RaeLynne Ferden's Inquiry 2 Part A

Your Name:RaeLynne Ferden

Inquiry Two, Part A:

Discuss Your Target Area and ‘Core Practice’ for Guided Lead Teaching

NOTE: YOU MAY INSERT YOUR ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS POSED BELOW IN A DIFFERENT COLOR FONT.  Please name your file with your last name and email as an attachment to your instructor (example: SmithPartATargetArea.docx)

Talk with your MT about your idea, and use the information you gained from Inquiry One to respond to the following guiding questions listed below.  Email your responses to your instructor before our Week 4 class (September 26) AND post them on your book club blog:

1.     Describe your target area for guided lead teaching. I will be teaching Unit 2, Week 3 in Reading Street, “Animal Babies in Grasslands.” In this unit, the target skills and strategies I will be teaching are:

·         Phonemic Awareness (Initial and Final /p/) CCSS Foundational Skills 2.e. Add or substitute individual sounds (phonemes) in simple, one-syllable words to make new words. CCSS Foundational Skills 3.a. Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter sound correspondence by producing the primary or many of the most frequent sounds for each consonant.

·         Phonics (/p/ spelled Pp) CCSS Foundational Skills 2.d. Isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in three-phoneme (CVC) words.

·         Comprehension (Main idea) CCSS Foundational Skills Text 2. With prompting and support, identify the main topic and retell key details of a text.

·         Listening and Speaking (Discussions-Who Am I? Who Are You?) CCSS Speaking/Listening 1.b. Continue a conversation through multiple exchanges. CCSS Speaking/Listening 3. Ask and answer questions in order to seek help, get information, or clarify something that is not understood

·         Writing (Genre: Notes) CCSS Writing 2. Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose informative/explanatory texts in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic. CCSS Writing 8. With guidance and support from adults, recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.

·         Conventions (Adjectives for Colors/Shapes) CCSS Language 5.c. Identify real-life connections between words and their use.

2.     Approximately how much time per day is allotted for your instruction in this area? Reading Street and Literacy Centers are from 10am-11:20 every day. However from 10:30-11am, we will perform reading instructions. We also combine our reading and math centers so I may be able to incorporate a few literacy centers from 12:20-1pm.

3.     Which Common Core State Standard(s) will you work toward? See number one for specific CCSS standards.

4.     How will teaching in this target area provide opportunities for students to learn important content and/or skills that relate to their lives?  In what ways does this learning include learning literacy, learning about literacy, and/or learning through literacy? In this unit plan, students will learn about literacy as well as learn literacy by using letter sound cues to recognize a few one-syllable words when presented completely out of context as well begin to associate letters of sounds in initial/final consonants and understand the alphabetic principle (that sounds in words are expressed by letters in the alphabet). It is essential that students continue to develop these skills in order to become readers and writers since they will do this every day of their lives. Students will learn through literacy by responding to individualized and multiple texts by finding evidence, discussing, illustrating, and/or writing to reflect, make meaning, and make connections to their past experiences in their lives with baby animals, engage in substantive conversations, remaining focused on subject matter, with interchanges beginning to build on prior responses in literature discussions, paired conversations or other interactions, contribute to a class research project by adding relevant information to a class book including gathering information from teacher-selected resources and using the writing process to develop the project, and explore and use language to communicate with a variety of audiences and for different purposes including problem-solving, explaining looking for solutions, constructing relationships, and expressing courtesies.

5.     What types of classroom talk take place within this target area? To what extent is the talk teacher-led, student-led, or focused on higher-level thinking? What norms for interaction would you like to build within your classroom as you teach in this target area (e.g., see ideas in Chapter 6 of Strategies that Work, the Berne & Clark 2008 article, or draw from some of the readings done in TE 402 on classroom talk)? In my unit plan, there will be a lot of different types of talks taking place:

·         In Kindergarten, we do a lot of teacher modeling. We model behaviors, skills and strategies that we expect to see from our students. These types of modeling establish a purpose and provide students with a mental model for how to complete tasks. When using teaching modeling, I will use questioning to check students comprehension. However, I also want to activate my student’s background knowledge throughout my unit. Additionally, as the teacher, it is important for me to model the academic language I want my students to use. I can do this during think alouds, shared reading and during whole-class discussions.

·         There will also be guided instruction to find out what students already know and what they still need to know. Both the students and I will be talking during this. Students are asking and answering questions, talking with peers and with themselves to clarify their understandings, reflect on their learning, etc.

·         I will also be using collaborative tasks as classroom talk where students talk to each other and work together (like during writing workshop when students are in their buzz groups). When this is taking place, I will be monitoring the various groups and providing any support that they may need.

·         Students will also be doing independent tasks where they may be developing their ideas or understanding in their own head.

I will try to get students to use a higher-level of thinking by not just asking my students questions to check for comprehension. Instead of just asking questions for understanding, I want students to engage in a dialogue in order to really develop their thinking and learn.

Some norms for interaction that I would like to build is not straying away from the target area which can be hard with Kindergarteners who want to share a lot of personal stories,  noticing and exploring thinking and reading, writing, and talking about the content areas.

6.     Which ‘core practice’ do you want to work on developing/improving as you teach in this target area (refer to document “Resources for Developing Core Practices”)? How will focusing on this core practice contribute to your own professional learning?

The core practice that I will probably be working most on is acquisition, use and assessment of foundational skills since it focuses on a lot of what Reading Street is based on. I think this will really help develop my own professional development because I am teaching more than just a literacy lesson plan for TE 402 for 2^nd graders. Instead, I now have to focus on how to teach explicitly and use authentic activities, focus on print concepts as well as phonological awareness, phonics and word recognition, word identification, fluency and assessing foundational skills to inform instruction to Kindergarteners-a completely new word to them. Therefore I really have to develop my skills in this area for them.

7.     What resources within the community, neighborhood, school district, school or classroom do you have to work with in this target area?

·         Reading Street and its resources

·         2 other Kindergarten teacher

·         1 other Kindergarten intern at my school

·         Interns at other schools who use Reading Street

·         TE 802 resources including the teacher

·         Library

·         Mentor Teacher

·         Mentor Teacher’s books

·         Smart Board

8.     What additional resources do you need to obtain?

·         I still need to go through some of my teachers personal books that she usually uses for this unit and evaluate them to see which ones I want to use.

·         I need to find out what activities I want to include in my literacy centers.

·         I need to begin collaborating with my peers, colleagues, my mentor teacher, and other teachers at Marble.

9.     How will you pre-assess your students in your target area?

·         I am thinking of doing a child study of several students in the classroom to find out what they already know about some of the things that will be in my unit such as the initial/final /p/.

10.     What else will you need to find out about all students in your class to help you develop lesson plans for your Guided Lead Teaching?

·         I need to ask my mentor teacher what students will need differentiated instruction (I already have a pretty good idea but that may change as the year progresses).

·         What way(s) they learn best?

11.     What else do you need/want to learn about the ‘core practice’ to support your planning and teaching?

·         I really need to review the readings that go along with my core practice so I get a better idea of what I should be doing.

12.     What concerns, if any, do you have about planning and teaching your unit?

·         My only concern is meeting both my Reading Street standards and my MSU standards. I think the best way to balance this will be by supplementing some of Reading Street’s materials and incorporating more MSU’s style of activities in my literacy centers.