At Rivertree Elementary in Mrs. Lowry's Kindergarten class, there are fifteen beautiful, diverse children ready to tackle the day. In our classroom, we have students from all over the county with some students living right up the road from the school to some of the students having to ride the bus for more than an hour each way. Two of our students, Philip and Josh, have siblings in the EELP program because they are deaf with Phillip and his brother riding the ESE bus an hour each way. Blake is still struggling with behavioral issues in class, but now has a one-on-one aid to assist him day to day. This simple accommodation has really made an impact on the overall classroom community. Mrs. Lowry is able to focus on the class as a whole and other students who are struggling as well as work with Blake rather than having to focus solely on keeping Blake's behavior in check. Going forward this semester I have done a spelling inventory and a sight words assessment and I am concerned with the class as a whole (with the exception of Philip who is in need of enrichment in these areas) in both of these areas. I have been able to divide the class into the students who need intervention, the students who are at the core (but still need some practice) and the couple of students who need enrichment in these areas. I intend to focus on differentiating language arts instruction so that every student has the potential to succeed.
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In this lesson, I introduced labeling in nonfiction text. I read the book Bugs to the students while showing them the labeling on the pictures and pointing out predetermined vocabulary words: head, thorax, abdomen, and antennae.
Reflection: For this lesson, I chose the book Bugs because it was recommended to me by my cooperative teacher to use to teach this lesson. The Kindergarten classes are currently working on nonfiction text as well discussing insects in science and my cooperative teacher and I wanted to keep the students on track with their unit objectives. This book complimented my goals by having clearly labeled pictures of insects which allowed for me to continually model reading labels in nonfiction texts. Additionally, I found that most of the students were engaged in the text because of the interesting facts that were presented. I noted that after my lesson was done and my cooperating teacher asked the students what facts they thought were interesting, most of them were able to name at least one. The knowledge that I have gained from Teaching Children’s Literature was so valuable to me in developing and putting this lesson into practice. Before I have fully decided on reading Bugs I evaluated the text using the criteria in the Huck textbook and found that it was quality children’s nonfiction. (Not to say my cooperative teacher would ever steer me wrong!) Additionally, before I taught the lesson, I practiced reading the text to my husband and dog, focusing on fluency and intonation. Finally, I was sure to ask open-ended questions throughout the read aloud to drive home the intended learning goal. All of these aspects I have learned throughout Teaching Children’s Literature. Analysis: Overall, I think my lesson went well. Based on the feedback that I received from both my supervisor and from my cooperating teacher, I think this was the best lesson I have taught so far. The students seemed to be genuinely engaged in the text and were looking at the pictures and labels to be able to point out differences in the insects. The pre-reading activities, in my opinion, was the strongest point in the lesson. Anytime the students are able to move their bodies to help learn a definition, they seem to be more engaged in the lesson. One of the challenges I did face though was having to have one of my students removed from the lesson because he was starting to throw a fit. I was however grateful that the ESE specialist was in the room to assist me. I also made the mistake of allowing students to get up out of their squares to come and point to the book and then towards the end trying to keep them in their seats. Looking back, I should have chosen one or the other and been consistent. I am constantly amazed at how fast we move in Kindergartenland. The students are really confident in the daily schedule. The students move to RTI time with ease and are transitioning with little problems. Everyday, they practice the elements of the calendar through student-led calendar time. They are still doing music and motion to reinforce concepts like phonemes, letter identification, and numbers. I can connect this to Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences that we have learned in Educational Psychology. The students have moved past building stamina to listening to reading and responding to the text. In writing, they have been learning why we should write and the thinking behind writing and some things that we think, while we write. I can connect this to what we have been learning in Educational Psychology about metacognition. Metacognition is simply thinking about thinking. In teaching metacognition, the teacher models their thought process while they are doing a task like prewriting. Over the past two weeks I have taught a read aloud lesson that focused on vocabulary and I was able to incorporate hand motions to be inclusive to kinesthetic learners. I was able to connect this to Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences that we learned about in Educational Psychology. Throughout the last two weeks, I have assessed students on list one of sight words. I was really impressed with how much Josh has grown. Since the beginning of the school year, he now knows seven of his sight words and is using strategies to sound out the words he does not know. I am very concerned with Brittney's progress, she was only able to identify two sight words and is using no strategies to sound out words. Blake's behavior is quickly getting worse and his outbursts are growing more random and don't necessarily seem to be related to anything like overstimulation.
Going forward, I am going to do some research in strategies to help with students with Autism like Blake. Something in this situation has to give. Additionally, I am going to start to work with Brittney more frequently and see if we can work on some strategies to figure out words. Reflective Questions What does the research state about Autism and behavior? How can I help support growth in reading with Brittney? 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? I seriously cannot believe how much I have learned in the past two weeks, I feel like I have made leaps and bounds in my pedagogy! In Mrs. Lowry's classroom, we are focusing on handwriting and learning sight words in writing and reading. In math, we are focusing on numbers one through five. Mrs. Lowry is continuing to do read-aloud frequently throughout the day and she even let me do one! I am building connections with the students and I really feel like they are learning to trust me as a sort of teacher.
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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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