Digging Deeper: Week 2 in the Learning Academy

My second week in the Learning Academy had a few hiccups in the road. Ms. Jameson was out of the class due to testing, so I was unable to interact with the students as much as I would've liked. However, the substitue, Ms. Lancaster, was up to date on the situation and let me sit and work with Johnny throughout the class. One thing that I noticed this week was that Ms. Jameson had rearranged her room to accomodate more students. While last week she had 7-8 students in her class, this week she had 8-9. Below is a rough sketch of how the desks were arranged and where Johnny and I were seated. We also went to the rug at the front of the room for part of our read aloud.

At approximately 8:02 AM on Wednesday, September 9th, 2015, I administered the Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation to Johnny. This test consists of 22 words of familiar words for the student to segment. I read each of the words to Johnny after reading the instructions and practicing segmenting words with him. He easily segmented words like "dog" and "red," but kept his voice very low. I had a hard time hearing him which lead me to asking him to repeat some words several times. In the end, Charlie scored 20 out of 22. He messed up on the words "fine" - he segmented it like /f/ /ine/ - and top into /t/ /op/. I found it odd that these two words were the ones that he messed up on because they don't have the same structure. I would have expected him to mess up on words like "fine" and "ice" or "top" and "job" instead.

8:00 - 9:20 AM: Observations during classroom time

My time in the classroom was either very scattered or busy. The first few minutes was dedicated to working with Ms. Jameson on what I wanted to that day and how we would function with the substitute there. She left at about 8:30 AM to go conduct her testing. Before she left, I conducted the segmentation assessment as described above. Johnny was quiet this morning and very shy.

- Johnny kept his voice low for the assessment.

- His focus easily remained on me during the assessment instead of wandering around the room.

- While his focus was on the test, his eyes did not stay in one place. They constantly shifted as he thought about the segmentation.

- He was open and more willing to take the assessment than the previous week.

After I finished the assessment, I asked Johnny what types of books he would like me to read aloud to him. He asked for books on turtles, but also wanted chapter books as well. During his reading naturally time during Lexia, I pulled him aside to the carpet at the front of the room and read him The Spiderwick Chronicles: The Field Guide by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. We read the letters at the beginning of the book and the first two chapters in total. He followed along closely. After I finished reading aloud to him the first time, he asked me if we could continue after OG. I read aloud to him during his snack and was very happy when he figured out that the main characters of the book had "written" the letters to the authors of the book. He lit up at this discovery and quickly engaged in a conversation about the series with his neighbor about the book series and the movie.

9:20 - 10:00 AM: Observations during Specials (Music)

Johnny was attentive during this music lesson. This lesson felt like it was teaching the students something rather than trying to keep them occupied.

- Students new the vocabulary words (octave, range, and scale).

- Teacher led the students in singing Buffalo Gals.

- Teacher used kinesthetic arm movements to teach students how to play the recorder.

- Students learned how to sing parts of the song Unsung Heroes, but weren't able to hit the notes easily.

- Teacher utilized the piano in the room to teach students tone, pitch, and the scales.

Image for Spiderwick Chronicles found at this address:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Field-Guide-Spiderwick-Chronicles/dp/1442486929

#readaloud #week2 #spiderwickchronicles