Response to "Writing Poems" on Reading Rockets

The video I watched was about a second grade class and their experiences with writer’s workshop.  Each student was asked to create a poem and then encouraged to share it with the class after they went through the crucial steps of drafting and revising.  A part of this video I really liked was the teacher.  First, she was enthusiastic when reading out loud to her class and seemed to fully believe in the importance of making writing “real”.  I liked how she also touched on the fact that reading and writing go hand in hand.  A part of the video said that "Good writers and good readers" and I firmly believe this.  I also liked how she would sit by the students and have them read their poems to her and how she would offer positive feedback.  At one point she says, “I really like your poem.  You used the same word a lot, but it did not make me want to stop reading”.  Providing comments like these to her students encourages them to keep writing and keep sharing their work, which is very important.  Also, I liked how the teacher let her students sprawl out around the classroom.  When the video showed students working on their poems they were not at their desks or sitting in chairs, but rather tucked in corners or laying on the floor.  Further, I like how she pushes her students to stay away from the “tired” words such as “pretty” or “beautiful” and encourages them to try their hardest to think of different words when they want to use the "tired" words.  This technique paired with reading literature with extensive vocabulary will benefit the students and ultimately create creative writers with a rich vocabulary set.  Overall, I really enjoyed watching this teacher at work and seeing her ideas played out in her classroom.  I plan on doing reader’s workshop in my classroom someday and this video further proved its importance.

Video:

http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/descriptive_writing/

Reflection on the Video, "Writing Poems" on readingrockets.org

When I first began watching this video, I was very surprised with the fact that these students were second graders.  They seemed to be advanced students as they knew how to develop very authentic poems with correct rhyme scheme.  I like the idea of having the students write poems.  When I was in elementary school I loved to write poems, this was because it was writing I could do that expressed myself and was unique to me.  I think this is very important in the classroom, because often times students are proctored to write about subjects that they have no interest.  To be able to have children excited about writing is something that is very important in order for them to stay engaged.  The video talked about the importance of writing and then reading their work out loud to their peers.  This helps students to get feedback on mistakes, or enables them to identify mistakes on their own.  When students have a positive attitude about writing they are likely to carry that attitude out for quite some time.  That is why it is so important for students to be able to enjoy the writing they are doing.  When students are writing poems they are being exposed to one of the importances of writing which is being able to express yourself.  Some students may not understand the reason for writing, but it is important to instill in students that writing is important and something that is used in every day life.  Giving students the free-range to write about what they like is a good way to engage as well, for if they are proctored one-hundred percent of the time the task of writing starts to become mundane.  I think the teacher did an amazing job engaging her students by having them express themselves, and therefore lead them to discover the importance of writing.

Reading Lessons

Kate, Henry, and Jimmy are the focus students I chose to work with for my two small reading lessons.  From observing in my classroom and talking with my mentor teacher, I concluded that each of these students would benefit from working in a small group.  For example, Kate is shy and often times very quiet during class discussion.  She rarely raises her hand to answer questions and only talks to the classmates that sit around her.  Next, I have noticed that Henry lacks confidence when asked to complete written work.  He often questions himself and worries too much if he is correct or not.  Sometimes he will not turn in work just because he is nervous to fail an assignment.  Jimmy has a brother in the classroom that I often see him competing with.  They share typical brotherly behavior such as competing to get higher grades, playing football the best at recess, and even racing to the lunchroom.  Competition is necessarily a bad thing, but I have seen Jimmy become discouraged when his brother “beats” him at something.  These students could all benefit from working with me with a smaller group of students.  I think Kate will be able to open up more and share her ideas aloud to her classmates, Henry will gain confidence by having me help if need be, and Jimmy will be pulled away from his brother.    

My mentor teacher also helped me determine the topic of both my small reading lessons.  We decided that it would be most beneficial for these students to work on text structures in expository texts and stick with the same topic over the span of two short lessons.  Previously, students have been learning about text features in informational texts such as bold and italic words and headings.  These particular students were struggling with identifying these features in different expository texts, so I thought that text structures and cue words would make them more comfortable with informational texts all together.  During these two lessons, students will be looking at different passages of each type of text, highlighting different cue words, writing their own passages, and filling out graphic organizers.  At the end of my lessons students will be able to pick out key words and phrases that will help them identify the different text structures (description, sequence, comparison, problem/solution, and cause/effect) of expository texts.

Example of Student Work

When I was working with my target student I had her draw me a picture.  After she drew me a picture I had her write a sentence explaining the picture.  She drew me a picture of her and in the picture she was holding two dolls.  So underneath her drawing she wrote the following: "I lki to pLa DoLs." Which is translated to: "I like too play dolls."  The elementary school I am placed at is an urban school and my target student is a struggling student, thereforeI was not surprised with the results of having the student write a sentence.  By observing what she wrote, it is clear that she understands that a sentence moves from left to right.  It also appears that she realizes that sentences begin a capital letter and end with a punctuation mark.  These two indications are examples of having awareness of concepts of print.  What is also shown by this example is that the student has phonological awareness.  Even though every word is not spelled correctly, there are letters that are present in the sentence that are the appropriate sound for the words she is trying to write.  This shows me that she is able to match a letter with its sound.  This student is in need of much more practice and instruction, but has the beginning steps of understanding concepts of print and formulating sentences while matching letters to sounds.  I think it is very imperative that this student continues to work on matching sounds to letters and creating words.

(Picture sample of work was taken but could not be formatted properly to be seen in this document)

Small Reading Lesson Plans

For my small reading lesson plans I decided that I wanted to work with students that were struggling in order to help them develop their reading skills that were lacking.  When I asked my teacher who she thought would be best for me to do this with, she directed me to two students who I thought would be perfect for these lesson plans.  While observing these two individual students over the past several months, I have seen that these students are able to comment on their favorite characters in stories, but they are not able to understand what the main point of the story is or the main events that occur in the story.  Basically these two students are lacking in their overall reading comprehension.  Since they are only in kindergarten, they are not able to read long stories to themselves, so they are expected to listen to stories that are read to them daily.  It is important for the students to listen so that they are able to comprehend what is happening in the story since they are unable to read the story to themselves.

Since I want to focus on the students' comprehension, I will read a story to the two students called Love is a Family by Roma Downey.  Before I begin reading, I will explain to the students that I want them to be thinking about who their favorite is while I read the story and that I will want them to explain to me why the character selected is their favorite.  After I am done reading them the story I will have them draw me their favorite character and tell me why.  I am expecting that by doing this the students will be focussing heavily on the characters in the story and not necessarily the events in the story or what is actually happening.

The next week I will take these same students and read them the same story.  This time before I begin reading I will tell the students that I want them to be thinking about everything that is happening in the story.  By prompting them in this way, my goal is to have them really focus on the storyline and the major events in the story.  After I have finished reading the story I will have the kindergarteners draw me three events from the story: something that happened at the beginning, middle, and end and then explain to me what they are and why they think they are important.  My goal with this task is for students to be able to think about books as the whole picture and try and grasp meaning from the story.

Writing Video Response

I wanted a video on a class of 2nd grade students who were going through a "writing adventure" or the writers workshop.  This program has a tight link between writing and reading, and also making writing real for the students. This teacher talks about how a lot of teachers weren't teaching writers, but the teachers that were teaching writing had students who had better writers.  The students start out by planning their writing, by asking questions about what they want to write about.  They then move onto the next step which is drafting.  The students sit by themselves and begin their own stories, most kids work alone but their teacher is always there to help and move them towards the next step of writing, revising.  The examples of student writing was awesome, it was so advanced for students their age and it is great that they are able to share their writing with their teacher aloud and then have her comment back on what they were writing about.  Some examples sounded somewhat poetic which I thought was great.  Their teacher gives them lots of ways to edit their writing (the last stage of writing). Literature comes in at this point too, and they learn different ways to write words so that they aren't using "tired" words.  These tired words are words like pretty when they could be using better words like beautiful, etc.  She tells her students that if they really feel they need to use a tired word they better have thought about every other option!  The part the student's love most about their writers workshop is sharing with their stories.  Research shows that peer discussion helps them to become better writers too, which I think is so interesting because I know as a student I was always so scared to share my writing with my classmates but these students are so confident in reading what they wrote and it is awesome to know that this helps them to become better writers in the long run.  Writing is hard for students regardless, especially these 2nd grade students,  it is new to them and a process they are learning but writers workshop helps this process become easier for them.  It has a structured approach and a great teacher to help them, so in this process they are learning the skills and seeing that learning is fun!  This helps them become life-long writers in the words of their teacher, it helps them become comfortable with writing.  I think overall this program is really nice, instead of just sending kids off to write and never really talking about it with them these students are able to discuss their work with both their teacher and their peers and get feedback and become comfortable with writing.  Not only that, they begin to enjoy writing and see it as something that is fun and exciting.  I love that when students become better writers they also become better readers, this makes me realize how much I have to focus on writing when I am teaching so that my students can be both great writers and great readers!  

Video:
http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/descriptive_writing/

Parent Letter

Dear Tina and Steve,

Your son Levi is an excellent student, more specifically an excellent reader.  We have recently done some reading testing and for a Kindergarten student, your son is reading at a reading level 2, which is second grade level.  Since the majority of our class is still at a Kindergarten level, Levi is not getting as much practice as he should with his reading level.  Although Levi is an excelling student, I would love to work with him more one on one on fluency at the second grade level as opposed to fluency at the Kindergarten level which is much different.  Fluency is the way that we read things, so the way our voice sounds when we read (not robotic sounding), how it changes for different punctuation, and just practicing reading at his level of reading.  In order to do this, I would like to work on teaching Levi high-frequency words that he doesn't know yet.  I also want to try a few things with Levi such as having him read the higher level text quietly to himself before reading it out loud to me and also choral reading with a few of the other students who are at the same reading level as him.  I would also love to try Readers Theater with Levi.  Readers Theater is when students are given a script and are reading for a specific character, since they are "acting" out this character they are practicing reading with emotion, I am going to do this with that same group of excelling students that I was talking about before.  I think all of these different techniques are going to help improve Levi's fluency at a second grade level!

I am looking forward to working with Levi on his fluency and am looking forward to seeing him excel even more in reading!  If you have any questions do not hesitate to ask me, my door is always open!  I am so proud of your son and his accomplishments in my classroom!

Thank you!
Leanne Zotos