Literacy Project One: Reflection

I have really enjoyed working with A thus far and being able to reflect on her capabilities as a writer.  A is a student who loves to write, and is very proficient at it.  Although the writing that I reviewed for this project was a prompted piece, A has explained in conversation that she really enjoys writing.  At this time she is working on a scary story for her friend who is moving away.  Knowing this new information makes me realize that the lesson we chose for her is especially appropriate, as this is the main activity of the lesson. 

There was a question in my blog responses asking if I feel that spelling or juicy words are more important to focus on.  At this point in her writing, I believe that the better selection of adjectives, nouns, and verbs would most improve her writing; the spelling would be done in the editing phase before her writing was published.  A is a very proficient reader, reads daily, and sets personal reading goals.  Through this reading of high level books, such as Harry Potter and Little House on the Prairie, A's writing skills will continue to improve as she sees examples of descriptive writing. 

For my lesson plan, I would add a step of shared demonstration from Routman's Optimal Learning Model. 
IV. Instructional Strategies
1. Teacher will explain the purpose and meaning of descriptive vocabulary including the utilization of the five senses.
2. Teacher will show a list of ordinary words and ask students to provide synonyms to make these words more descriptive.  Chart of these words will be created.3. Have student brainstorm ten each of: sights, sounds, objects, emotions, and creepy names that could be associated with a scary Halloween situation.  Teacher will encourage the use of concrete words and descriptive adjectives.  Student will write the words on index cards and sort into appropriate piles (i.e. emotions, adjectives, etc.)
4. Give the story prompt of: One dark, stormy night I walked down the street and saw... (or she can create her own).
5. Student needs to use 20 words from the index cards in her story and can only use the common words of said, yelled, scared, and spooky once.

I look forward to further working with A and watching her writing continue to improve.

$500 Bills

Yesterday while I was at my main placement, two of my students were debating over whether a $500 bill existed.  To settle the debate I told them that I would look it up for them while at music. 

 My master teacher was out of school at a meeting and had taken her computer with her.  Luckily I had my iPhone in the classroom and I was able to look up not only a picture of a $500 bill, but find out the history behind it, including that it hasn't been produced since the 1940's.  When my class came back from music I was able to use the document camera to show the photo of the bill and to encourage my class to look information up on the internet or ask their parents to. 

My 5 and 9-year-old daughters are constantly asking me questions that I have no answer to (such as how a cat purrs), and I am so grateful for Google!  We learn about so many things that we would not have otherwise. 

Class #3: Gapminder

This week in Math we were able to finish and view everyone's Gapminder posters.  I learned so much about presenting data in different ways, and also how everyone's interpretations and presentations were different.  For instance, I enjoyed graphs that were basic and provided all of the information.  I would get overwhelmed on the posters that were very busy.  But that is just my style, everyone has their own preferences. 

The question I have is: How much time would you have a Gapminder project go on with elementary or middle school students?  How do we fit in a lenghty project like this when we are given a math pacing guide that tells exactly which lesson you should be on each day?

I see this as a useful project to use in a classroom.  When viewing the standards for 5th grade, line graphs is among them.  I believe that using Gapminder would be a memorable experience and would give more ownership and meaning to the data and graphs the children produced. 

Literacy Project One: Analysis & Lesson Plan

I. Analysis
1. Meaning
In her piece, The Chatty Dog, A is writing about her dog, Boomer in a fictional setting where Boomer is able to talk.  As this was a prompted piece, I would like to see more examples of her unprompted writing to look for meaning.
2. Six Traits
a. Ideas and Content
5A The topic is narrow & manageable: A's topic is one day in the life of her dog who could talk, plus the following morning when his voice was gone.
5B Relevant, telling details: “He was singing his favorite tune, ‘Who Let the Dogs Out?’”
5C Accurate details: the dog screamed, sang, and laughed
5D Writing from knowledge or experience: included her dog’s personality: “He stupidly yelled, ‘Feed me!’”
3E Reader is left with questions: How was the dog able to talk?  Why was it just for one day?
5F Insight: the only thing that changed was that the dog talked, he continued to do his regular activities such as eat and go outside.
b. Organization
5A Inviting introduction & satisfying conclusion: “I blinded my eyes…” “I would never forget…”
5B Thoughtful transitions: “within seconds”, “after”, “when”, “once”.
5C Sequencing is logical & effective: the story takes place through the progression of a day.
3D Pacing is fairly well controlled: A needs to elaborate and provide more details for each activity.
3E Title is uninspired/inaccurate: the title is My Dog is Chatty, but the dog actually speaks relatively little in the story.
5F Matches purpose & audience: paragraphs are split by page.
c. Voice
5A Selection of relevant details: writing paints a clear picture: “Instead of going to do his business, he started singing and rolling in the fluffy white snow.  He had a horrible singing voice!”  A does a good job at using the right amount of details.  As Routman states in Writing Essentials, "Voice is in the details--but details that show the real person and the story behind the words, not just details for the sake of adding more words, transitions, or sentence variety" (Routman, 2005).
5B Arrangement of ideas: ideas are sequential and all related to the topic
3C Writer occasionally reveals personal details: the author needs to talk more about her emotions.
3E Writing does not reflect a unique perspective: A needs to add more emotions, discussing how she and Boomer feel in this story.
d. Word Choice
5A Words are specific & accurate: “He loudly screamed.  It sounded like a horror movie scream.”
3B Familiar words and phrases: multiple use of the word “jumped.”
5C Natural, effective, appropriate language: “When he stopped jumping, he ran around the house in circles.”
3D Passive nouns and everyday verbs: “got used to”, “jumped”, “yelled”, “mad”.
5E Language enhances meaning: “He zoomed past me…”
3F Language looks like first thing that popped into her mind: needs to use a thesaurus to correct passive nouns and everyday verbs (see 3D).
e. Sentence Fluency
5A Sentences underscore and enhance meaning: “Then, right in my face, right there, right then he stupidly yelled, “Feed me!”
5B Sentences vary in length and structure
5C Purposeful & variety sentence beginnings: “On”, “Once”, “Then”, “That”, “Now”.
5D Creative & appropriate transitions: “within seconds”, “once”, “when”.
3E Parts are stiff & awkward: “The next morning, he didn’t talk, he just barked.  Since he was talking I knew what he wanted.”
f. Conventions
3A Spelling is usually correct: needs to fix “grabbed”, “tired”, “business”, “stopped”.
3B End punctuation usually correct: needs to indent when characters are speaking
5C Capitalization: she capitalizes proper nouns and the beginning of a sentence.
5D Grammar is correct: “Instead of doing his business,…”
5E Paragraphing: ideas are split by paragraph and page.
3F Moderate editing needed.
3. Ownership
A has professed to love writing, but at this time we are needing more information to determine her preferences for topic and genre.  When discussing this piece with her, we discovered that it was based on a prompt, but that she also enjoyed writing it and was proud of her piece.
4. Spelling Development
In regards to spelling, A is at a very high level.  When given the Elementary Spelling Inventory 1, the only word missed was opposition (opizition).  When my partner and I gave her the Examiner Word Lists, she scored 100% on the third, fifth, and sixth grade tests; 95% on the fourth and upper middle school test; and a 75% on the high school level test.  While she scored very well on these tests, she did make errors in her written piece.  It will be important for A to focus on correcting these spelling errors before publishing, because as Routman states, "having a spelling consciousness means valuing correct spelling as a courtesy to the reader" (Routman, 2005).  She had trouble with the doubling of consonants when adding an –ed (stopped, hopping, grabbed).  She also made a few mistakes that make me wonder if she was just rushing during the writing or editing process, such as spelling the word “slowly” two different ways.

II. Lesson Plan

 I. Objectives
To utilize descriptive language and emotion in her writing

II. Standards
3.2.2 Uses language appropriate for a specific audience and purpose.  Uses precise words (e.g., vivid verbs —screeched, hovered, absorbed; specific nouns — granite, longhouse, cedar).

1.1.1 Applies more than one strategy for generating ideas and planning writing.

III. Materials
Notecards
Pencil
Thesarus

IV. Instructional Strategies
1. Teacher will explain the purpose and meaning of descriptive vocabulary including the utilization of the five senses.
2. Have student brainstorm ten each of: sights, sounds, objects, emotions, and creepy names that could be associated with a scary Halloween situation.  Teacher will encourage the use of concrete words and descriptive adjectives.  Student will write the words on index cards and sort into appropriate piles (i.e. emotions, adjectives, etc.)
3. Give the story prompt of: One dark, stormy night I walked down the street and saw... (or she can create her own).
4. Student needs to use 20 words from the index cards in her story and can only use the common words of said, yelled, scared, and spooky once.

V. Assessment:  At the end of the activity she will write a story using one of the prompts from the brainstorm.  She can use the words: said, yelled, scared, and spooky only once in her story.  She will have to use 20 words from the word bank (juicy words) to portray emotions and add descriptive language.  

iTouch iThoughts

Student E.R. is an ELL student who never remembers his homework, assignment calendar, or Friday Folder.  The first thing that came to mind when I thought about the Touch for E.R. was the ability to track homework and provide reminders.  I think the Touch would be beneficial in keeping him organized.  E.R. is also an ELL student whose parents speak limited English.  One app, "Translator" would be beneficial for me to send notes home to his parents.  E.R.'s parents have very little contact with the school and are not in the classroom, so it would be beneficial for me to video happenings in the classroom including lessons.  I could then set up a blog that is accessible for all students to show to their parents so they can be more involved.  A limitation I see is if E.R. forgets his Touch, which is what often happens with his schoolwork.  I do not think that he has much exposure to the Touch, so I would need to ensure training not just for E.R., but for all students.

J.M. is a student with ADHD.  He is required to go to the nurse's office at a certain time each day, as well as to the Speech department weekly.  The Touch would be a great technology for J.M. to have to provide him with reminders.  J.M. also has a very short attention span and has a hard time with things such as sustained reading or writing.  The stopwatch function would work well to show him how long he had read/written and how much longer he needed to keep going.  The voice recorder would help J.M. practice his speech, and his parents could review the recordings to know what he needs to work on and to help him.

S.Y. is an advanced student who would benefit from additional activities.  In particular I would use apps such as Textropolis, Word Spy, or Chicktionary for spelling and literary challenge and Brain Tuner and Brain Thaw for math.  In general I think S.Y. would like to explore different apps on the Touch.  S.Y. also has a parent who speaks limited English, so I would also be able to use the translate app to send her mom notes in Chinese.

Class #2: Positive & Negative, polynomials with manipulatives

This week I was amazed at the alternative ways to teach by using manipulatives.  When I learned about positive and negative numbers and multiplying polynomials when I was in school, we had to memorize a process, but were never told the logic behind it.  In class this week I was able to see why these processes work.  It was so much easier for me to visualize adding and subtracting the positive and negative numbers with the two different colored beans and making pairs.

The question I have is how long to use the scaffolded methods before moving to teaching the students the theorem or process to use?  For example, my daughter who is in 4th grade came home with homework for multiplying two two-digit numbers together.  The method that was being shown was the grid where you multiply each number by the others and add up the sums.  Two of her friends had shown her how to skip this step and set up an equation like:
  42
x37

Now that she was able to do it the quicker way, she no longer wanted to do homework that took much longer.

The implications this class session had for classroom environments were very clear.  I think it is important that the kids know why a process works and that they can visualize it.  By using the manipulatives, the kids can see and understand why the math works.  It is also best to have multiple ways to explain a problem so that every child can understand.

Math Class #1: Snakes, Gardens, and Rivers

This week I learned more about finding relationships between different situations.  I have always had a hard time with these types of problems, because I don't do well with visualizing situations.  I do better with looking at a sequence of numbers and figuring out how to move from one to another.  It was helpful to have practice with these types of problems and have manipulatives to use to figure them out.

My question is about Cohen's group method.  How often should this approach be used vs. individual work?  Are there times when individual work is more valuable?

The first implication that this class had for our future classrooms was the group work.  I really liked that each person had to be accountable for knowing how to get the answer so each person knew how to solve the problem.  Another implication was having students use manipulatives to show the class how they found their answer, and seeing multiple ways to do the problem.