Galster reflection 2

The second part of the lesson went well. The students were able to come up with very creative answers to my open-ended questions. I noticed that Katie was more willing to participate, however, I made sure Matt participated equally by making them alternate on who answered the questions. They were also both encouraged to comment on each other's answers and ask follow up questions. They both were able to carry out the objectives I made for them by answering several questions. Furthermore, they used the questioning strategy learned in the previous lesson to ask each other and me additional questions.
The strengths in this lesson for supporting my students learning were that the questions used were very open-ended and allowed them to think about the book more critically than they are usually required to do in their class. A limitation to this was that they are not used to these types of questions, that do not have a "correct" answer, which they were thrown off by a bit. They asked me if they got the answer right a couple of different times. When they did this, I reminded them that there is no "correct" answer other than trying their best to think about them as answer them as best as they could by using the book's pictures and words to help explain their thinking.
I noticed that I may be a bit too accepting of answers. By this I mean, I have a hard time saying that students are wrong, or need to think about their answer more. I did however ask them to explain their reasoning when I felt this was an issue, which I think is a good way to keep them motivated and not feel bad about their answers. All in all, I thought this lesson went well.
Please let me know if I need to clarify anything!!! Thanks!

Galster Reflection 1

This lesson went over OK. I noticed a couple of things about my students' participation and learning in relation to my objectives. Firsst, both Matt and Katie participated very well. It seemed that Katie really liked asking questions and trying to find the answers to them, while Matt did not so much. He did, however, seem to like answering the questions Katie came up with :) Katie generated 9questions before, during and after the reading. Matt generated 6 questions before, during, and after the reading. Some of Katies' questions were: "Why are the pigs' eyes all different colors? Why do the pictures have boxes around them? Where are all the words? Why are the letters missing?" Some of Matts' questions were: "Why do the pigs change color when they come out of the book? Why are your brothers annoying? Why is that story black and white? How could a paper airplane hold up three pigs?"

The strengths of my lesson were that I had Katie and Matt come up with questions they had and therefore were interested in reading on to find their answers. They seemed to like asking the questions instead of me asking them questions. At one point, Katie said, "Hey, it seems like we are the teachers!" The limitations to my lesson were that I had a hard time not telling them some of the answers to their questions and loosing my place everytime they interrupted my reading with a question.

I noticed that I am not as nervous as a teacher working in small groups. I also noticed that I was effective at caturing their attention by reading enthusiastically and a book they thought was funny. I wonder how effective this lesson was for them. They seemed to have learned a new skill, questioning, because they were both able to generate many questions. Will they be able to transfer this skill to other genres of books? Will they be able to carry out this skill when they are reading on their own, and if so, will they actually do so?

Galster lesson plan 1 AND 2

Grade level: 2nd. Date taught: 4-29-11. Number of students: 2.
Rationale: The evidence that my focus students need to learn this skill is from talking with my CT about their comprehension levels, and looking through comprehension assessments in their portfolios. Both of them have pretty low confidence in their reading skills such as comprehension. In addition my CT said they could both use some help with questioning strategies. There are not however low achieving when it comes to comprehension. "Readers ask themselves questions about the text as they read (Duke & Pearson, 2002). They ask self-questions out of curiosity and as they use this strategy, they become more engaged with the text and want to keep reading to find answers (Harvey & Goudvis, 2007)." This is also a major part of my rationale because teaching students to formulate questions during reading is very important in comprehending the text and being motivated to continue reading the text to get answers to their questions.
Reading skill focus of lessons 1 and 2: comprehension, in particular questioning.
Objectives for lesson 1: Students will ask themselves and each other useful questions to help improve their comprehension of the story. They will do this before and during the reading.
Objective for lesson 2: Students will be able to answer a list of questions during and after I read a book to them. They will have the opportunity to have a small discussion about the questions as well.
Materials and supplies needed: The Three Pigs by: David Wiesner. My list of questions and possible probing questions to help scaffold their learning.
Introduction to lessons 1 and 2: Have either of you ever read a story about the three little pigs? Have either of you read this version of the three pigs? This is like the three little pigs, but has a lot of differences as well. Today, I am going to read you this book, and ask you questions about the book. It's really important you try to pay attention to the story as I am reading it so you understand what it is about. We will also talk about how you guys can ask questions to yourselves to help you understand what you are reading better. When I read, I am always asking myself questions about the book to heko me understand it better. I will motivate them by being enthusiastic about reading the book and providing an environment that shows them I care about their ideas and their learning.
Outline of key events during lesson 1: I will ask students to come up with questions they have about the book just by looking at the cover. I will also ask them to ask themselves questions as we are reading, and to share their questions with our group so we can all think about their questions. I will tell them I expect them to listen to the story being read, and to chime in whenever they have a question. I will also ask a question abouth the cover to model what I am expecting of them> I wonder why the author named this book the three pigs, and not the three little pigs?
Outline of key events during lesson 2: By using the comprehension continuum worksheet, I will ask some of the questions listed under merging thinking with content and aquiring knowledge. I will ask the following questions: What do you think? What did this book remind you of? Has anything like this ever happened to you? What is something new you learned? What do you think the author wants you to get out of this most? Some probing questions to help scaffold their learning: Why? What makes you think that? How did you come up with that? Tell me more.
Closing summary of lesson (since taught back to back, only one): You guys did really great today! What did you learn about during this? Do you think this is important? Why? Do you think you will be able to use your questioning skills in all the books you read from now on? Did you two enjoy this book? This lesson? How do you think I could do a better job next time?
Ongoing assessment for lessons 1 and 2: I will monitor Katie and Matt's learning by listening to the questions and answers to their own questions and my questions. This will help tell me if either of them or both of them need more work on questioning skills. They will continue to need help with comprehension skills throughout their learning careers, but if they need help comprehending this particular story.
Based on what I know about my focus students, Matt may need my help with focusing back in on what we are doing. I will do so by reading with enthusiasm, and asking him and Katie questions. If he seems to be off topic, I will ask him to generate another question for me about the text, and/or ask him if he has come up with an answer to any of his previous questions.

Galster Overview

I chose to work with two students, Matt and Katie for the two mini-lessons. I chose them with the help of my CT. My CT informed me that they are both middle achieving students when it comes to reading comprehension. I wanted to work with students at roughly the same comprehension level so they could get the most out of it as possible, without being lost or bored. Katie is one of the quietest students in the class. She is usually very motivated to learn and always completes the work assigned to her. She rarely asks for help, and I have never seen my CT yell at her. She is a middle or high achieving student depending on subject content. Matt is usually a quiet student as well. He has ADD, and is medicated. I have only seen him get yelled at by my CT once, and this was on the day he forgot to take his meds. He is less motivated than Katie, but with a little help from the teacher re-focusing his attention, he usually completes the work assigned to him. I wanted to work with two students so we could have a mini discussion.

Gabriels Post 4.26.11

I think DJ teach did a great job exploring the readings and materials taught in class and incorporating them into our blogs. It is clear through the posts that we all took what we read and connected it to our classrooms. We have learned in this class that it is so important for students to feel connected to what they are learning and make the content mean something outside of school. We are clearly showing this in our blog, and prove that students must connect topics to their personal life. I think we all agreed on a lot of issues in this class and our blogs seemed to go together. The only time I read that Lauren disagreed with me was in our math blog. Even though it wasn’t part of this blog, I think its important to note that even though Lauren disagreed with me, she did so in a very respectable manner and explained why she disagreed with me. Both Lauren and Gabe pushed my thinking while I read their note blogs, there were times when they brought up points that I didn’t think about. They were also lucky enough to see evidence of the readings in their classroom, while I didn’t always see things that we talked about in my classroom. When this did occur, I did try to connect it back to when I was in elementary school, that way I was at least making some connection to my personal life. One thing that surprised me about the blog was that we actually took the conversations from the blog and brought it to class. We had discussed topics from the blog while we were all out to lunch one day. I think this really shows that we are taking what we are learning and incorporating it into our daily lives, which is what I think this class is all about. I think the only way our group may have been able improved our professional learning would be to expand more on the quotes we used in our note blogs. Even though I think we all did a good job in pulling quotes out and relating it back to our classroom experience, perhaps we could have gone more in depth about the quote its self. Overall, I think we all did an excellent job with our blogs, and I give myself 10 out of 10. I really feel that I got a lot out of the readings and did my best to connect what I was learning to my life, and the classroom I am currently in.

Giles Reading lesson overview

My focus students are very different from each other. They are both optimistic, friendly, and love to learn. They both learn very differently. Irene is able to focus in the environment that my CT has set up, but Garret has a tough time. He has severe ADHD so is constantly being reprimanded for being distracted, but I can’t blame him, our classroom is chaotic! The target areas I chose for these two students would be the section from Tompkins, chapter 8, Predicting, connecting, questioning, and visualizing were my points for the first lesson, and my second lesson plan continued on with identifying big ideas, summarizing, and evaluating. I chose this because I have noticed that they are both very involved in their discussions after readings with their class, but they do not get very in depth. It thought that teaching them these terms, and practicing these methods would help them really evaluate a story, and help them to find the deeper meaning in future stories that they will read. They are both very active, and involved in readings the class does together, but I think that we can improve on their sharing topics.

            Irene is a phenomenal student. She is one that really impresses you and throws you off guard sometimes. She is very independent, and always on task. She loves learning, and she rarely needs help or gets things wrong. Garrett has potential to be like this, but he is very energetic and distracted easily. I knew that during the lesson I would have to have some ways to keep Garret involved. He loves to participate, and maybe when it was one on one, and he had more sharing time, he would be more engaged. 

To keep them both engaged, I will have them take an outline of notes during the readings, and draw a picture of what they think the story will be about in the beginning, prior to reading it. This will be a competition to see who will guess closer, so that both are listening and engaged in the story to see who will win, while comparing each of their predictions. 

Final Self-Assessment Noteblog Entry GILES

Trends in group's thinking and learning that are evident: My group did a great job debating. I liked the fact that we would get into it during the blogs, we were respectful, but evidently, we did not always have the same opinions. I liked how we freely discussed our different opinions of topics, readings, what was going on in our classrooms, and what the authors pov was. We all seemed to have the same stance on a lot of disagreements on how some of our CT"s handled certain situations. Yet, we had different ways of approaching the problem as potential teachers. I saw that a lot of the disagrements on how to handle certain scenarios came from what kind of student we were when we were younger, and our own experiences. Lauren openly discusses her ADHD, and how it effected her relationships with teachers, and I really feel that this will make lauren a phenominal teacher. She can empathize with the energetic students, knows how to keep them engaged, and understands where they are coming from. I even noticed during our lesson plan at Rose's school together that we did for the Math section of TE, that lauren did a tremendous job with a student that was constantly picked on because of his excess energy. She sat down with him and made him feel better about what was going on in the classroom. I know that she will make a difference in a lot of kids' lives, especially ones that have had a hard time, and don't like school as much because of it. She will be able to channel their energy into a positive learning manner, and make school fun for them.

My group contributed to one another's learning through note blogs, by challenging topics that we disagreed on. We worked off what the first poster discussed, and critiqued their ideas, or agreed if we found nothing wrong with it. We are comfortable with each other and are friends, so it was easy to openly discuss our disagreements, which was fun. 

I believe I should receive a 10 out of 10. Our group was punctual with the posts, lengthy, incorporated readings and topics, and debated often.