Who'd have known that emergent literacy encompassed so much? and how does one summarize so much that has been learned in the past six weeks?
Well, I get that children progress through four phases of development - beginners, novices, experimenters and conventional readers and writers. Beginners are dependent on others for their reading and writing experiences. Novices write with the intention to communicate and their pretend reading is based on their understanding that reading must be meaningful. Experimenters understand the alphabetic principle. Through their reading and writing, they experiment with the sound-letter correspondence. The reading and writing of conventional readers and writers increasingly resemble what adults in their language community would call "really reading and writing"
In order for we as teachers to help children pass through these phases, we must assess to know each child's level of development. Our assessments will provide us with instruction on how to encourage that child's growth toward the next phase. Our assessments must be on-going and reflective, systematic and comprehensive. I know I am often guilty of turning in all my data by our deadlines and then, feeling short on time, just moving on with instruction. I don't give the time to hypothesize and reflect on that hypothesis after instruction. In the future, I will truly strive to take more time to reflect. It is through analyzing and reflecting on my data, as well as ensuring my assessments are valid, reliable, quantitative and on-going that I can effectively scaffold each and everyone one of my students so that they may reach their highest potential.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Saturday, July 10, 2010
The New Old Mrs. Taupenot
A new, or rather, new again thought for the coming year: sharing time. This is not a new thought at all to me or anyone else. I used to do it every day in my first-grade bilingual classroom and new it was powerful.
Many years ago I had an excruciatingly shy little boy, David, with a prosthetic eye who was very self-conscious of it and never shared it with any of his classmates. After being found out by a neighbor kid, he decided to take the leap and share his eye with the class. In my small-group rotation sharing time, four times David's mom carefully popped that eye out with what looked like a golf tee and showed his classmates. Of course, we got a few "ewwww"s but mostly the kids were fascinated and I could feel David's relief of telling his secret. It might have brought even a few tears to his mom and my eyes. It's actually a good thing he did share because a couple of weeks later his eye fell out during Writer's Workshop. David was too shy to say anything rather he held it in his dirty little palm with a nervous smile. I heard quiet little cries of help to me from the rest of the class "David's eye fell out." Well, I knew just what to do since he and his Mom had shown us! So after a few panicked moments, I lined the children up to wash my hands in the bathroom (we were in a trailer) and I popped his eye back in and adjusted it to be straight. We, the whole class, felt very pleased with ourselves at that moment and we marched right back to resume WW.
A couple of years ago, I left that classroom to come East and felt the pressure of a new curriculum with lots of testing, so I threw the baby out with the water. Introducing the New Old Mrs. Taupenot - the one who embraces sharing time. I won't be the only one in the classroom who cheers when they hear what we'll be doing next school year.
To name just a few benefits of sharing time:
1. personalizing instruction to make it more meaningful and powerful to the child,
2. offer opportunities for my ELLs to talk and listen about things in a comfortable and exciting atmosphere
3. to give all children that needed oral language development, not only in presenting but also in asking questions of the presenter
4. to encompass comprehension strategies through oral language: predict/infer, clarify, question, summarize
5. create great topics for writing about
And to give it a more sophisticated twist, I may call it "Community Sharing Time". As suggested by educator Margaret M. Williams in Suite101.com "While Show and Tell is typically associated with early primary grade classes, this model can be used with students of any age. A simple name change, to something like Community Sharing Time, can turn this important lesson opportunity into an experience to look forward to."
I can't wait!
Many years ago I had an excruciatingly shy little boy, David, with a prosthetic eye who was very self-conscious of it and never shared it with any of his classmates. After being found out by a neighbor kid, he decided to take the leap and share his eye with the class. In my small-group rotation sharing time, four times David's mom carefully popped that eye out with what looked like a golf tee and showed his classmates. Of course, we got a few "ewwww"s but mostly the kids were fascinated and I could feel David's relief of telling his secret. It might have brought even a few tears to his mom and my eyes. It's actually a good thing he did share because a couple of weeks later his eye fell out during Writer's Workshop. David was too shy to say anything rather he held it in his dirty little palm with a nervous smile. I heard quiet little cries of help to me from the rest of the class "David's eye fell out." Well, I knew just what to do since he and his Mom had shown us! So after a few panicked moments, I lined the children up to wash my hands in the bathroom (we were in a trailer) and I popped his eye back in and adjusted it to be straight. We, the whole class, felt very pleased with ourselves at that moment and we marched right back to resume WW.
A couple of years ago, I left that classroom to come East and felt the pressure of a new curriculum with lots of testing, so I threw the baby out with the water. Introducing the New Old Mrs. Taupenot - the one who embraces sharing time. I won't be the only one in the classroom who cheers when they hear what we'll be doing next school year.
To name just a few benefits of sharing time:
1. personalizing instruction to make it more meaningful and powerful to the child,
2. offer opportunities for my ELLs to talk and listen about things in a comfortable and exciting atmosphere
3. to give all children that needed oral language development, not only in presenting but also in asking questions of the presenter
4. to encompass comprehension strategies through oral language: predict/infer, clarify, question, summarize
5. create great topics for writing about
And to give it a more sophisticated twist, I may call it "Community Sharing Time". As suggested by educator Margaret M. Williams in Suite101.com "While Show and Tell is typically associated with early primary grade classes, this model can be used with students of any age. A simple name change, to something like Community Sharing Time, can turn this important lesson opportunity into an experience to look forward to."
I can't wait!
Friday, July 2, 2010
Ashley's chosen article "The Alphabetic Principle" really resonated with me. I get so much satisfaction when teaching phonics and my students really enjoy the explicit systematic instructional time with fun hands-on activities to follow. So... why do I dread that time of day so often??? That was what I was asking myself just a few months ago.
After realizing my students' spelling was still weak, I realized broad "shot gun approaches" to teaching phonics were fun and important lessons to keep the whole class more or less on the same page and to expose all students; however, my students were all at different spelling stages and that also needed to be addressed in my classroom.
The first thing I knew I needed to do was assess them to know exactly which stage they were at. I remembered having used the Spelling Inventory of Words Their Way for many years and then stored it away to learn another style with another county. I found that purple book, dusted it off and got to administering the assessment.
I remembered why I loved that inventory - it provided me with concrete, detailed data on each of my students. I then was able to group them depending on their level and provide powerful and linear lessons in a small group setting that really allowed some of my students to grow by leaps and bounds in a relatively short time.
So, for next year, I am already ready with my copies of the inventory in hand and I will administer the assessment as soon as possible so the whole year will be just as rewarding as those last few months. Then, I can feel just as accomplished as my students in knowing that I addressed and met each and everyone's individual needs.
After realizing my students' spelling was still weak, I realized broad "shot gun approaches" to teaching phonics were fun and important lessons to keep the whole class more or less on the same page and to expose all students; however, my students were all at different spelling stages and that also needed to be addressed in my classroom.
The first thing I knew I needed to do was assess them to know exactly which stage they were at. I remembered having used the Spelling Inventory of Words Their Way for many years and then stored it away to learn another style with another county. I found that purple book, dusted it off and got to administering the assessment.
I remembered why I loved that inventory - it provided me with concrete, detailed data on each of my students. I then was able to group them depending on their level and provide powerful and linear lessons in a small group setting that really allowed some of my students to grow by leaps and bounds in a relatively short time.
So, for next year, I am already ready with my copies of the inventory in hand and I will administer the assessment as soon as possible so the whole year will be just as rewarding as those last few months. Then, I can feel just as accomplished as my students in knowing that I addressed and met each and everyone's individual needs.
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