Week 8 Assignment 3

Candidate’s Name: Gitel Itzkowitz

Grade Level: 1-2

Title of the lesson: How to Sound like a Fluent Reader

Length of the lesson: 1 session

Central focus Students will learn what fluent readers sound like and will learn and practice different strategies on sounding fluent, using clues in the text to work on proper expression and intonation as they read. Key questions: ●      Do students pay attention to clues in the text (for example, punctuation marks) that provide information about how that text should be read? ●      Are students reading passages with a certain emotion, such as sadness or excitement, to emphasize expression and intonation?

Knowledge of students to inform teaching ·      Students should have basic phonemic and phonological awareness, and able to read and write and developmentally appropriate level. ·      Students should have an awareness of feelings and emotions and be able to recognize how one may feel when sounding a certain way.

Common Core State Standards Common Core Learning Standards for ELA and Literacy) CCSS RF 1.3 (Reading: Foundational Skills, Phonics and Word Recognitions) 3. Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words. a. Know the spelling-sound correspondences for common consonant digraphs. b. Decode regularly spelled one-syllable words. g. Recognize and read grade-appropriate irregularly spelled words. CCSS RF 1.4. 4.Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.            b. Read grade-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on    successive readings.

Support literacy development through language (academic language) ●      Identify one language function: Students will analyze and interpret text appropriately while reading, demonstrating ability to sound like fluent reader. ●      Identify a key learning task from your plans that provide students opportunities to practice using the language function: Students will read text aloud, utilizing opportunity to demonstrate sounding like a fluent reader. ●      Describe language demands (written or oral) students need to understand and/or use. Vocabulary ●      General academic terms: analyze, describe, explain, interpret, retell, ●      Content specific vocabulary: fluency, expression, mood Sentence Level Sentence structure, transitions/connectives, recognize punctuation marks and how affect reading Discourse ●      Text structure, conversation, discussion

Learning objectives 1.     Will read passage and understand how to read as if they are talking with proper expression (not sound like a robot) 2.     Will recognize phrase boundaries as they read and label correctly in passage 3.     Will understand how identifying moods of passage helps with reading properly and complete Mood Worksheet.

Formal and informal assessment (including type[s] of assessment and what is being assessed) ●      Listen to students read and observe changes in reading expression and intonation as they reread ●      Review and collect Mood Worksheets to asses understanding of concept ●      Look out for participation and understanding during discussion and activities

Instructional procedure: ●      Introduce lesson by activating knowledge and modeling two ways of reading passage. Choose a book students have been reading recently so that they are familiar with the text. ●      Read first time without expression and intonation. Sound robotic and choppy and exaggerate to get point across. The reread with a lot of expression, paying attention to exclamation points and so on. Explain this can be called a storyteller’s voice. ●      Ask students which way of reading helped them understand and relate to passage better, robotic reading or expressive reading. Explain that fluent reader recognizes how to relate to mood of passage and read with right expression. Define fluent, expression, mood. ●      Have students model reading the selected passage both ways repeatedly as well so they feel the difference. Have them practice sounding like the storyteller in partnerships and small groups. As they listen to each other read, they can give a "thumbs up" if the reader reads with lots of fluency, a "thumbs down" if they need more practice, or a "thumbs in the middle" if they are on their way, but still need a little more practice. They can even evaluate their own fluency. Listen out and observe for assessment. ●      After practicing and recognizing how fluent readers sounds, explain concept of phrase boundaries so students will understand what is going on as fluent readers read. Model a few examples with sentence strips on board and explain that fluent readers put together words to make it sound like they’re talking and not just reading individual words in a choppy fashion. For example have the sentence: ‘“I can jump!” said the grasshopper’, written on sentence strip and then proceed to break it down into phrase boundaries. Model the phrasing like you would read it: "I can jump" Read phrased (smooth and connected with inflections in your voice), but you will naturally stop here because that is the way we speak. There is a very brief pause between phrases when good readers read. Point out how  "said the grasshopper." is read.  This group is said together naturally when we speak. ●      Have students come up and cut up more sentence strips where they feel there is a phrase boundary. They can then mark it in the copies of their text with a pencil. ●      Talk about how different ways of reading with different voices affects our moods. Reading something exciting is read one way and reading something sad is read another. Find instances in the chosen text where they can be written and read as happy, sad, scared, angry, and model how differently they are read. Discuss how reading according to the mood affects understanding of text. How do they know the mood? What about the text led them to come to that conclusion? Was the girl crying, laughing, dancing, sick, fighting, etc.? How do we read something happily? What does an angry voice sound like? ●      Students will analyze the text to identify the mood and then match voice accordingly. They will then write in worksheet the evidence that made them conclude the mood of specific parts of text. Model how to complete worksheet. ●      Hand out worksheets and students can pair up or work alone, depending on ability and interests. ●      After activity is over, review and have students come up and present their findings. Collect worksheets for further assessments. Accommodations and modifications: Visual aids on boards and further assistance and instruction during activities. Collaborative learning is in place during activities as well.

Instructional resources and materials used to engage students in learning. ·       Mood Worksheet ·       Sentence strips ·       Chosen developmentally appropriate text that students are familiar with and is readily available

Reflection ●      Did your instruction support learning for the whole class and the students who need great support or challenge? ●      What changes would you make to support better student learning of the central focus? ●      Why do you think these changes would improve student learning? Support your explanation from evidence of research and/or theory.

Dr. Hui-Yin Hsu Spring 2014

Week 7 - Assignment 5

I conducted the assessments on a first- grade student who native language is English but overall language and literacy development is considered lower than her peers and, according to her teachers, is falling behind. Her print awareness seemed on target and she identified all aspects of the book we read correctly. She seemed able to identify the alphabet letter names with appropriate sound associations such as /d/ is the beginning sound in ‘dog’. She had difficulties differentiating between similar vowel sounds in similar words like ‘cut’ and ‘cat’. Seeing the words visually in front of her helped make the some associations of individual consonant sounds however she seemed to have trouble with her overall phonemic awareness and blending the sounds on her own to read words not yet learned or seen before. She identified most of the letters but couldn’t string the sounds together properly and form the actual word as a blended whole. I suggest that practice for the student, when learning read, write, and spell words that are taught in her class, should be conducted both in isolation and in context so comprehension will be achieved of how the word is used as well. Activities should focus on beginning blends so she can learn to combine sounds to make a new word. Other phonemic awareness activities, such as those incorporating segmentation, deletion, and addition, will help increase student awareness of how to manipulate the individual sounds to form complete words and this will then hopefully help her with her overall phonological awareness and reading and writing the words as well. The following is a few websites that have games that help with phonemics and phonics instruction.

http://www.sadlier-oxford.com/phonics/student.cfm - great variety of games that focus both on letter sounds, consonant blends, and over all phonics.

http://teacher.scholastic.com/clifford1/ Clifford is always fun and motivating and these games which focus on phonics, reading, and constructing words are really interactive as well

http://pbskids.org/lions/games/- t his is a great game which focuses on beginning blends and sounds.

http://www.starfall.com/n/level-a/learn-to-read/play.htm?f - this game provides activities for phoneme blending to make a word by dragging and dropping letters, and by phoneme isolation where students identify and categorize words by their onset.

Week 6

1. Instructional focus based on the assessment results

I feel the instructional focus of the intervention should on reading comprehension and understanding the story structure. While Mary’s strengths were on display during her reading an unfamiliar expository text at 95% accuracy, her retelling of the passage showed her poor recall of the main idea, where she remembered only 16 out of the 49 of the main ideas and details listed and her scores when retelling of the number of ideas was at 33%, and her level of comprehension was 63%.

2. Length of Intervention (How many weeks? Daily lessons? How long is the lesson while maintaining the rest of your class?)

Being Mary is an ESL student, aside from any services she will be receiving, she should receive intervention at least twice a week between a 1/2 hour  to 50 minutes  of instruction per session. Assessments should be conducted often enough to track progress. I feel this is something Mary could benefit throughout the school year but if it coincides with her ESL services and the assessments depict that she is making progress, the sessions can go from twice a week to weekly and be adjusted accordingly.

3. Intervention structure (intervention components, such as repeated reading, decoding, encoding, expository structure and details, writing…)

I feel Mary’s intervention sessions should include instruction on using the structure strategy, which will help her follow the logical structure of text to understand how an author organized and emphasized ideas, and it will help her overall reading and writing organization as well. The interventions should include repeated readings so she can work on recalling details. The more she reads a passage and “looks back”, the more Mary will be able to test herself to see what she recalled from the reading beforehand.  Materials that consist of well-structured texts with elements such as cause and effect, compare and contrast, sequencing, or problem-solution, should be included so Mary will have clear-cut opportunities to work on her understanding of story structure and increase her familiarity with different structures in order to help with her over-all mental representation.  (Mayer & Ray, 2011) The information can be organized in forms of graphic tools such as Venn Diagrams, story maps, or sequence charts to gain a further understanding of the text structure, which is a great visual aid for an ESL student as well. Literacy responses and other creative writing opportunities should be incorporated as well to provide Mary with opportunities to apply her understandings to her own thoughts and ideas.

4. Create one sample mini-lesson that addresses Mary’s areas of need. 

An example of a mini-lesson catering to Mary’s struggle with understanding text structure can be one that focuses on texts with cause and effect structure.  This lesson can be conducted within a small-group intervention structure so collaborative learning is in place. Mary can work with her peers to understand the text and the main idea. Begin the lesson with reviewing/explaining concept of cause and effect (e.g.: I wore a raincoat- its raining outside= which is which). Then have Mary and her peer(s) come up with a few themselves. Introduce a text with this text structure (such as “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” or “If You Give a Moose a Muffin” by Laura Joffe Numeroff) and, to assess prior knowledge, go through ask students what they know or may know about the book (What about? Who are characters?) . The book should be read via guided reading, as students follow along with own copy of text. Begin a discussion/review of the text and be sure to model identifying the cause and effect relationships. After rereading is complete, have the students compile a list of cause and effect relationships in the text (if more than two students in group, have them work in pairs). For Mary’s individual comprehension assessment of text have her retell the story and respond to questions posed to her that will assess comprehension. Have her complete a cause and effect chart as well to organize the information for her. It’s not only about the reading the words well, but understanding the idea of what the author is trying to convey. While there may be pictures involved in this text and not completely expository, I feel Mary is at a level where one text structure should be focused on at a time, so they become clear to her and she will learn how to analyze the text and understand it better.

Bibliography

Mayer, B. J., & Ray, M. N. (2011). Structure strategy interventions: Increasing reading comprehension of expository text. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education , 4 (1), 127-152.