Kayleigh ScannellEDU572Professor WarhamReadings from Diagnostic Teaching of Reading, by Barbra J. WalkerLearning Log Chapter 10
“Teacher development is viewed as an active process where the teachers engage in instruction and reflection in order to advance their understanding of teaching reading.”
During my two different student teacher placements I have had the opportunity to attend many teacher/professional development seminars. I was able to learn from my cooperating teacher and her colleagues. I was given the opportunity to learn how they work, for instance usually there is a speaker that opens and introduces the topic of the meetings. He or she usually brings handouts of information for everyone to take with them. Following the distribution, groups are formed to discuss their practices and questions for the speaker. Within the group there is usually a task that requires the teachers to work collaboratively to come up with some teaching strategies. Then the presenter will redirect the attention and ask each group to discuss their findings. Lastly, a question and answer segment follows. These teaching development seminars are extremely beneficial because it allows the teacher to share their experiences and learn new instruction.
“When instructional decisions are made, sometimes the literacy coach models the classroom instruction so that the teacher can see “instruction in action” and observe students’ responses to the instructional activities.”
I agree this is a very helpful approach to help teach teachers how to effectively connect with their students. The reading coach is the expert and having the opportunity to bounce ideas off of him/her is very helpful. Also by having the opportunity to teach in front of a literacy coach is great tool because he/she can provide adequate feedback that will aid in your future instruction. It will also be great because the literacy coach can provide new and effective reading strategies to incorporate into lesson plans and unit plans.
“In the initial interaction that occurred between one literacy coach and a classroom teacher, they developed collaborative interactions to jointly solve problem issues in classroom learning.”
The ultimate goal is to work collaboratively to help plan and problem solve issues in the classroom. The literacy coach and the classroom teacher should be able to bring different perspectives to the classroom yet; they should feed off of each other and grow. At my first student teaching placement at Emmet Belknap, I was a CT and I worked in many classes. I started the day with science, then English, next was social studies, math, health, and lastly study hall. I co-taught with all of these teachers and some days I would teacher the lesson and other days they would. Overall, it was a very nice balance and it work out nicely for the students.
“Besides student learning, a feature of teacher development includes forming collaborative groups that share their knowledge and practice with each other.”
Like stated about in response one, collaborative groups are a part of teacher development because it provides the teacher time to share their teaching experiences. This is very helpful because teachers can hear what works and what does not; the teachers compare their teaching strategies. Teachers also steal and/or borrow teaching strategies from one another. Teachers also find ways to tweak or adjust strategies that were not successful in the past.
“In fact, many literacy coaches are talking the lead in forming Early Intervening Teams of the Response to Intervention Initiative in Special Education.”
I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to attend an “Innovative Response to Intervention (RTI) Practices” seminar on Tuesday night. It was hosted at Niagara University by the Phi Delta Kappa Chapter 047. Here we learned about the three tier process and the appropriate steps to take before referring students to special education. Jim Wright, the speaker, emphasized how important literacy is and the strategies used to help correct some students who struggle in certain areas. The goal is to catch the weaker struggling learners and provide them with services that can help push them back on track.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Learning Log Chapter 9
Kayleigh Scannell
EDU572
Professor Warham
Readings from Diagnostic Teaching of Reading, by Barbra J. Walker
Learning Log Chapter 9
“Knowledge about instructional materials allows teachers and students to make changes that can advance student reading performances”.
There are many instructional materials also known as resources that can be found quickly yet are very helpful. Resources provide explanations and examples that aid to the learning. For instance, the student that I am working with is a seventh grader but his frustration level was that of a fifth grader. He needs some extra help and guidance to help him improve his reading. When creating my lesson plans I felt that I had to change some of my instructional materials and strategies because I thought my student needed work in one specific area but instead he need work in a few different areas; therefore I changed the focus of my lessons to add more instructional materials to aid his weaknesses.
“Chapter books do not have an instructional manual, nor are they designated to a specific grade level”.
I like chapter books because they are catered towards the middle school and junior high school age levels. The student I am working with is a low reader but he is very sensitive. I feel that he should not be embarrassed at what he is reading, he should be happy about what he is reading. I do not want him to feel different because he has to read lower level book in front of the other kids so I was able to use chapter books. This helped drastically with his confidence because he felt as if what he was reading was the same as the other kids.
“Social studies topics are found in various places on the Internet; however, newspaper and current events Web sites are exceptionally useful for middle and high school”.
What I did my second student teaching placement at Niagara Falls High School, I taught social studies. I would always be searching the internet to create lesson plans and homework assignments. I remember doing an internet assignment based on the presidential election. I had the students work on the computer to find different articles about their selected candidate and research their stances on certain issues. The class was able to find the information on the internet and we used the internet research to defend our classroom debate. The internet is a critical tool in school especially in Social Studies classes.
“The diagnostic teacher evaluates the type of material she is using and considers factors that will help her match the material to the instructional level, interests, and needs of the reading”.
The goal is to find something that the student will like that matches the instructional level and needs of the reader. This can be a difficult task depending on the student. Most students that are struggling to read do not really know what types of books they like they simply just tell you what they are interested in and hopefully you can find a book or even better a book series. I would always try to find a few books that are compatible with the appropriate reading levels and then have the student choose.
“The Fry readability graph is based on the number of syllables in a word and the number of words in a sentence. It is easy to use and provides an estimate of the reading level of the text.”
I have used this method to analyze a student’s readability level before. It is accurate, quick, and very practical because it only calls for 100 words and a stop watch. In my personal opinion, the hardest part of doing assessment is finding the time to do them for every student. That is one reason why I highly recommend using this method. For instance a teacher could assess her entire class by doing an around the world read a loud by timing his/her students read.
EDU572
Professor Warham
Readings from Diagnostic Teaching of Reading, by Barbra J. Walker
Learning Log Chapter 9
“Knowledge about instructional materials allows teachers and students to make changes that can advance student reading performances”.
There are many instructional materials also known as resources that can be found quickly yet are very helpful. Resources provide explanations and examples that aid to the learning. For instance, the student that I am working with is a seventh grader but his frustration level was that of a fifth grader. He needs some extra help and guidance to help him improve his reading. When creating my lesson plans I felt that I had to change some of my instructional materials and strategies because I thought my student needed work in one specific area but instead he need work in a few different areas; therefore I changed the focus of my lessons to add more instructional materials to aid his weaknesses.
“Chapter books do not have an instructional manual, nor are they designated to a specific grade level”.
I like chapter books because they are catered towards the middle school and junior high school age levels. The student I am working with is a low reader but he is very sensitive. I feel that he should not be embarrassed at what he is reading, he should be happy about what he is reading. I do not want him to feel different because he has to read lower level book in front of the other kids so I was able to use chapter books. This helped drastically with his confidence because he felt as if what he was reading was the same as the other kids.
“Social studies topics are found in various places on the Internet; however, newspaper and current events Web sites are exceptionally useful for middle and high school”.
What I did my second student teaching placement at Niagara Falls High School, I taught social studies. I would always be searching the internet to create lesson plans and homework assignments. I remember doing an internet assignment based on the presidential election. I had the students work on the computer to find different articles about their selected candidate and research their stances on certain issues. The class was able to find the information on the internet and we used the internet research to defend our classroom debate. The internet is a critical tool in school especially in Social Studies classes.
“The diagnostic teacher evaluates the type of material she is using and considers factors that will help her match the material to the instructional level, interests, and needs of the reading”.
The goal is to find something that the student will like that matches the instructional level and needs of the reader. This can be a difficult task depending on the student. Most students that are struggling to read do not really know what types of books they like they simply just tell you what they are interested in and hopefully you can find a book or even better a book series. I would always try to find a few books that are compatible with the appropriate reading levels and then have the student choose.
“The Fry readability graph is based on the number of syllables in a word and the number of words in a sentence. It is easy to use and provides an estimate of the reading level of the text.”
I have used this method to analyze a student’s readability level before. It is accurate, quick, and very practical because it only calls for 100 words and a stop watch. In my personal opinion, the hardest part of doing assessment is finding the time to do them for every student. That is one reason why I highly recommend using this method. For instance a teacher could assess her entire class by doing an around the world read a loud by timing his/her students read.
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