Leisa+Module+2+Response

Module 2 Response: wallleis@msu.edu

I would like to address the Best Practices book first. Chapter 17, Organizing Effective Literacy Instruction, was one of those readings that really stood out to me. At first, when they were discussing differentiating literacy instruction based on students needs, I completely agreed with them. This just makes sense. As educators, why would we not want to differentiate our instruction based on our students individual needs? This is something that I do on a daily basis, especially for my lowest students. While this is not easy to do, it is necessary if we want to fully meet each child's individual needs.

"The tension between a teacher deciding to increase management complexity and meeting the needs of a diverse student population is a tenuous balancing act." (Reutzel, 413). Typically, in a classroom, not all of one's students will be low achieving in the area of literacy. While you are helping out those lower students, one of the questions that always comes up is... What am I going to do with the rest of the class? The quote from the chapter this week really made me think about what I do. Since I teach reading and writing in a workshop format, I carry that idea into my intervention block each day. While I am working with my struggling students, the rest of my class is either reading or writing... working on something that they have already been working on in either reading or writing workshop. This has worked wonders in my classroom because the management of rules and routines has already been set up. I clearly define my expectations with my students telling them that intervention block is just like readers and writers workshop and I expect the same behavior from them. That has worked out really well for me.

Another idea from this chapter that I really liked is when they were discussing book clubs. I do historical fiction book clubs with my students each year and I loved the Record of Goal Completion and Participation in Literature Circles on page 423. The reason that I liked this form so much is because it allows students to honestly evaluate themselves as well as their other group members. I am typically very involved with all of my groups but I think by using this form, it will allow me to get honest feedback from my students. I do think though that this form needs to be modeled and discussed with students so that they see how important it is to fill this out honestly. I am going to use this form next year when I do book clubs.

Finally, the last thing in chapter 17 that caused me to sit back and think was the Five-Block Schedule for Literacy Instruction page 426. I think that this should be used more as a guide and not something that is set in stone. I feel that all of these areas are important literacy components but they can be broken up in ways that best fit the age group and management style of the teacher. For me, I do a half hour of word study and a hour of reading and a hour of writing every day. This works best for my fifth graders. I also do a half hour intervention block. I am interested to know what you think about this Sara....

I still have to read the other two chapters... I did my reading!

Chapter 10 of What Research Has to Say About Reading Instruction was an interesting chapter to read. The reason that I think it was interesting is because a lot of what they said makes sense. "ALl too predictably, it is the children of poverty whose reading achievement is most often deemed unacceptably low (Allington, 238). While I have only been teaching four and half year, I have seen this to be true on most cases that I have seen were children are not reading at grade level by the end of the year. Being a co-chair of the Student Study Team (SST) where we discuss students who are having learning issues, most of the cases that we discuss about reading difficulties have to do with students who come from economically disadvantages households. Often times we notice that the parent did not have a good experience in school and they themselves might have struggled with learning how to read as well. The major question that we are always asking ourselves is... how can we help these people? How can we break the cycle?

The section that discusses who is reading/learning disabled? brought up points that we are constantly discussing at my school. There is no "one size fits all" in regards to students who struggle in reading. What works for one student, might not work for the other. Educators need to have a huge bag of tricks to try in order to see if a student who struggles is really learning disabled or slow to learn how to read. Personally, I do not believe that all low achieving readers are learning disabled. I had one student this year who came to me in September reading at a 3rd grade level. She had wonderful reading fluency, she struggled with comprehension. I tried numerous reading interventions with her, five days a week. We worked on various comprehension strategies and when we did not see any progress over a 20 week period, we decided that she should be tested for special education. After all the test was complete, she did not qualify for services. She was not considered to have a learning disability in the area of reading. By the end of the year, she was reading at a middle 3rd grade level. While she did not qualify with a learning disability, I continued to work with her during our intervention block each day for the remainder of the school year. As I found in the readings, this particular student was just a slower to learn reader, she was not learning disabled.

One thing that I read about that was like... duh! was the reduction of class size section on page 248. This is a no brainier. I think that it is humorous that they included that in this book because while all educators know that the small the class size, the more individualized instruction that the teacher can provide. This will not happen though due to budget cuts so why even include it? Just to make us mad? (I know that wasn't the reason but it does make me mad to think about!)

"Virtually all struggling readers are victims of their schools" (Allington 254). I can see this. At each school in my own district, the ideas on how to help struggling readers vary greatly and the support that is offered also differs. How can this be changed though? We all know that when a new administrator comes in, they have their own vision for how things work and they change things to fit their vision. The changes might not take place right away but they do over time.

Chapter 17... Assessments

Ahh... assessments. This word seems to be one of the current buzz words in education right now. Everyone needs to assess their students learning frequently and keep the data to share with others the progress that their students are making. I love having data on my students but I have not found an effective way to organize it or use it to its fullest extent. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!!!

The idea of a universal assessment for all students make sense from a district standpoint but from a classroom teacher standpoint, I already know how my students are going to score on these tests so I see them as an interruption to my teaching time. Some of the issues that I have with the test that we use (AIMSWEB) is that the person testing my student is a stranger, they only get one minute to read a passage (some students are shy), and by the time we get the results of the test back, I already know who has fluency issues. To me, we would be better off having a universal screening test on comprehension because that could provide me with some great information. I have yet to see a test like that.

I use formative assessments in my classroom often. I do see the problems that can come up with this sort of testing... these assessments can be biased based on the teacher scoring it. For example, if the student struggles in a particular area, the teacher might not score that particular part as difficult because they know what type of learner this student is. Have you experienced anything like that? This is the best type of assessment to use to get immediate feedback. What kinds of formative assessments have you used in reading? I am always looking for new ideas!!!

I think the self assessment section is great! I need to remember to do this more often! It makes sense to ask our students to self assess because they can provide us with honest feedback!

Interim assessments are newer to me as well. The only experience that I have with these types of assessments are our math common assessments. Each grade level gives these at the same time throughout the school year. We meet as a grade level to discuss our results and go over specific test questions.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this chapter... it kind of seemed a bit redundant and similar to what we read about last week.