Educational Psychology class where we have talked about being researchers in the classroom. Through research and data collection, I can help to make instructional decisions. I have taken to working one-on-one with Blake throughout the day and he seems to be responding. Last week, he and I were working on a sight word worksheet and he started to get frustrated because I couldn't understand what he was saying. Before it escalated I apologized for not listening better and asked him if he needed to go to his calming corner and he instantly calmed down, gave me a hug and said, "It's okay Mrs. Randolph! I love you!" and continued to work diligently for the rest of the activity. Going forward, I would like to see what I can do to assist in keeping Blake calm throughout the day. I would also see what we can do to increase Australia's stamina, and see what unique mini-lessons Mrs. Lowry and I can come up with for Brittney and Josh to support them. Reflective Question How can I use our small group time to support Josh and Brittney in letter identification and phoneme awareness? What can I do to increase Australia's stamina in reading? Reflection
Today in class we learned about quality contemporary realistic fiction is a vital staple for the classroom library. Contemporary realistic fiction reflects on life and helps children understand things like self acceptance, problems that people face, or reactions and consequences of situations. Additionally, children can connect with characters in contemporary realistic fiction and glean a feeling of comradery. Evaluating quality contemporary relistic fiction is also incredibly important. It is important that the text is examined for racism, sexism, cultural stereotypes or inaccuracies, and ableism, just to name a few. It is also important to look at the author and what authoritative stance they are able to take on the subject they are writing on. Using the criteria from the article "Building Arab Americans’ Cultural Identity and Acceptance With Children’s Literature" by Tami Craft Al-Hazza and Katherine T. Bucher and adapting Arab Americans to Deaf Americans, this can be an effective tool to evaluate my selected text this week. Evaluating the book El Deafo written and illustrated by Cece Bell, the author wrote the book to reflect on her own childhood growing up deaf. The Newberry Award winning graphic novel is extremely well written. Cece (the main character) exhibits characteristics of any other girl in society, she enjoys playing, wants to have friends, and even has a crush on a boy in school. The author includes different ways that hearing people (mostly inadvertently) make Deaf culture foux pas. For example, shouting, speaking super slowly, trying to force ASL, and many others. The author also displays the different stuggles that many deaf students could relate to like feelings of isolation, embarrassment that everyone is looking at them, ect. Overall, El Deafo is a quality piece of contemporary realistic fiction and I would love to use it in my classroom one day. |
Mrs. randolph*For the purposes of this blog, all student and faculty names have been changed to protect their privacy. All identifying information has been removed.* Archives
March 2017
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