Matt's Inquiry 2 Part A

Matt Jablonski

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

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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 (meierjes@msu.edu) before our Week 4 class (September 27) AND post them on your book club blog:

1.    Describe your target area for guided lead teaching.

-Practicing to Facilitate Comprehension Instruction: using the structure of Reading Street with guided target strategies and practices, working with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum our goal is to have the students perform group and individual read aloud, think aloud, writing activities, and eventually act out a play after mastering the text.

2.    Approximately how much time per day is allotted for your instruction in this area?

-45-55 minutes

3.    Which Common Core State Standard(s) will you work toward?

-        Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.

n  Explain how a series of chapters, scenes, or stanzas fits together to provide the overall structure of a particular story, drama, or poem.

n  Analyze how visual and multimedia elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a text (e.g., graphic novel, multimedia presentation of fiction, folktale, myth, poem).

n  Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, description, and pacing, to develop experiences and events or show the responses of characters to situations.

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?

-By teaching within these target areas students will be challenged to relate readings and writing to their own lives and life experiences. By thinking and reading aloud, the students will be learning literacy through practice and modeling by teacher preparation and questioning. The students will be learning about literacy by thinking critically and writing about the text we will be reading, discussing, and acting out aloud. By combining reading, writing, and acting out a story, the students will be learning through learning by having experienced the literacy and information in a variety of ways.

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)?

-Interactive read aloud and read write and talk. Much of the talk is modeled and teacher-led. By setting up strong classroom norms at the beginning of year, the students should know how to respect and act appropriately during the various activities. Monitoring must take place throughout the entire unit planning.

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?

-Thinking aloud, reading aloud, interactive reading aloud, guided interactive discussions, writing about reading, visualizing, summarizing and synthesizing information.

-By focusing on these practices, I will gain the skills and strategies of working with a wide variety of lesson planning and administering, rather than just focusing on a few practices.

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

-I plan to use the reading and writing strategies within the Reading Street Series to help guide my interactive read aloud, writing prompts, and questions. The school will provide the space for our “play” or performance to be held. Within the classroom we have a full set of the text for each student use.

8.    What additional resources do you need to obtain?

-Worksheets, writing prompts, script for the performance, and materials for the performance.

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

-Using the Reading Street Series, the previous readings, writings, and assessments should help to pre-assess the students.

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?

-Which students enjoy the process or reading, writing, and can master the material enough to create a performance having analyzed the settings, characters, interactions, themes, and overall story.

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

-The resources should be very helpful and insightful for support while planning.

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

-There are many components talked about while planning this unit, all of which simply cannot be accomplished. This will lead into a much larger unit longer than just guided lead teaching. So my only concern is that I will be able to narrow down the options and lessons for the 2 week unit.