Matt Jablonski's Inquiry 2 Part E

·        What did students learn and which students struggled with the lesson?

-After teaching my first two lessons, the students learned how to identify the settings and themes of stories, as well as techniques and strategies for finding the meanings of unknown words. The concept of setting came fairly easy for most, if not all students. The themes of the stories took the students longer that I anticipated. From prior practices, the students did a fairly good job at using dictionaries and glossaries to identify the meaning of unknown words, using contexts clues to find meanings was slightly more difficult for some students. The students who struggled to identify the themes and use context clues to find the meanings of unknown words were the students who seem to be struggling most with reading and writing this year. I believe these students are listening while I am reading, and are doing the readings when asked to read with a partner, but I believe the students are not actively reading. These students could barely retell me a summary of the stories other than the main parts from the story. I would guess these students are just reading to get through the material, rather than reading with a purpose to identify theme and unknown words. I plan to help these students by keeping them accountable while reading by informing them they will have to read to find themes and identify words. Worksheets can be used to keep these students accountable for actively reading.

·        What are alternate reads (interpretations) of your students’ performance or products?

-Other alternate interpretations of the students' performance could be as simple as the students did not listen while I was reading out loud, or were not reading when they were given time to partner read. Later on in the week, the students will be asked to complete a unit worksheet that specifically asks them to interpret the themes, settings, and meanings of unknown words of a unknown text. Since the students know this is the worksheet/quiz they will be receiving a grade on, it is my hope that they will in fact do the readings and be able to identify all of these components.

·        What did you learn about your students’ literacy practices that extend beyond your objectives?

-I learned that the students' literacy practices can be very limited or very extensive, based on the students literacy abilities. Those students whom I know are strong readers, and read for enjoyment regularly, found the objectives of the lessons came very easily. I learned that for these students, the settings, themes, and search for meaning of unknown words is practiced naturally while reading, while the students whom do not read regularly must be taught to look to identify these things. For some students, active reading come naturally, while others need to be taught to actively read.

·        When and how will you re-teach the material to students who need additional support?

-As the week progresses and new reading strategies and skills are introduced while reading new texts, the students will be asked and challenged to identify the themes, settings, and unknown words of all the stories in addition to the other skills and strategies being taught. At the end of the week, the students take a weekly reading test that will assess their abilities to accomplish these reading skills and strategies. For those students who need additional support, each days readings, writings, and worksheets will challenge the students to practice and familiarize themselves with the reading skills and strategies.

·        If you were to teach this same lesson again, what would you do differently and how do you think the changes would improve students’ learning?

-If I were to teach the lesson again, I would spend less time on the skills and strategies the students seem to have a strong grasp on (setting and using a dictionary and glossary) and spend more time working on how to identify themes and using context clues to identify unknown words. I think the more practice the students would have with these harder skills and strategies would help the students to understand and comprehend how to accomplish the objectives of the lesson best.

·        What did you learn so far about implementing your ‘core practice’ and what do you need to do to continue your professional learning?

-So far, I have learned that the core practice of teaching comprehension skills and strategies for some students comes very naturally, where others have trouble implementing these strategies due to unfamiliarity with active reading. To continue my professional learning, I need identify individual students strengths while reading for comprehension and allow them to have more independent work time. This will allow me to free up myself to be more accommodating for the students who need more practice and individual instruction and practice working and learning these new strategies and skills.

Week of 10-15-12 Post...Just a bit later though

Very sorry about the late post you guys.  This was kind of the last thing on my mind this week.  I looked at Chapters 10 and Chapter 14 from the Strategies Book.  Chapter 10 focused on figuring out the importance of texts.  This chapter was very informative in that it gave many ideas that we could use for our own lessons.  Although I am doing Fables, there were some really good ideas about Nonfiction texts.  It gave ideas about creating links and how to show the importance to students for this type of genre.  It also gave the idea abut effective highlighting strategies.  It says that they need to read the text, highlight it, think about it, and make conscious decision about what they need to remember.  I am actually using this strategy within my Unit.  I am using Guided Reading and Reader's Theater as Centers and am having students highlight to help effectively comprehend the texts. Another part of Chapter 10 I liked was the section based on "Coding Important Information on Unfamiliar as Well as Familiar Topics."  This section focused on how how students might be very broad in their understandings of a lot of topics, but it is just as important for them to make similar connections with unfamiliar topics.  Again, with my unit, I will be reading Fables which have morals that most students should be familiar with.  I actually challenged myself to look for Fables that maybe they were unfamiliar with.  If students are able to make connections on unfamiliar texts based off of ideas that they may have learned previously, it will be beneficial to my students.

When looking at Chapter 14 it talks about reading to understand textbooks and how to actively do this. I found this section interesting because we haven't really dug into any textbooks.  With the MEAP review, we have only done stuff out of those workbooks.  I feel that understanding how to read a textbook and take the most out of it is really important though.  The book talks about "merging student thinking with textbook information in the same way we have them merge their thinking in other texts."  This is sometimes hard though because of how structured textbooks can be.  I do not use Reading Street, but I know you guys do.  How do you think you can make reading out of a textbook fun?  Especially when it's so scripted?  What practices have you found useful when it comes to contextually understanding works right from a textbook?

10/11 Post: Authentic Questions

As the reading states, authentic questions are great strategies for both teachers and students to use to challenge the thinking of students. When questions authentic and open ended, students must articulate the thoughts that naturally come to them as an answer, and really think and explain why they are responding to the question that way. When students challenge their own thinking for why they have come to a conclusion by explaining, not only are they providing a more detailed answer, but they are helping others to understand their thinking as well.

On page 123, the strategy of having the students ask "lingering questions" after finishing a reading, where the students stop and think about some things about the text that they are still wondering about. I think this is great strategy, because instead of just having the reading finished as the goal, this challenges the students to think beyond the text about what else might be missing, or what other thinking can stem from a reading. I think the best way to expose these lingering questions would be to hold a free discussion amongst the students where they are free to ask these lingering questions to the other students. By asking the other students, rather than just the teacher, the students can begin to understand how other students interpret texts in different ways and may have similar or different questions. As the students perform this discussion, it would be great if the students would then challenge each other's thinking by asking good authentic questions (such as "can you elaborate more about your thinking").

What do agree with this strategy for exposing lingering questions? Can you think of other and possibly better ways to work with lingering questions? What makes you think that another way would work better, or why do you agree strategy?