Comprehension

Ever since I was little reading has always been very easy for me and it is something that I have always enjoyed. Because of this reading comprehension is also something that I never had to put much thought into. I have never had trouble comprehending so I have never worried about what is actually going on during comprehension or what strategies might have led me to having these good comprehension skills. After reading chapter 8 of Tompkins and learning about the different strategies that teachers use to help build comprehension I can definitely remember these strategies being used during my own schooling. When I was the student participating in these different strategies I never really understood why we had to do them and I find it interesting to look back and to finally know exactly why the teacher was having us do all of these different things while reading. I was especially surprised to see that even the types of reading ( i.e. independent, buddy, guided etc.) have strategic meaning while designing a lesson. Having all of these steps broken down in the two Tompkins chapters made it much easier for me to understand what goes into the process of comprehending and how all of the steps work together.

While reading I couldn't help think of this one student at my placement. This student is very far behind the rest of the class in all academics and to be honest, I do not understand how he is even allowed to be in the fourth grade. My CT doesn't expect much out of him and he pretty much goes through the day doing a very low amount of work and he never gets extra help from my CT. Whenever I am in the class I get stuck working one on one with him and I find it very frustrating at times. The class will be given a worksheet where they have to read and pick out information but since this student is so far behind he had never learned the skills of how to comprehend while reading. He still struggles with reading in general so to ask him to comprehend while trying to read is almost impossible. Tompkins stated in chapter 8 that there are three prerequisites needed to be able to comprehend. These include having adequate background knowledge, being familiar with most words in the text, and being able to read fluently. The student I work with has none of these but is still expected to be finishing the worksheet and I find this to be a big problem. On top of this I never really see my CT demonstrating any of the actual strategies that were discussed in the readings. After learning about these strategies and how these are the things you have to do to help your students develop good reading comprehension strategies I am a little bit bothered that even though my CT demands that the students be comprehending, she is not doing anything to help them gain these skills.

Mrs. Potter's Class

Lupita has not had the exposure that most of her classmates have had. I think Mrs. Potter needs to provide Lupita with as many opportunities as possible. This might include calling on her in class, making lots of contact with her, recommending books or puzzles to her, having other students interact with her.. Because she is so shy this might be adding to her lack of academic skills. I think Mrs. Potter needs to try different things to make her more outgoing in the classroom and with other students. Lupita's lack of self confidence may also be another factor. To help this Mrs. Potter could comment on her successes and post her work in the classroom somewhere. Lupita's grandmother also needs to be aware of the situation. After talking with her Mrs. Potter may be informed about ways she can approach Lupita. Because she doesnt have many resources with her at home Mrs. Potter could also let her borrow books, puzzles, crayons and give her simple tasks to do at home.

Jonathan definitely needs more help with reading. I would explain to Mrs. Potter that she needs to dedicate a lot more time in class towards reading and writing. Each day Jonathan needs to get a chance to read a book so maybe Mrs. Potter can have DEAR time or silent reading time. Also, whenever Mrs. Potter is reading in front of the class or directions on a piece of paper she should point to each word while she’s reading and also have the entire class do this with her. Although it’s directed mainly towards Jonathan the class would be able to participate. I would also ask Mrs. Potter if she’s had any sort of communication with his parents recently. Sending home a note or a quick call home would inform his parents of his reading ability and she could give them some recommendations of ways they can help. Mrs. Potter could even start a weekly reading log that the students would take home every week. Each day they would have to read for an hour (or half hour) with their parent and then the parent could sign it.

I think Mrs. Potter needs to talk to Eddie’s parents because he might have ADD or ADHD. He represents many common characteristics of attention deficit such as getting out of his seat often, moving his arms and legs all the time, and in general not being able to sit still. This case seems similar to Marcus’s case because they’re both bright, talented students who just cannot stay focused in school. Because Eddie is in second grade now I feel as if this disorder should have been identified at an earlier time. If he had all the same characteristics in preschool and first grade the teachers should have acted on it then. The Breitfelder article recommends using visual support for ADD students within the classroom. Mrs. Potter can use this for directions, schedules, rules, etc. and it can also be used to decrease behaviors. Mrs. Potter may be more observant than the previous teachers and because she notices this daily she needs to talk to his parents as soon as possible.

4th Grade Writing Samples

I had the students in my literature circle write a summary of the story we read the previous day which was a myth about a goldfish who fell in love with the moon…

Writing Sample #1-
This student wrote a very thorough and precise summary about the story and I believe she is in stage four of spelling development. She used commas in appropriate places throughout her writing and even incorporated big words such as “foreign” and “familiar”. The reason I placed this particular student in stage four, is because she used affixes, inflections such as “stopped”, “asked”, “going”, “looked”, and “smiling”, and compound words such as “goldfish”. One thing I noticed about this student’s summary, is that she took many phrases straight from the story so much of it isn’t in her own words. This makes it hard to determine if the student is really in stage four or not.

Writing Sample #2-
This student wrote a less thorough summary and I noticed that this resulted in missing pieces of the story that were pretty important, but I believe he is in stage three of spelling development. He left out punctuation at the end of his paragraphs which was interesting to me, because he incorporated them in the middle of them. He also misspelled many words such as “depthes” instead of “depths”, “diffrent” instead of “different”, “chating” instead of “chatting”, “beleveing” instead of “believing”, “dolfin” instead of “dolphin”, and “enuther” instead of “another”. Many of these spelling errors are because he forgot to add “silent” letters or follow spelling patterns which is a characteristic of stage three. I thought it was interesting that he obviously misspelled words by sounding them out or forgetting to get rid of the “e” before adding an inflection to the end of the word. Another interesting thing I noticed in this student’s writing is that he wrote the sentence “a dolfin came, alon came along and said mean things about the fish.” Not only did the student misspell dolphin, but he also started to write the phrase “came along” but stopped and then accidently wrote it again.

Writing Samples

Sample #1
After reading this sample I would say this child is at stage 4 of spelling development. Some things seen during this stage is that students start to apply affixes and inflectional endings to words, they also start to use compound words. Throughout this sample the student used many different inflectional endings correctly, but seemed to have trouble when it came to a more advanced skill, conjunctions . For example, two times in the sample the student meant to write "didn't" but instead wrote "diding" the first time and "didint" the second. The fact that this student was able to correctly use inflectional endings but not conjunctions shows that she is right at level 4. The only other spelling mistake was that the student wrote "washing" but meant to say "watching". This is a skill that is developed in level 3 but since there was only one mistake of this kind I do not feel as if it should bring the student down a level.

Sample #2
This sample was more difficult for me to tell what spelling stage the student is in. There were only two spelling mistakes throughout the sample. The first was the student wrote "steped" for "stepped" and the second was the student wrote "esppicaly" for "especially". Since the student did not have any trouble with affixes, inflectional endings, or compound words, which are all strategies present in level 4, I would want to say the child was past this level but I do not see much evidence of the child being in level 5. The writing sample is mostly comprised of easy words that the student had no trouble spelling, because there are no higher level words in the story, I can not tell if the student would have been able to correctly spell them or not. The closest evidence to level 5 would be how the child spelled "especially" because of the fact that one of the stages children become familiar with in level 5 is consonant alterations. I the child would have sounded the word out they could have noticed the root word of "special" which would have lead them to be able to correctly spell the word. Because the child was not able to pick out this word I would guess that she has not yet reached level 5 and therefore is still at level 4 of spelling development

Writing Samples

For the first writing sample I believe this student is in stage four of spelling development. This sample is about a trip to the circus with her godmother and she talks about her experience. This fourth grade writing sample has about 1-2 spelling errors throughout the entire thing. What really surprised me about this was her ability to spell ponies, but misspelling moving (she spelled it 'moveing'). The students have been working with inflectional endings so that may be why she understood removing the -y and adding -ies. However, for the word moving, im not sure why she could remember the -y rule but not remember to remove the -e before adding -ing. In this stage inflectional endings are being taught constantly so she is possibly starting to grasp the concept now.

After reading writing sample two I realized that this student is at the stage three of spelling development. It is quite a long journal entry about his plans for the rest of the day once he gets out of school. The first thing I noticed was that there are a lot of spelling errors, and these errors are because of missing letters. Christmas is missing the 't', hockey is missing the 'e', before is missing the 'e', etc. In stage three students are confusing spelling patters and I believe that he forgets that some words have silent letters or a silent ending. If you sound out the words he misspelled (christmas, hockey, before) you will notice that the letter he missed is a silent letter. I believe this is common for early spellers. This may be the only thing stopping him from moving into stage four in spelling development.

4th Grade Writings

Child 1:

From his piece of writing, it is obvious that he is in a couple of different stages according to the Stages of Spelling Development. For starters, he shows very good indicators that he is well past the 3rd stage. He understands that the word "famous" is a diphthong and the -ou makes a totally new sound when put together. This particular writer seems to be mostly in stage 4, still learning how to spell using syllabication and recognizing homophones. He incorrectly uses a homophone; using "were" instead of "where". This surprised me because they have been learning about homophones during class while I have been there observing. This writer also needs more help with learning how to spell by sounding out the word. He writes "Amirican", using the "i" instead of "e" which proves that he either cannot hear the "e" in the word or he needs to pronounce the word clearer so he can spell it using the syllables. I believe that he just needs to pronounce the word better because he also misspells the word "tournament", forgetting the "r" so it looks like this, "tounament". When this word is said out loud quickly, it is hard to hear the "r" in the word. This child is clearly in stage 4, learning how to use the syllables to spell a word and knowing what spelling to use for a word with multiple meanings.

Child 2:

After reading this writing sample, child 2 is clearly in the 4th stage of spelling development. During his paper, he writes about tonsils and tonsillitis, however it is evident that he attempted to use the syllables to spell the word. He spells them "tonsalites" and "tonsales", which seems correct when sounding them out. It is also evident that this child knows about the magic 'e' concept (adding a silent 'e' on the end of a word), he just needs to know when to use it properly. He also shows evidence that he knows when to drop certain letters when adding -ing onto the end of a word. This is evident when he writes the word "riding". Instead of writing "rideing" like some students might do, he drops the 'e' and adds the -ing. One thing that surprised me with this child was he mixed up the letters in a word, which is something that is evident during the 3rd stage. At the end of his paper he writes "trails" instead of "trials", simply mixing up the 'a' and 'i'. I am curious to know if he really does not know how to spell "trials" or if he was just rushing and misspelled the word.

Digital Native All The Way :)

After reading the short article about Digital Denizens and looking at each type, I am without a doubt a digital native. I have grown up with having either my own computer or using the families computer, I actually cannot remember ever not having one within my family. Even when I went to school there were computers to use, from elementary to high school and now college. I have grown up around technology and because of this I rely on them to do every day tasks. Aside from computers, I also have used or are currently using CD players, iPods, and cell phones. Some of the defining moments with my use of technology was my 6th grade typing class. Everyday we would sit at the computer and learn how to type. I know that my parents did not take a class like this because computers were not as widely used when they were my age. However, a 6th grade typing class proves how important technology is in everyday life because schools are spending time teaching children this. Another prominent moment with the use of technology was 8th grade computer class. During the entire semester we learned how to use Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, Excel, and surf the internet. Our grade was based on how well we knew how to use these different technologies. My world has been surrounded by the use of technology and because of that, I would consider myself a digital native.

Digital literacy is something that I played around with but I was never forced to use it. When using the term digital literacy I am referring to using technology to learn and expand a person's knowledge. In the past, I have only ever used technology to write papers or make Powerpoints for different classes; very rarely have I actually ever used technology to learn. Is this aspect, I would consider myself an emergent learner of digital literacy. However, after watching the short clip in class with all the children saying "engage me", I know that I will need to step it up when it comes to digital literacy if I want to be a successful teacher. In my placement last year the children were able to play on the computers for about 30 minutes while in their computer class. However, it was not just any game they wanted; the children played games that were teaching them about language arts concepts such as rhyming and parts of speech. I was astonished at how engaged they were while playing these games. The placement that I am in now never uses technology, they actually don't even have a computer class. Everything is done by paper and pencil, textbook, and the whiteboard. Sometimes the teachers will bring out the overhead projector. I feel like the students in my placement are missing out on a different learning technique, however it also seems that the paper and pencil technique is working just fine. So this is where I get torn, why bring in technology when paper and pencil learning are still working? Some students and districts do not have enough money for all of the fancy technology that is out there. Does that mean their students are losing out on learning through technology?

In one of my placements a few years ago a young boy from China, who was also LD, was struggling with English and learning the main concepts. The teacher allowed this student to use the computer for most written work because it allowed him to spell check and change words quickly. Within a month or so the young boy was speaking significantly better English and I think that because he was allowed to use the computer, it helped him emerge as a speaker of English. ELL students who struggle with English should be allowed to use technology because it will allow them to practice their English skills faster and better. Teachers and future educators should not be afraid of using technology in the classroom. It has many positive benefits for the students, while at the same time engaging them.