Designing instruction to meet my students learning needs takes careful planning. While I use the county pacing guide to provide a starting point, I consider the students interests and their abilities before creating activities. Often, the resources provided by the county lack differentiated qualities that encourage higher level thinking and collaboration among students. Therefore, I adapt many of the ideas, provided by the adopted curriculum, to bring valuable learning experiences alive for my students.
It is very important that my students are engaged in activities that teach them new concepts and build on previously taught objectives. In order to be successful in this, scaffolds are often required. These supports are vital in assisting students as they build links and connections among information learned. In reading, I use a variety of scaffolds such as modeling think alouds, developing guided reading groups, providing independent practice opportunities, and graphic organizers to assist in understanding story elements and vocabulary. Reflecting on my strategies I use in my own classroom, draws me back to an activity I use to help my students better understand the character’s in The Westing Game. Within in this novel there are 15 characters that play a huge part in uncovering the mysterious death of Sam Westing. In creating the “Who Dunnit?” mug shot wall the students have a visual representation that can be used as a guide throughout the novel. In addition to the mug shot wall, the students are coordinated into detective agency groups. Each group is given a premade agency book that they keep notes in about the characters attributes, connections/relationships they developed with each other, and any mysterious behavior that needs notes. The combination of the mug shot wall and the agency books are extremely important in facilitating discussions and helping the students understand the characters and plot that is uncovered throughout the novel.
Furthermore, pre-reading activities such as surveys, like the one I use for Walk Two Moons (a whole class novel introduced at the beginning of the year) encourages the students to think about main themes that will occur throughout the book. In this particular prereading activity, the students are given generic themes that arise in the book. For instance, “Is it ok for someone to make up stories to explain something?” Before starting the book, the students rank each statement as “Never ok, sometimes ok, always ok” based on what they believe. As one might assume, this invites a grand discussion on morals and beliefs. At the end of the novel, the students receive the same sheet, with their original responses, and rank what they believe based on the events that unfolded in the novel. This pre and post reading activity allow for in-depth conversation about the dilemmas faced by people like the realistic characters in Walk Two Moons.
Furthermore, as literature circles are introduced to the class examples of expectations along with directions for each job are available in each reading groups binder as well as a job card resource for each student to keep in his/her binder. These reference guides assist students in understanding expectations of content and quality work. Moreover, a “hall of fame” wall is created for exceptional work. The wall provides visual representation of expectations. I found the implementation of this has motivated students and assisted them in understanding many of the key components of literature circles. Also, as literature circles progress, I am able to implement guided reading strategies and facilitate discussions that promote students to think about their own experiences and connections to the book. While much of these described activities require a sophisticated thought process, some students are not ready for this. Therefore, ‘little readers’ are carefully chosen to support their developmental level. Once they have displayed a strong understanding of the reading components through these books, they are eased into whole class novels, literature circles, and independent reading projects.
Furthermore, I scaffold metacoginitive strategies through the use of a CROPQV wall (connections, reactions, opinions, predictions, questions, and visualizations) during our read aloud book. Typically I share one of the above components using the book and then encourage the students to do the same. Each student is given a post it note and asked to write a comment to post on our CROPQV wall. One student is asked to read the comments to the class. This has been known to spark some very interesting conversations and debates.
Moreover, to support the students’ vocabulary development and encourage deeper understanding of the weekly lists, the students engage in word work activities. Each vocabulary activity encourages an in-depth analysis of their weekly words. An explanation of each activity can be found below.
1. Word Study Boxes: The word study boxes encourage the students to apply their understanding of the vocabulary word by writing the definition, drawing a picture, writing a sentence, and writing a synonym and antonym for the word.
2. It’s Your Turn: In the it’s your turn vocabulary activity, the students are expected to display their understanding of the weekly vocabulary words by writing sentences that depict the meaning of the words they have chosen to write about
3. Fill in the blank sentences: In this activity, the students use their given vocabulary list to help them fill in the blanks to bring meaning to each of the prewritten sentences
4. Vocabulary Grid: The vocabulary grid is similar to the word study boxes in that the students have to write the word, the definition, provide a picture, and sentence to describe the words chosen.
5. Smart Board: During the Smart Board center, the students are engaged in some form of interactive game. This ranges from memory to hang man. The integration of technology has be beneficial to many of my students
*Vocabulary activities can be completed in any order.
All of these activities encourage students to make relevant meaning of the vocabulary words in their everyday lives. To help them further, I will even use the words in my daily vocabulary as often as possible. If a vocabulary word(s) appears in a text, they have a special hand signal they use to show they recognized the word. Often, students will find words in their independent reading books. This discovery is exciting for them and supports the importance of utilizing these words daily.
Finally, my unit plans exemplify the careful consideration I take in scaffolding my reading instruction. For instance, at the beginning of every year I start out with a whole class novel. This allows me to become familiar with the students and their reading. Then, using classroom performance and AMIS web data, I coordinate literature circles for 2nd quarter. As we delve deeper into comprehension and story elements for 3rd quarter, I go back to a whole class novel. Finally, I finish the year with an Independent Reading Project which encourages creative in-depth analysis of the student’s novel.
Kylie,
ReplyDeleteThinking out loud is such an important method to convey to students how they should be using strategies to understand text. Often, we take for granted that we implicitly use particular strategies at particular times during reading. Students need to hear it, see it, and practice it if we expect them to become self-regulated readers.
I appreciate your use of classroom discussions and appealing to students' interests. I am sure that this keeps them engaged and motivated to learn. I agree with your explicit use of expectations; it is so important for students to understand what is expected and how a model product or task should be presented. Additionally, you are scaffolding the text to meet students at their instructional level. This shows that you are challenging them, while also allowing for a sense of self-efficacy to build.
Lori
Your model of whole class novel, literature circles, and independent reading projects seems to bring the best of what we know about reading instruction together, Kylie. I've recommended a similar model to middle and high school teachers for years (we opt for book clubs for collaborative reading).
ReplyDeleteI'm curious if you've added an online discussion component. Could this be valuable, do you think, for either scaffolding the whole class novel project or the collaborative literature circles.
So good to read of all the scaffolding you're doing naturally. You'll be pleased to learn that many of your scaffolding strategies have been named, ie, anticipation and reaction guides for the pre-and post activities you use for Walk Tow Moons.
Thanks for sharing a mini-documentary of sorts about your literacy program.
Dr. Crissman,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate you 'stopping by' to read my blog! You will find in later post that I mention the use of blogging for my independent reading project (IRP). This project wraps up our school year and is much anticipated by many of the students. I found using the blogs for this project brings my non-writers out of the wood work. In the 3 years I have used the blog for IRP, I have not had any student complain about writing. Many students become so involved with it, they do more than expected and even for homework :) Who would have thought hw could be so fun? It is difficult to incorporate blogging as an in school activity, because there is limited unused computer lab time. However, I am trying to think of more ways to incorporate this as a writing component because it is so important in student learning. My hope is to use it more frequently throughout the year :)