Module 5

Effective Classroom Management for Literacy Instruction Video
I really like how these students in the video were working on hands on activities through the use of the word cards.  I think this is a valuable way for students to get exposure to the words as well as practice skills like antonyms, homophones, etc.  These do have to be monitored though to make sure students are learning and correctly completing the activity.  The teacher in the video had students make a booklet and draw out pictures of words that are opposites etc.  This will ensure that the teacher is reviewing the student's work and then provide remediation through small groups if needed.

What is Literacy and Why is it Important?
This video has all the elements that encompass the reasons that we as teachers, should get students engaged in reading.  We need to be creating life long learners through reading.  As stated in the video, reading takes you on a journey and I truly believe that.  As a teacher we need to figure out ways to get students to understand that statement and view reading as a life skill, fun, and not boring.

Using Literacy Centers to Strengthen Reading and Writing Instruction
During Reader's and Writer's workshop this balanced literacy approach is used through small groups, whole groups, mini lessons, stations, and independent reading activities.  This is a great time for the teacher to plug in other content areas through the use of reading and writing skills.

Designs for Balanced Literacy
At my school we are required to have many of these ideas for classroom designs in our classrooms.  We must have small group areas, a place on the floor for whole group mini lessons, the classroom library, etc.  I think this set up provides for the optimum amount of collaboration between students, individual areas for independent work, and teacher directed small groups.

Spaces and Places by Debbie Diller
I've heard of Debbie Diller but not of her book about classroom design.  I love how she provides real classroom ideas and pictures.  At the beginning of each year I struggle with how to organize my areas and make the room feel not as small.  With 29 large 5th graders the room quickly becomes very small and overcrowded.  I am going to look into this book to get some ideas for the next school year so I can maximize my space in my classroom.  This will make instruction so much more fluid throughout the room.

Supplemental Materials

Talking Word Wall
I love this audio dot talking word wall! This allows all students, especially those low readers or ELL students to use the word wall effectively and more often than they would.  I love this idea and think this would even be a great resource for upper grades.  I have never seen this before!

Phonological Awareness Activity Using Hand Pointers
These hand pointers provide the student with a movement while reading and allow them to focus on the parts of the word rather than the whole word itself.

Module 4

Literacy Across the Curriculum-
This is a great plan that incorporates reading, writing, science, social studies, and the arts.  This unit clearly defines why literacy across the curriculum is important and focuses on skills in various content areas that are about a topic that many students would have a high level of engagement with.  Literacy is important in all content areas and not just in reading or writing class.

Webquests are a great way to encourage inquiry within your students as well as hit on various levels of Bloom's Taxonomy and incorporate various skills across the curriculum.  Students typically find webquests fun and exciting and are engaged while completing them.  They are however, a big task to take on as a teacher.  I have incorporated pieces of webquests into my reading and social studies stations but have not used a full webquest for students to work on.

RTI and Reading Strategies-
RTI has become a hot topic in education.  Years ago many people believed that taking data on a low student would qualify him or her for special education services.  Now with the redesigned RTI system, data is colelcted based on the specific needs of a student.  The intensity of the interventions and data collections increases as a student moves through the RTI process.  The data collection and the interventions are very prescribed and calculated.  It has become increasingly more difficult to get to the SST portion of the RTI pyramid due to the success of interventions that are being put into place early on in the school year.

My school uses the RTI pyramid that is found in the GADOE information.  We are required to collect and analyze the data before coming to a meeting about the child or before SST.  I have used interventioncentral.org and find it very helpful.  It has many probes for various subjects and skills.  It takes some of the work out of the RTI process with the many probes that are already created for teacher and student use.  I have also used easycbm as a reference for reading fluency passages.  Many of these websites will allow you to input the student information and it will track and graph the data that is collected.

The instruction provided through RTI supports the differentiated instruction models that we have discussed in class as well as the ones we implement in our own classrooms.  The goal of RTI is to decrease the number of students that are being placed into special education programs without the support of various interventions that should be implemented to allow for student success.

Many students at my school go through the RTI process around 3rd or 4th grade but in 5th grade we have many students who still need basic instruction of reading skills.  Our ongoing assessments of students determine their needs in various areas and it is important that as an upper grade teacher that I know how to effectively teach basic reading strategies because there are many students that come into 5th grade not knowing phonics patterns or decoding strategies. As the curriculum gets harder they fall farther behind. Children need constant modeling and guided practice of skills before they can be expected to use those skills efficiently as they read, speak, and write.

Flexible Teaching Strategies
As our culture changes and evolves so do our students.  It is important for us to be up to date on the newest technologies and instructional practices that we are using with our students.  Many of these new practices go hand in hand with the RTI process.  Our teaching methods must change and evolve in order to reach the most students as possible in order for them to be successful.  I have seen a drastic change in the way my school has taught math over the last few years, this also applies to how we have taught reading and writing.

I really like how interactive the writing lesson is for the students.  You can tell that this teacher has built up to this lesson and the students are very engaged as they are encouraged to collaborate and communicate with each other as well as participate in the creation of a sentence. The teacher used basic sentences and then expanded the students' sentences to create more detailed sentences. This is by far a very different approach to sentence creation than when I was in first grade.  I do not remember this much interaction when learning how to create sentences.


Strategic Reading Instruction-
This powerpoint discussed how teachers must scaffold the learning and doing of reading.  Students need support in the early years (or later in their education if they are a lower reader).  Students need to be taught the skills of fluency, comprehension, and phonics and phonemic awareness and need to be gradually released as they learn throughout the process.  I liked how this power point laid out what other students can be doing when a teacher has a small guided reading group.  This is also a perfect time during the literacy block to incorporate other content areas such as science or social studies.  Students can be working on word work or listening to a book on tape that has skills or concepts from other content areas.  During this reading workshop time students should also be given the chance to read books of their choosing to encourage a love of reading.

Students need practice with reading and vocabulary strategies.  The reading strategies vocabulary power point provided a lot of ways that teachers can get students acquainted with their reading in order for them to think as they reada dn become a more involved reader. Fluency encompasses a wide range of reading skills and allows for a student to be a more efficient reader if they are able to fluently read a passage or text.

Module 3

Encouraging Enthusiasm for Reading Video

I really like and believe the quote in the video “children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” I think it is very important to start reading with children while they are young at home.  Parents can encourage a love of reading by immersing them in a lot of books at a young age.  I also think children need to see their parents reading in order for them to see that it is important and that will help encourage a love of reading. 

The SMART Table Video

This is the coolest thing I have ever seen! I love it! I think this could be used for spelling, math, reading, science, and S.S. in a workshop and collaborative setting. Students can create stories using the pictures in primary grades.   I can see it being really useful for ELL students learning the language, upper grades students learning fractions, geometry, and math facts, and for younger students learning sigh words, or new words related to content and reading.  This would be great to have in a station/center in a classroom. 

Virtual Field Trip to Atlanta

The resources listed on this page of the module are all great for students who need background knowledge of the places within our own state.  These can also be a great tool for students who need more information on the topics listed. Many students have not taken family trips to some of these places and this is a very inexpensive way of getting students to explore, learn, and take a field trip! I loved all of these videos!

Exploring Social Studies and Technology Video

This would be great, in my case, for getting students to learn the important places, battles, and people of the various wars we learn in 5^th grade.  They really need that interactive learning to help them remember.  This would be great to use for ELL students as well.

Integrating Science and Literacy in Early Childhood Video

The integration of science and social studies is a large component of Common Core.   In this video it discusses what literacy is and how to integrate literacy into the primary learning of reading.  Students need to know various aspects of reading, and how it works in order to use it.  I like how the lady in the video discussed how viewing strengths and weaknesses of a child is oftentimes looked at as negative but how we need to view the weaknesses as a need the child has. I loved the second half of the video how the women discussed the math and science activities through songs, counting, memorization, and organization.  In the third part of the video it focused on reading- how reading works, how print works, and the turning of pages  because it is a complex task and students need these basic skills before they can move on to reading aloud. She also mentioned building background knowledge.  This is vital for the many skills students will learn later in their educational career.  We have to read aloud to our children in order for them to see how the language works, they learn the importance of reading, and hopefully build that love of reading.

Development of Early Literacy Strategies Presentation

This gives great information, although somewhat long, about the importance of researching and using the wide array of tools that we have today.  As teachers it is important to teach our students how to use various search engines, websites, and research databases.  We want them to be safe, but we also want them to be able to determine what information is the most necessary by skimming and scanning through it and using reliable sources.

Expository Text Structures and Signal Words

I recently did lessons with my students on this and found them to pick up on it very quickly.  I think this is a skill they get every year.  But, in this presentation, I like all the vocabulary that is used to signal different text structures.  I didn’t have all of these vocabulary words but will definitely be using these next year when I teach this skill. Students need to recognize these words in their readings to help them understand the content and by using this information, it may help them have a deeper understanding of the text.  This can also lead to discussions of why the author would write a certain way.

Expository Text Article

I really liked this article and felt that it gave great information on how to teach expository text structures using informational trade books.  Students need to know how to read these types of texts in order to write these types of writing pieces.  Students need a lot of exposure to these texts in order to become comfortable with them.  I liked the distinction between retelling and summarizing.  This can be a hard skill for some students.  When doing a retelling, there are those students that will make connections to everything in the story, and then there are some students who can’t make any connection because they may never have experienced something similar to what is happening in the book.  Summarizing gives students the opportunity to discuss the main ideas in the book without making connections.  Retellings will give a more in depth view as to whether they are comprehending the material or not.

Kathryn Smith Effect of Explicit Instruction on Reading Preferences

I really liked Kathryn’s study and feel like it shows that we as teachers need to make sure we have a healthy balance of fiction and nonfiction integrated into our reading and writing programs.  The more we use nonfiction texts the more students will feel comfortable selecting these books on their own because they have been taught tools and strategies on how to read and interpret them.  This deeper understanding and appreciation for nonfiction texts will likely influence their writing in this genre as well.