Boiling Up: Week 5 at the Learning Academy

This Wednesday, September 30th, was my fifth week of observation at the Learning Academy. Week 5 brought a new kind of look towards teaching. I was not on top of my game this week, and consequently I was highly unprepared to teach a lesson. While I have done lessons in Field Studies before with 20+ students (aged fifth grade or first grade), I have never felt so nervous for a lesson in a classroom of 10 students. I had to do a lesson on fluency, which isn't one of my strong suits in teaching. (I know that read alouds help a lot, but I have trouble coming up with activities.) My classroom teacher, Ms. Jameson, opened my eyes to another side of fluency, and created a lesson for me to execute to her class.

I had done previous assessments with my case study student, Johnny, to see where his skill level is in writing, spelling, and phoneme manipulation. However, I didn't realize how much those simple things played into fluency, particularly the third. My classroom teacher showed me how to do a lesson in fluency to make it into something the students would highly benefit from rather than get "fluff." Ms. Jameson emphasized this week that it's about the students, not the teacher, and it is up to the teacher to "hit the nail" every day to make sure the students are getting what they need. These students all have some form of learning disability, and I didn't want to take away the option of teaching them something valuable.

The lesson I taught focused on the digraphs wh, th, th (with the line through it), ch, and sh. I first had the students describe what a digraph was and give me the sounds to each of the digraphs listed above. Then, I went around the room and asked the students to give me words with these digraphs. This was harder for some students because of the two different th sounds and /wh/. I was surprised to find a few students told me "with." My classroom teacher and I reminded them that the sound /wh/ was like blowing out a candle, light and airy. We also practiced what a voiced or unvoiced sound felt like and sounded like ebcause the two "th" spellings were voiced and unvoiced!

After the quick review, I gave the students a passage that contained most of the digraphs we had covered. They had to underline or highlight, depending on their preference, the digraphs that they found in the passage. I walked around the room and checked on each student's progress to ensure they were doing well and to answer any questions they may have had. Afterwards, I modeled for the students fluent reading using the passage they had just used. I read a sentence really slowly and then one too quickly in a Goldilock's type of experiment. Then I read all the way through with good accuracy, rate, and expression, and had the students follow along with my finger. I was able to catch a few students who weren't following closely by stopping my reading and asking a question about why I raised my voice at an exclamation mark. The students who weren't following closely kept moving their finger after I had stopped reading.

After the modeling, I had the students pair off into groups and read one sentence at a time to their partner and switch back and forth. (A suggestion from Ms. Jameson was to have the person with the longest hair start first! It worked great!) I pulled a small group of three students to work with them closely during this activity since they have trouble reading or focusing. It went smoothly, and the students were done with their activity with little trouble.

Finally, I had the students do a group reading by going around the room and having each student read one sentence until the passage was complete. This allowed me to hear each student's reading ability and get a baseline for their progress. After they had finished, I collected their papers and thanked them for being so attentive.

Other than my lesson, I got to work with my case study student, Johnny, some more on his fluency. I began by having Johnny read a passage that Ms. Jameson gave me that was on his reading level. I listened to him read the passage and kept a running record of his accuracy. It was hard to keep up with Johnny, even when he was reading choppily, because my hand got tired of making tick marks. I also got behind when he made an error that I had to log. Running records are easy in theory, but hard in execution! Still, I got a good impression of how he reads on his level and what issues he has when he reads. An example is he replaces the word "what" with "wait." I remember him having issues spelling "wait" on one of his earlier assessments, so I would like to develop him more in this area! (He spelled it "whate".) The long vowel sound needs to be worked on with him. He read with good accuracy on his assessment, but he lacked in rate. His words were choppy since he was still trying to decode them. He also skipped a few words, but they did not detract from the meaning of the sentence. I also had him echo read The Spiderwick Chronicles with me after I read aloud to him. In both instances (his assessment and the echo reading), Johnny lacked expression. It didn't matter if I read the sentence in an outlandish expression, he would say the sentence in a monotone voice while he read it off the page. However, his accuracy and rate during the echo reading was much better than the running record assessment!

This week was hard on me. As a student, I pride myself in my grades and excellent work ethic. However, this week was a major disappointment for both me and my professors. I wasn't prepared for my lesson and it showed. This week was an important lesson for me to learn. I wasn't able to keep up with my standards, and I have to own up to it. It's a part of growing up and learning, but I can make sure that it doesn't get to the point where I am failing myself again. That is inexcusable when it comes to children and their futures; as a future teacher, I had to learn that.

Lessons Learned this week: Always double check, communicate with your professors, and never do anything less than your best, especially if it concerns your career or children's futures!

#spiderwickchronicles #observation #readaloud #week5 #DRI #LA2