Reading and Writing Strategies for Non-Fiction Texts- Unit Reflection

The first lesson was creating a concept map based on the vocabulary word Immigration. Students pulled from background knowledge and filled out a concept map relating ideas to the central word. The second lesson was a lesson where I read a book about Immigration into America and students added information to their concept maps after discussion about the text. After teaching this lesson I was able to reflect on my practice. The students I think were successful during this lesson. I think what helped was being able to return to their concept map and add more. Also, I think it helped that they were able to work with partners. This always works well with the students, many of them have said that they just enjoy bouncing ideas off of one another and that it really helps in their thinking about the concept or the task. Some students however decided to work independently and you could see how it had an effect on their additions to the concept map, or lack thereof. These students just say and moped during this time and did not add much to their concept map. I saw that those who chose to work with a partner took the most away from the lesson.
In terms of literacy practices I learned that my students are able to dig deep into their previous knowledge and that helps them during reading-especially in this lesson. I had a great deal of participation when asking students for input. Even students who do not usually participate offered up information when constructing and revisiting our concept map. I think overall students are able to make cross-curricular connections (which is very important in upper elementary).
I will re-teach this material again as we loop back through reading and writing strategies for non-fiction texts. We will see these strategies again as we look at other non-fiction text. At this time I will give more independent work time to those I know can handle it and I will pull small groups for those who had a hard time constructing, adding to or defending their answers from this lesson.
If I were to do this lesson again I would split the reading up into 2 days. The book was quite long and I think lost some of my students because of it’s length. I think I would also follow up the lesson with a different text and have them construct a concept map based on a vocabulary word. They would dig in their prior knowledge to see what they knew and then add to their concept map while they read. I think I would do this with several different non-fiction texts and vary small/large group discussions and independent/partner work. I think that if students practiced more with building vocabulary or even built vocabulary based on looking up the definition and reading about the topic, they would have been more successful on the independent level.

The second lesson I did was about determining big ideas and important details.I was very pleased with the outcome of this lesson. I think that I had so much success because students were familiar with the book and had read it in previous classes. Having the prior knowledge made for a very rich discussion and in-depth thoughts about big ideas, important details and questions to ask to set a purpose for reading. Even my students who tend to shy away from class discussions participated and contributed good dialogue to the conversation. We took a picture walk through the book and came up with questions based on the pictures. We had lots of questions that they produced, several of them were very connected, in-depth and reached the goals of my lesson from the bat. They caught onto the story and ran with it, I was very pleased.
I learned key factors about my student’s literacy practices, and that mostly revolves around having a rich prior knowledge and being able to tap into that during ELA lessons. Students had to understand the context of the book in order to understand the important details, and they were able to draw upon that based on their prior knowledge about the context and the basis of the book. If I were to re-teach I would chose a different text and have them research the context of the book. I wonder how the lesson would have gone if students did not know the context or had background knowledge of the book. I think it taught me that before you dive into a text you should do some research on it to better familiarize yourself with what the book is about-especially with non-fictional texts.
The third lesson was an extension of the lesson before. They were taking what they learned in the previous lesson and applying to an independent writing piece. This involved reading a passage and applying what they knew about determining big ideas and important details.
Most students were able to successfully read a passage and determine the important details and big ideas based on that passage. Students worked hard to gain understanding of the passage and apply in a writing piece. Some students do not thrive when given independent work and thus needed either a one on one or a small group discussion of the topic. These students benefited from oral conversation and were able to successfully determine the big ideas and important details of the passage. I was please with them being able to communicate orally their comprehension of the piece and of the task. I was a little disappointed with what followed though. I thought that if I pulled students in a small group and we all discussed the meaning of the passage and draw big ideas that it would boost their confidence and I could have them try the writing piece on their own. Instead of running with it, students fell back into the anxiety ridden state that they get to when they are asked to write independently. Most of these students want you to sit next to them while they write and check to see if they are doing it correctly. They do not thrive when asked to work independently. I wish I could have thought of something that could have gotten them to work more independently without getting so much anxiety of doing so.
If I were to re-teach this I would find a way that connected those students in a way in which they did not feel anxiety. Similar to students who enjoy playing an education game. They are having fun, so they do not realize that they are actually learning. I would like to think of something that gets them writing on their own where they do not feel so isolated and have anxiety of the independence.
Planning and teaching an entire unit most definitely allowed me to grow as a teacher and as a reflective teacher. I am becoming better at understanding quickly if something is not going right and either changing it or reflecting on what I could've done differently.I am very thankful for this opportunity.

Literacy Unit- Genre Study

General Background: I did my unit on a genre study that mixed Historical Fiction, Mystery and Tall Tales all together. The first ten days, that I used for inquiry two were the introduction to the unit. We started off the unit by creating a KWL chart, then read a book from each genre. We used these books to generate list about the setting, characters, problem, solution and moral from each genre.

Finishing up my unit for my genre study, has left me with mix feelings. First of all, I am proud of myself for being able to create an unit when not a lot of materials were given to me. This is not a striped curriculum like I have been seeing with many other subjects. I was given points that the students had to learn, six weeks to create unit around this. Second, I feel as if there is not enough time in the day to teach all the material that I want my students to walk away from this unit with. With the MEAP, DWA, Fifth Grade Camp, Power Outages and student led parent teacher conferences, it seemed that my unit was very inconsistent on when we did the lessons. Also, it seems that we will never get to all of the material because there is ALWAYS something that is coming up (I hear this will be an issue for all teachers!).

I was thrilled with the response of flip-chart and character-setting drawings. All of the fifth grade teachers asked for copies of this lesson along with the flip chart template. I was glad to see my ideas were being used by other teachers. Also, I felt that it showed that I was planning and trying to put a lot of thought into my lesson.

While writing their own Tall Tale, was a great idea and my teacher thought I had a great plan, we figured out we would not have enough time to go through the entire writing process. (Originally, my goal of this lesson was for students to play around with tall tales and see if they can get that deeper understanding of what a tall tale is). While I think the lesson still went well, I was worried that the students were rushed and did not have enough time to dig deep into the genre. When doing this unit again, I would wait until the end of the six weeks to think about writing a Tall Tale. I think my some of my students may have had a hard time because they were still unsure what a tall tale is. Also, next time I will have my students do research and online activities (if the school will allow it) to help the have more hands on experience with the books.

While my unit went well, there were a couple of things that I was not expecting. I was not expecting my students to struggle with note-taking without any lines. They were writing too big or too small and running out of room. On the first day of using the flip-book, this took away from the students learning the materials. Also, after ten days of taking about these three genres I found the students were bored and ready to move on. While the flip book is a great organized way of holding the information, the lessons were very similar. Next, time I would try to condense some of these lesson so the students would not become 'bored'. I also found that some students that their favorite genre is mystery, so when we were filling out the chart they had the most to contribute to mystery. I should have taken more time to read more examples of Tall Tales and Historical Fiction so the students had a better base knowledge before we started filling out the charts.

Lastly, while I love the idea of a genre study, however, I found that studying three genres was hard for many students (this is how my school district has this set up). The lesson became long when we had to cover three different genres in one day. We would spend just one day talking about the characters of the three genres. Even if I could cut the conversations down to eight minutes a genre, it would still be a twenty four minute mini-lesson. This did not leave enough time for the students to explore reading or writing about the genres, outside of note-taking. Also, I felt that many students were confusing the genres because there was so much information to think about.


Answering the Questions:
I felt that the students struggled with the genre of Tall Tales across all three of my lessons. Many students were not sure what the genre really consisted of. So I can across that digging deep was hard for them. My students also struggled and worried about the picture they can to draw that combined character and setting. They were so worried about how it would look instead of the important aspect of the project.

My alternate reads for my students work was I was surprised by how they struggled with note-taking. This is a skill we are working on for sixth grade. I thought when they had the boxes and the information on the board, this would have been a great modeling of organizing their data. However, the students struggled with how big to write, their writing wasn't neat because there were no lines. Or there were too man notes and not enough room. Next time, I will teach a mini-lesson on strategies on note taking with this kind of set up. I think this will help the students and not have the lesson get away from my main point.

I was amazed by how well my students did picking apart the genres. They did a great job of reading one book to guide their thinking about an entire genre. Also, they did an awesome job of listening to a story Casey At Bat to guide their thinking about writing their own Tall Tales. I was surprised about how many of them were able to pick up on idea of Today's Tall Tales.

As for re-teaching any of the materials from my lessons, we are going to spend the next four weeks working on the genres, character, setting, problem, solution, moral and theme in my classroom. The students will revisit the material, write more from the genres and read many more examples. For the next four weeks, we read aloud a picture book from one of these genres as well. The students are also ask to read one chapter book from these genres during silent reading time.

If I was going to teach the same lessons again, I would change a couple of things. I would change studying three genres at one time. Also, I would change having the students write their tall tale piece in the middle. I think I would change the mystery writing piece and the Tall Tale Writing piece because I found the students had more background knowledge about mystery than Tall Tales.This will help students to become exposed to more Tall Tales and I think their writing will improve because of this.

All in all, I really enjoyed teaching my unit!

The Connection of Fluency and Comprehension in the Classroom

In Mosaic Of Thought, I read about the importance of comprehension and fluency in the classroom, as well as how it connects to our leveled reading for our students. The relationship between reading comprehension and reading fluency is that once you understand what you are reading, then you will become a more fluent reader. Students who struggle with comprehension struggle with fluency because they are having to stop and re-read or struggle to understand what they are reading. Because of this fluency in their reading suffers. I am not seen any approaches to assessing fluency in my classroom thus far. Although we have set time for reading, we have not been teaching strategies about reading yet this year. I think that formal assessments help us to understand where students are at. Having a DRA data for each student is critical in deciding what course of action should be taken to help develop skills in our students. I think we also need to see how much students are comprehending about their reading, if they can connect it to writing or not, and if they are able to form concise responses based on their comprehension of the piece they read. I think it is also important to discuss reading development with our CT’s and with our literacy coach at the school. They are aware of the testing that is done and which ways to assess learning of skills and develop readers on and individual level. I think that we also need to confer and conference with students frequently to make sure they are at the correct reading level and they are being challenged enough. Comprehension is very important and students also need to be able to display and understanding of what they are reading and also be able to develop this understanding in their writing. We use DRA testing to correctly place students at a reading level and work from their on developing comprehension and fluency.

Fluency: How can we tell?!

While reading the Mosaic of Thought: The Power of Comprehension Strategy Instruction, I noticed that the theme was about how to get students to comprehend what they are reading. In Mosaic Thought, they bring up the idea of students who are able to read fluency but using the comprehension strategies only “slows them down.” They bring up the point that many students are not reading books at their level. This means that the students are not reading books that enrich their minds while reading. Are they able to use the comprehension strategies on this book or is there not enough plot to do so? We also talk about this with my fifth graders; a lot of time when the text is not challenging enough you will use the strategies automatically without thinking. This is a great thing, but we want you be challenged. 

Fluency is first tested in our classroom through the DRA (Development Reading Assessment). This assessment is done at the beginning and end of each year to see where each student is at for their reading. The assessment looks at their fluency and reading level.

We use a couple of different strategies to teach fluency in my classroom. The first thing that we do is to make sure all of the students are reading ‘just right’ book. This should be a book on their level. We test to see if the book is on their level through the five-finger test, as well as making sure the students understand what they are reading. Then we set goal for the students to help them keep on pace while reading. For instance, we tell them they have a week to finish reading one of their books. My mentor said that she finds students often work best when they have a set in stone goal. This will help them monitor their reading.

In my classroom, we spend most of the time working on silent reading and improving that fluency. The students do not seem to be able to read aloud as much. As a reader, personally, I find I struggle most with reading aloud. While reading their books, how do we know they are reading word for word? Are the students actually reading or are they able to grasp the basic idea of the book? Also, we teach them all of these reading strategies, how can we get them to do them naturally? The strategies will help them become fluent readers, however they how do you get them to them naturally?

I could pull them more for conferencing. I think the only way to really find out how much your students know is to ask them and work with them. We can’t leave all of our ‘assessments’ up to a formal test, we need to work with them as much as possible.

Gill-The Forgotten Genre of Children's Poetry

In this selection Gill brings up the point that children's poetry is a very popular subject. However, much of the literature that is devoted to children's literature that is being published today focuses on teaching the different kinds and genres of poetry, and insists on exposing children to the so called "classics". In this article Gill wonders if there really is an actual genre of poetry that is explicitly devoted to children. In the article Gill states "I believe that central to helping students enjoy poetry is helping them to understand what poetry is" I think this is a great point. Just like every other subject, goals and standards are being reshaped and reworked to accommodate a new generation of students, so why should poetry be different. I agree that a study of classic poems can give students a great glimpse into the past and can be a meaningful exercise. However, for it to be the only way that students see and interact with poetry makes it hard for them to relate and become excited about poetry. Until we as get students to understand that poetry is "something people do...to share their experiences." When those experiences the students read about in classic poems are very un-relatable to their personal experiences it is hard to get that point across.

This article really hit home with me for a couple reasons. The first is that as a child I was fascinated with poetry. I loved writing it, and I loved reading it. But as I read the same poems over and over in the poetry units in language arts and those poems were not really related to my experiences it was hard to keep that passion alive. The other is that in my placement I have actually experienced that this is still happening today. After specials one day, one of my students came in and slumped down. When I asked her what was wrong she said that specials were sooooo boring. When I asked her why she told me because all they did all day was read poems. When I said that poetry was awesome and asked her why she had disliked it so much I was surprised at her response. To paraphrase her, The poems are all really old and I don't understand them and it is just boring. I mean I like poetry but that was really boring. I mean its art class why are we reading stupid poems all day? Reading this article brought this back up, and I really believe that before we can get kids interested in poetry we have to take our foot off of the classic poems gas and look towards more child geared poetry that kids can relate too and get excited about and interested in. If we don't I fear that poetry will become a dying art.

Deidra M. Gammill- Learning the write way

This article was about the importance to learning to write, and writing to learn. It discusses the importance of writing in a cross-curricular setting, bringing up the point that writing can help with many different subjects and tasks including activating prior knowledge, problem solving, and reading comprehension.
They then to go on to give you strategies of incorporating these tasks into your daily routine. This is super helpful because this article gives you ideas, not just talk about research. One strategy they suggested was the K-W-L chart and journals. These charts can be used in all subjects and many contexts. These strategies help to incorporate many subjects in many contexts and help develop writing techniques in many ways.
I think that in the 5th grade it is important to use this approach. Like we were talking about in class last week, by upper elementary we don’t use a literacy block because literacy is incorporated in every subject throughout the day. I think it is important to use writing strategies to continue fostering development in their writing and comprehension. In the older grades you are reading to learn, not learning to read. However, I do think having something that can fit across many subjects is a beneficial thing. I don’t know of how well it would fit into my current literacy curriculum. I haven’t seen enough reader’s or writer’s workshop to make a decision on if it would mesh well or not.
I think in order to be successful in teaching this we would have to look at the big picture of our teaching and create common goals and plans across the subjects. And then see how you can incorporate comprehension, discussion and writing into your subjects. I think to be successful you also have to mesh your teaching so that it is seamless between subjects. I also think that students would get into a routine of using these strategies and become better at using them if you used them throughout the day in every subject.
All of the writer’s workshop components we have learned about today has influence the way I approach my unit. Looking at writing samples to see where students are, using forms of assessments is so important when looking at the big picture and where you want to take your students during your unit. I am thankful to have been exposed to the knowledge and it has given me ideas on how to be a more concise, and meaningful teacher.

Conferring in Writers Workshop

This week for the jigsaw reading I choice the article about writing workshop and conferencing. I choose this because in fifth grade I see this a lot and would like suggestions on way other teachers have made this work. School Talk: Conferring in Writers Workshop was all about hearing student voices in the during writers workshop. It gave key components of conferencing during writing workshop, which include: short conferences, praises, listening to student, teach the writer, student involvement, etc. The main goal was keeping the conversation to the specific students needs and work on their writing, not the writing process.

I would use this approach very much in my classroom and see similar communication going on in my classroom. For instance, parent/teacher conferences are student lead meaning they have to talk about their learning and their work. Writers conferences are a great way for students to talk about their work and knowing what their process was during writing. In my classroom, when we confer with them, we are always asking them "what was your style or techniques or writing?" My mentor teacher said she does this because she wants to know if they understand what they are doing. During conferences, I have a hard time not correcting everything on their papers. Many of my students have grammar errors, spelling errors or fragments in their writing. It has been hard for me to sit back and listen to what they have to say and correct their entire paper.

In my classroom, we have a writing conference journal with a tab being each students name. The mentor teacher and myself are able to keep track of the students writing and there process just like the article stated. As well as Mike in the video had a binder. The binder is not a mystery to the students because we are working on goal setting and improving together, so they are able to see everything that is written in the binder.

One thing the article mentions, is showing your students your own writing. Mike did this on the 5th Grade Writing Workshop as well. This is one thing I have never done but seems like it would work. Showing the students my work would deeper my connection to the students, showing I am a human with a life however a learning experience for both of us. They will have opporutnities to edit or give me ideas of my writing. Another thing that I have learned as a professional, is letting the students talk and seeing what they have to say about their writing. Do not always jump in their with your ideas, let them think.

The article has made me think about viewing my students writing instead of worrying about the writing process. How can I help that specific student improve compared to how can I get the student through this writing process? What can I teach the student that will help all of their pieces and not that specific piece? I do not want to do the writing or work for the students, I just want to guide them in their thinking.