Morris Inquiry 2 Part A

Inquiry Two, Part A:

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

1.    Describe your target area for guided lead teaching.  We are doing CAFÉ and Fantastic 5 (our own adaptation to the Daily 5) this year for language arts.  As a team, we are pioneering this literacy program at our school, and I feel like we have the potential to make a big impact on the literacy curriculum at our school.  For guided lead teaching, I will be focusing on the “E” part of CAFÉ, Expand Vocabulary.  I have already set up a word wall in the classroom, but this will be addressed to the children and we will decide how we want to use our word wall, how it will work best for the students, during my guided lead teaching.

2.    Approximately how much time per day is allotted for your instruction in this area?  50 minutes

            Which Common Core State Standard(s) will you work toward?  Consult reference materials                   (e.g., dictionaries, glossaries, thesauruses), both print and digital, to find the pronunciation and determine or clarify the precise meaning of key words and phrases.  R.WS.05.05 R.WS.05.07

1.    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?  This target area is so important to the real world, because it is crucial that if you come across a word you do not understand, that you do not just skip over it.  You need to take control over your own learning, and in my guided lead teaching I hope to plant this idea in my student’s minds, because it is not something they might be aware of.  I want them to treasure new and interesting words they come across, and have the opportunity to explore those words, and how they might be able to use them in their own personal lives.  They are learning these new words through reading, so this truly is an opportunity to learn through literacy.

2.    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)?  Within this target area, I am hoping that we have teacher-led discussion, student-led discussion, and class discussion focused on higher-level thinking.  When the topic is introduced, it will initially be teacher led, but my goal is for the students to generate ideas about how they want to use the word wall in the classroom, and how they want to add words as they are reading to this word wall, and how this word wall would be a useful tool for them.  I really believe that in order for something to be a good use of time, the students have to believe that it is useful, and that it is helping them.  I could set up a word wall how I think it would work best, but what I think is not necessarily what the students think, and I want to come out of this Guided Lead Teaching with a functioning and useful word wall set up in our classroom.  I would also like to do mini lessons with groups of students during this target area, as this is something that is a part of the CAFÉ program. 

3.    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 I will be focusing on is Vocabulary Acquisition, Use, and Assessment.  I think that focusing on a core practice will contribute to my own professional learning because I have not focused on Core Practices before, and if this is what teachers do when they plan units, then I need to know and understand how to do this as well, and this is a great opportunity for me to work with these for the first time.

4.    What resources within the community, neighborhood, school district, school or classroom do you have to work with in this target area? The CAFÉ literacy textbook, my MT and the MT of my team intern, the Okemos Public Library, the Library at Kinawa.

5.    What additional resources do you need to obtain?  At this point, I have the CAFÉ book, I do need to find a copy of The Daily Five at the library (hopefully), and I need to set up my Teacher Café Binder in order for this to be a true head teaching experience in the area of Language Arts.

6.    How will you pre-assess your students in your target area?  We have assessments on all of our students from their teachers last year, and I will do some word work assessments, and we need to have a discussion on word walls and how they have been used in classrooms they have been in before, and how they would like to use a word wall this year.

7.     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 have already taken an initial reading interests survey, hopefully the initial assessment conferences will take place with each student before my guided lead teaching begins so that I can really implement the CAFÉ program the way it was intended.

8.     What else do you need/want to learn about the ‘core practice’ to support your planning and teaching?  I need to find out more about what core practices are, how they relate to the common core standards, and why they are important to keep in mind during planning.

9.     What concerns, if any, do you have about planning and teaching your unit?  At this point, I really do not have any concerns. I am really excited about planning and teaching, especially because this is the first time we are doing CAFÉ, I really have a lot of freedom in what I end up planning and implementing.