Week 12: Assignment 3

Please find the link to my prezi presentation on technology that can be used to enhance literacy instruction. Thank you :]

http://prezi.com/b4pt28u9qdew/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Week 12: Assignment 2

After reading the articles this week, I gained more insight into information that I have been learning throughout this experience. As technology advances and younger students grow up using that technology, we need to be able to incorporate different technological tools into our instruction not only to engage, but to help students learn in a way that is natural for them. Technology can be used simply in classrooms by accessing the internet on a computer, using a word processor, or presentation software. Technology can also be used to create authentic writing projects, communicate with peers from school and outside of school, and proudly display work for families and friends to see. One of my favorite uses of technology in the classroom is taking a virtual field trip. With the internet being so easily accessible in almost all schools now, students can take a trip without ever having to leave the classroom. This increases the possibilities for students to learn about different people, culture, places, etc. all within the classroom walls. I also like the idea of creating a class blog or webpage. A class blog allows students to reach out to experts in a field and get a different perspective about the things we are learning. A class website opens communication to parents and lets students display their work which makes the entire learning process more meaningful and exciting.  

The articles we read this week focused a great deal on digital storytelling. What I like about digital storytelling is that students who may not normally be motivated to write, could be inspired by the fact that they are moving from paper and pencil to creating a project they can share with others and revisit whenever they want. Digital storytelling allows students to creatively display their ideas through images they draw or pictures they take themselves. Writing can become more personal for students which helps them take ownership of their learning

Link to technology writing lesson plan: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F5FNRfUwQDKwm5kp4CVgOrTgUOTJOBBiuDcS2U1IVK4/edit?usp=sharing

Keystone Assignment: ELL Case Study

Brandy Blanchard

EDLI 636

Spring 2017

Dr. Hsu

Keystone assignment: ELL Case Study

Classroom and Student Background: For my observation this semester, I helped in a Special Education classroom for students with multiple disabilities at the Olean Intermediate Middle School in Olean, NY. The students in the school and in my cooperating teacher’s classroom range in age starting in 4^th grade through 7^th grade. This year, the class is a combination of a life skills class and a class for behavioral students. Because of the extremely wide variety of students learning levels and behavioral tendencies, the classroom teacher must have the ability to differentiate almost everything she does in the class. With so many differences in her class, the one type of student my cooperating teacher does not have in her class is an ELL. To complete my keystone assignment, Mrs. M suggested that I work with one of her nonverbal students we will call Emily.

Emily is a twelve-year-old Caucasian female in the 7^th grade at OIMS. She is an only child and her parents are divorced but she spends time with both parents who speak English as their primary and only language. Emily is diagnosed with autism disorder and does not speak at all. To communicate with family, peers, teachers, and therapists, Emily uses a type to speech device called a Dynavox which allows her to press buttons with words on them, or use a keyboard to type what she would like to say and the device speaks for her. Emily receives push in and pull out speech therapy services multiple times a week at 30 minutes a session to help her work with her device to communicate. Although she is proficient in navigating her device, she often becomes frustrated when she is asked to use it to answer questions. She would prefer to use sign language, but sign language is not used per her IEP so the push is really for her to use the device as much as possible to create a wider base of people who can understand and communicate with her. Besides becoming frustrated at times when being asked to use the device, she also becomes frustrated when she can’t navigate the device quickly enough to say what she is thinking. Although she is non-verbal, she is extremely bright and when given a task she likes to plunge ahead and get her work done quickly and as accurately as possible.

 SOLOM Matrix and English Language Learners Rubric: Because Emily is not an ELL in the typical sense, I had to do my best to perform the above assessments and fit her into the categories as best as I could. I performed the assessments with her Tobii Dynavox device and tried to categorize her using the speech assistance, with the help of my cooperating teacher. For the SOLOM scale, Emily scored a total of 11, which landed her on phase 1. For comprehension, she understands what is being said to her but sometimes needs things repeated and said as a slower rate, which landed her on the scale at a level 3. For fluency, she also scored a level 3 because of the disruption of her conversation and classroom discussion as she searches for the correct words to respond. For vocabulary, misuse of words and limited vocabulary make comprehension and conversation difficult. Pronunciation was also a level 2 for Emily because she must often repeat herself and change words on her device to help make herself understood. Lastly, Emily scored the lowest at a one on for grammar on the SOLOM scale. She will say words or use sentence fragments but almost never uses complete sentences unless her speech teacher steps in and makes he re-type what she was trying to say. What I gathered from the SOLOM is that Emily needs to work on putting together complete sentences so help others understand what she is trying to say. It is difficult to know how much she comprehends from a text without her using complete sentences and keeping calm when she is asked to use the device. I had a difficult time matching Emily to the categories provided by the ELL rubric. With the help of my cooperating teacher I placed Emily on the low intermediate scale in all categories (see attached ELL rubric). Again, her difficulties seem to be communicating fully what she is trying to say without getting frustrated. Emily can write, spell, and read (at a lower grade level), but it is difficult to tell how much she is comprehending because she often responds in short fragmented phrases.

Writing assignment and Lesson Plan: With the help of my cooperating teacher, based on the results of the assessments, we decided that the focus for Emily is two parts. First, Emily needs help with working on calming techniques that she can use when she becomes frustrated after being asked a question. The second thing we wanted to work on with her was putting together sentence strips, typing them into her device to speak, and re-writing the sentence while adding in an illustration to show her understanding.

Link to lesson plan: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12WvwTwnG7vAlAzoZrRP1vu5iMtH4_Xo2SbIlnGVaHZw/edit?usp=sharing

Summary of teacher interviews: Interviewing my cooperating teacher on ELL was a bit difficult. The school district doesn’t have any ELL currently, and at any given time they may have ONE at the most (and it is usually a foreign exchange student). With that being said, my cooperating teacher did her best to try and apply the questions to her experience with teaching special education. A connection I made between the guiding questions for this assignment and my cooperating teacher’s answers is that individualizing education is key when working with different types of learners. As we have learned through our courses at NYIT, differentiated instruction is necessary if we want all students to succeed. Collaboration among teachers, therapists, paraprofessionals, and others who have contact with the student along with ongoing professional development have helped my cooperating teacher learn how to assess student need, and creatively design instruction to meet individual needs.

Reflection: Overall, I had an extremely positive experience working with my cooperating teacher on identifying a student to work with for this keystone project. Although I was unable to work with an ELL, I was able to work with an interesting student who struggles with some of the same things ELL struggle with. This experience allowed me to see that patience, assessment, and designing instruction based on the assessment is necessary to make and reach student goals. I believe this assignment may have been easier to do using the SOLOM and ELL Rubric if I were actually working with an ELL, but I was able to relate what I was observing to the content we have been learning about. I have a new appreciation for teachers in the field of special education because as we see in general education classes, instruction must be highly individualized. In special education, not only must instruction be different for each student, but assessment, behavioral interventions, and even classroom procedures must be individualized. I was fortunate enough to observe an experience classroom teacher who was able to do all of that and more for her students. The only issue I had during field placement was fitting in the ten hours while still working. I would have to complete my hours during my off periods when I didn’t have to work with a student or during my lunch break. This made it difficult for me to be in the classroom for long periods of time, and also made it so that I had to observe the same type of lessons each time. 



SOLOM and ELL Rubric Documents: 

Week 11: Assignment 3

Graphic organizer lesson plan links:

Lesson#1 KWL Chart
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tWhho7un5CaYDYGHSPzmd4Uaj2Ivxd_0pooNgSMOA40/edit?usp=sharing

Lesson #2 Sequenece of Events
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M7IYIO_29PBFbkeiygruIItHxJSUyyc1AygVGjcrmWM/edit?usp=sharing

Lesson #3 Cause and Effect
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10Gh3Xd6k2H7uDDVQAnk-x5Vb5l2I7zDLU3mZjtpZe9s/edit?usp=sharing


Thank you :]

Keystone Assignment: QRI5 Assessment

Brandy Blanchard

EDLI 636

Spring 2017

Dr. Hsu

Keystone assignment: QRI5 Written Report

1 Student: both narrative and expository pieces used for assessment

Student Background: The student I worked with for my QRI5 assessment is a 7^th grader we will refer to as JD or J. J is a Caucasian male who has been diagnosed with autism and is reading at a 2^nd grade level per his classroom teacher. JD is in a special education classroom specifically designed to address student’s life skills needs. He receives speech services as pull out and push in sessions multiple times a week. The first thing I noticed about JD is his extensive knowledge in history and social studies, particularly focusing on presidents, past and present. I wanted to take the teacher’s assessment of her student into consideration, but wanted to start with the primer level reading list to see if I would come up with the same conclusions as the classroom teacher. The word lists were read over a few different class periods, with breaks in between, as to not overwhelm the student.

Assessment: I began the assessment with the provided word lists and started at the pre-primer level. I wanted to see JDs reaction to the different lists and get my own idea of his reading level and abilities while keeping in mind what grade level his teacher placed him on. One the pre-primer list, J scored a 17/17 or 100% on the first list, and on the second list he read “where” instead of “were” but then identified the word correctly. This gave him a score of 19/20 or 95%. Both lists put him at the independent reading level for pre-primer. On both the primer and first grade reading lists, student scored 95% which kept him at the independent level. On the second-grade level list, J scored a total 18/20 or 90%. He automatically read 14 correctly and then identified 4 others (pieces, insects, weather, noticed) with still have him considered independent reader at the second-grade level. When we moved onto the third-grade list, J became frustrated at this level. Out of 20 words, he could only automatically identify 10/20, and correctly identified three more. This third-grade level gave J a 65%, placing him at the frustration level. I decided here that the best level to place JD would be second-grade independent, with higher level second-grade passages as his instructional level.

The next step I took was to have JD read both a narrative and expository text. For the narrative, we started with some basic concept questions so I could get an idea of his prior knowledge and see if he showed an interest in the topic, and would therefore find the reading engaging. After having him answer the concept questions, I felt like JD would do well with this passage as far as reading and comprehension. The student made 5 errors while reading, and read 87 WCPM. When it came time for recall, the student could retell 24 out of the 38 details in the story, or 6% of the story. When it came time to answer level 2 questions, he struggled to recall key details in the text. For an expository text, I chose a text about U.S presidents because I knew he had a great deal of prior knowledge in that subject. I was surprised to find that the results of the expository reading were like the results of his narrative assessment. Even though he had a great deal of prior knowledge on the topic, he became frustrated with the assessment.

Student strengths and needs: After the assessment, I determined that the student is very eager to please and becomes frustrated and upset when he can’t answer the questions or retell the story correctly. A positive of JD is that he is willing to learn and wants to work to improve on his reading and retelling skills. He wants to be able to read texts about the presidents and remember what he read. JD’s needs and academic goals are to work on fluency and confidence while he is reading. As his fluency improves, comprehension will become easier for J. He often replaces unknown words with words that look similar. He is able to get a basic idea of the story but is unable to recall key details in the text.

To work with JD on his needs, I have decided that he needs to focus on improving fluency along with learning comprehension strategies (such as graphic organizers and retelling) and discussing a story out loud while he reads.

Reflection: Overall I really enjoyed administering the QRI5 assessment and getting to work with my student JD. The most important thing I learned while working with JD, and other students in my field placement, is that you cannot judge a student based on their IEP’s or what other students in the class are like. Each of the students are unique individuals and need to have their instruction designed specifically to reach their personal goals and targets. Using both a narrative an expository text allowed me to see different sides of the student and get an in depth understanding of where the student thrives, and where he needs extra attention. The QRI5 helped me design a lesson that will help one particular student in his area of need. The idea that all students are different motivates me to look at each QRI5, or any other assessment, with fresh eyes and to remember that all students do not need the same thing, have the same strengths or interests, and need to be treated as individuals with specialized instruction whenever possible. 

Link to lesson plan: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d7UJHwESwR2dTuwE0mr4HECvnYda6fUEbTjQoDmNppU/edit?usp=sharing

Week 10: Assignment 4

Below is the link for my recapture lesson based on the ELA reading/writing lesson we viewed on the teaching channel. Thank you :]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hLW03jqrWxujaroL1LY4yDH4U_6SKFeL4FE5snIBeok/edit?usp=sharing

Week 9: Assignment 3

QRI5: Qualitative Reading Inventory is an individually administered informal reading assessment for students in grades K through 12. The assessment uses graded word lists and passages to asses oral, silent, and listening skills. The qualitative reading inventory provides information about conditions where students can identify words and comprehend text, and conditions that result in unsuccessful word recognition and comprehension ability. Results used to estimate student’s reading levels, choose appropriate books for literature circles, reading workshops, and independent reading. And to group students for reading instruction and to help identify reading levels of independent, instructional, and frustration level. The QRI5 Provides information for designing instruction and tracking student progress, it is not a standardized assessment which means that information taken from the results are for individual students and not compared to any norm group.

DIBELS: Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills is an individually and group administered assessment that measures specific literacy skills for students in grades K-6. These different methods of assessment focus on the five main areas of literacy which include phonemic awareness, alphabetic principal, accuracy and fluency with text, vocabulary, and comprehension. The purpose of the DIBELS is to determine students who may be at risk for reading difficulties, low performance levels, and problems reaching early literacy benchmark goals. Short fluency assessments administered at least 3 times a year (beginning, middle, end) produce results that are used to identify students who need extra instruction to meet benchmark literacy goals. The dynamic indicators of basic early literacy assessment tools provide information for designing instruction and tracking student progress. DIBELS is a standardized assessment tool allowing for students to be compared to a benchmark or norm group of students at their grade level.

Similarities: With both the QRI5 and DIBELS being assessment for literacy, fluency and comprehension are a focus of both assessment types. Both can be used to inform instructional design based on the needs of the students, and both can be used to monitor and track student progress.

Differences: The biggest difference I noticed between the QRI5 and DIBELS is that they are assessments for different grade levels. Where the QRI5 assesses student literacy for grades K through 12, DIBELS assesses students in the earlier grades, K through 6^th. DIBELS focuses on aspects of literacy that the QRI5 does not. Another difference between the two is that the QRI5 is not a standardized assessment tool. All results are dependent on the individual student, where DIBELS is standardized, and results are compared to a norm group of other students at the same grade level. 

Week 8: Assignment 3

Candidate’s Name: Brandy Blanchard

Grade Level: 2nd

Title of the lesson: Fluency through Phrasing (No Robot Voice!)

Length of the lesson: 2 ELA blocks (45 mins each)

Central focus of the lesson: In this lesson, students will learn fluency strategies by working on phrasing sentences and appropriate pacing while reading.

Knowledge of students to inform teaching: Students will use prior knowledge of basic sight words, strategies for reading unknow words, and writing complete sentences and paragraphs to complete the lesson.

Common Core State Standards: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.4 Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.4. A Read grade-level text with purpose and understanding. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.4. B Read grade-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings.

Support literacy development through academic language: ●     Key learning task to practice using the language function: Students will work on phrasing sentences by creating them out of cue word cards and deciding whether they have phrased the correctly depending on how they sound spoken out loud. ●     Describe language demands: Students will read their created sentences out loud to see if they have broken them up correctly, and to see if they sound fluent as the read them. Vocabulary ●     General academic terms: retelling, phrasing, fluency ●     Content specific vocabulary: expression, pace Sentence Level ●     Sentence structure, complete sentences Discourse ●     Text structure

Learning objectives: Students will read text with proper expression and volume. Students will be able to chunk groups of texts when reading. Students will read at an appropriate pace.

Formal and informal assessment: Participation in group work Fluent reading rubric grade Exit tickets

Instructional procedure: Day 1 To start the lesson, I will read a passage to the students in a robot voice (word for word instead of fluently) and ask the students if it sounds right to them. I will explain to students that when people don’t read fluently, it can sound silly like my robot voice. I will discuss with the students that when reading, we take breaks between certain parts of the sentence so that everything flows together. Next, I will write a sample sentence on the board (The large dog is barking too much) and read again in the robot voice. I will call on a student to re-read the sentence in a way that they think it sounds better. I will then underline ‘The large dog’ in one color, and ‘is barking too much’ in another color. I will use the different colors to show the students the phrasing we should use when reading the sentences in a fluid manner. I will drag my finger under the first phrase while reading out loud, and do the same with the second half of the sentence. I will explain to the students that this is called phrasing, and that when we read in groups of words that flow together, the sentence makes more sense than reading word by word. I will model another swooping motion for a different sentence to show the students how I would break the sentence into chunks or two separate phrases. Next, for guided practice, I will call students from the class to come up and practice breaking apart and “swooping” while reading the sentence. Lastly, I will have the students break up into their reading buddies and work through a paragraph phrasing and swoop reading as I move through the room to aid and take notes on what the students are doing well with and struggling with. Instructional procedure: Day 2 To start the second part of the lesson, we will do a quick refresher of the previous day and have students come up to the board to break up sentences into phrases and swoop reading them to the class. Next, students will break up into pairs and be given strips of different phrases on them. The students will work together to group phrases together to write sentences that make sense. Once they have decided whether a sentence makes sense, each student will take a turn reading the phrase with expression and at a good pace using the swooping method. Each pair will be responsible for creating 4 different sentences, and reading them out loud to the class (using swoop method) after writing them on the dry erase board. To make the presentation of their sentences fun and engaging, the students will first read a sentence incorrectly (out of order and in the robot voice) and show the others how they corrected the sentence to sound fluent and to make sense. To end the lesson, students will have independent free time on one of our fluency game websites. Accommodations and modifications: Higher level or gifted students will be paired together and given more difficult strips to work with. Lower level or ELL will be given modified sentences and have extra assistance from an aide or classroom teacher as needed.

Instructional resources and materials: Dry erase board Different colored markers Printed sentence phrases Internet ready computers List of fluency websites

Reflection: Questions to ask following the lesson ●     Did I provide modifications for those who needed extra support? ●     Did my lesson meet the standards I wanted to focus on? (fluency standards) ●     Were the students engaged throughout the lesson?

Week 7: Assignment 5

Student info: 1^st grade male, reading at a 1^st grade level.

*all assessments used were from the module on readingrockets

Print awareness: For the print awareness assessment, I followed the guidelines from the online module on readingrockets.org. I had the student locate the front, back, and title of the book. The student was able to identify all. I then asked the student to identify where you should start reading, a letter, a word, the first word of a sentence, the last word of a sentence, punctuation marks, a capital letter and a lowercase letter. Again, the student was able to identify all that I asked for. I asked the student what different words mean (example, what does a wet floor sign mean or is used for) and the student was able to tell me that different types of writing are used for different things (serve different purposes). From this assessment, I have gathered that the child has a very good idea of print awareness.

Phonological awareness: For this assessment, I worked on counting words in a sentence and counting and segmenting syllables with the same student. With the use of a pointer, the student counted the words in show sentences. We started with sentences 2-5 words in length and worked up to 8 word sentences. He was able to do this without much difficulty at all. Counting syllables was the next step, and this was about the level where he wasn’t able to do this independently, so I did not move onto segmenting syllables. I found activities on pbs kids that work on phonemic awareness via interactive games. I thought this would be a good site for the student to visit to help with blending, etc. http://pbskids.org/island/preview/games-phonemicawareness.html

Phonics: For this section, I first worked with the student on identifying letters on the page, and matching them with the sound they make. He was able to do this without a problem. Next, I gave him a list of beginning sounds like sh, ch, th, wh, and ck. He was able to read the words matching the correct sound. Next, I worked on helping him with blending the beginning sounds he already knew to read unknown words (ex; shark). At this stage, he needed assistance. I found a site to help with phonics overall. https://www.kizphonics.com/materials/phonics-games/

Fluency: For fluency assessment, I used the reading rockets finding a fluency score. Out of 100 words in one minute, the student read 55 words. There were 7 errors which put him at 55 wpm and 48 wcpm. I’m not sure that I chose the best passage for him, and I think by the end of all the assessments he was beginning to get tired and lose interest in what we were doing, so that could have played a part in his assessment results. I searched online for a website that would provide interactive games to help with fluency and came up with a class website that not only provides links to activities for fluency, but other aspects of phonological awareness as well. This site led me to starfall.com where I found a section on games to help with fluency. http://www.starfall.com/n/level-b/index/play.htm?f

Week 6: Assignment 1

Happy week 6 everyone! You can find the links to my prezi presentation as well as a googledoc of my mini lesson below.

Thank you :]

http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cbe1rZ6UYt

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p-AnDp5hnKK_iweefdESd2IDK2HdiSlS4m7tMpoWTcU/edit?usp=sharing

Week 5: Assignments 1-4

Assignment 1: After reading a Level 1 word list in which Mary read 18 correct words, which would place her at the independent reading level. Because Mary was able to read independently from this list, a record should be taken using level word 2 list to see how she would do at that level.

Assignment 2: After having Mary read a level 2 word list, she read 17 words correctly and it appeared that she would be at the instructional level here. She was borderline frustrated but able to read most of the words so this would be a good instructional fit.

Assignment 3: To be sure that Mary needed to start at a level 2, the instructor provided a level 3 list to double check student reading level. At the third level, Mary was only able to read a few words and became very frustrated. The instructor immediately stopped the reading and Mary is considered to be at a level 2 reading for instruction.

Assignment 4: The examiner’ results for the Whales and Fish reading with Mary were as follows:

• ·         Total Accuracy: 8 miscues
• ·         Total Acceptability: 5 miscues
• ·         Rate: 46 WPM
• ·         WCPM: 44
• ·         Reading level: instructional/acceptable

Mary’s strengths: After figuring out all of Mary’s results and watching her work through the passage, I noticed that she could retell the story providing specific details. She had little prior knowledge, from the passage she learned and could recall similarities, as well as differences, between whales and fish. Her major strength was comprehension.

Mary’s needs: Mary had difficulties keeping her place and often got lost if she wasn’t reading along with her finger. She also got confused with similar looking words such as ‘though’ and ‘thought’. To help Mary, I would suggest she continue to work on fluency by using a ruler or sheet of paper to move along with as she reads. I would also suggest that she participate in activities to tell the difference between similar looking words, and work on expanding her vocabulary by participating in more reading time. 

Week 4: Assignment 2 Reading Programs screencast

Below is a link to my powerpoint presentation on reading programs in elementary school classrooms. Thank you :]

http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cbnrVT6oK3

Week 4: Assignment 1 RTI details and questions

Response to intervention is a tiered instructional approach that provides all students with the methods they need to succeed. Starting be screening all students in the general education program, those who may be falling behind or struggling will move through the different levels of intervention to help accelerate their rate of learning. As students move through the different tiers, intervention based on scientific research becomes more intense. As the intensity of the intervention increases, groups become smaller to help give students the attention needed to catch up to their peers. A variety of individuals such as general education teachers, special education teachers, therapists, and even paraeducators work together to provide the interventions needed to help identify and then apply proven strategies to help these students.

3 tiers:

Tier 1 instruction is given to all students and is delivered by a general education teacher who will differentiate instruction. 80-85% of students respond to this type of instruction. For those who don’t they move up to the next step.

Tier 2 intervention is for students whose learning needs were not met during tier 1. Tier 2 is a supplement to tier 1. Students will still participate in the lessons given to the other students, but will participate in additional time in reading and other areas.

Tier 3 intervention provides instruction to the students who have not been reached by tiers 1 and 2 alone. Tier 3 groups are small and instruction may be delivered by a specialist or special education teacher. Out of the 5% of students who are in need of tier 3 intervention, those who do not respond to the supplemental instruction may qualify for special education services.

The question I still have about RTI is how the students who need these extra services fit everything into one school day. Are the required to make up the work they missed in the general education instruction? And how do they make up that missing time? 

Week 3: Assignment 3

What is QR15? The QR15 is an informal reading inventory that assess student reading levels using word lists and passages. Students are assessed on oral and silent reading, and listening ability. This inventory is designed to gather information about conditions that allow students to comprehend text and identify words, and conditions that do not allow for comprehension and word recognition. The QR15 can be used to assess students from preschool through high school, and determines student reading levels from independent reading, to needing instruction while reading, and finally to becoming frustrated when trying to read a text.

What is the purpose of using QR15? The QR15 can be used to place students at their correct reading level, choose appropriate level text for independent and guided reading, and find appropriate text for literature circles and reading workshops. The results of the inventory can also be used to inform and plan instruction based on the reading levels and needs of different students.  

Have you seen similar assessment activities like QR15? What are they? The only type of reading inventory of assessment I have seen is a running record and miscue analysis. It is similar in using reading passages to inform educators about students reading level, and to help determine what course of action needs to be taken to provide extra help, as well as how to design instruction.

What is your impression of QR15? One thing I really like about this inventory is that it can be used for so many different ages groups. Where some inventories or assessments can only be used on older children, the fact that the QR15 can be used as early as pre-school. We have seen how important early intervention is in helping students catch up if they are behind, and this is just another assessment that can properly place students at a reading level where they can grow. 

Week 3: Assignment 2

Both summative and formative assessments can be used to measure student’s learning outcomes. Formative assessment is used throughout the unit to monitor student progress and inform instruction, where summative assessment is used at the end of the unit to determine whether students reached the goals of the unit.

Formative assessment examples include:

·         Literature discussion circles

·         Preparation of open ended questions about the reading

·         Short quizzes

·         Student teacher conference

Summative assessment examples include:

·         Group or individual presentations

·         Technology final products

·         Exams

·         Peer/ Self assessments

With students of varying levels, common core standards can still be met, and these students can still be assessed with some modifications in place. One of my favorite assessment modifications I have read about so far is altering the way in which a child can present their final product to the class. Where some people may be comfortable speaking in front of the class, others may not get the best grade if they must be evaluated this way, even if their information is excellent. In this case, a student could create a voicethread, prezi or voki presenter to show they have learned the information asked for, and will still have an opportunity to get a good grade and show what they learned without the method of presentation changing things for them. Students are still responsible for learning the information, and showing what they have learned, but in a manner, that is better suited for them as an individual. 

Week 2: Assignment 3 Video Clips Response

The 10 mini-video clips and readingrockets.org website provided a great deal of information on the different aspects of helping students learn how to read. One of the most important things I learned is that early intervention is key to helping build strong readers. Reading is made up of multiple concepts and ideas that students need to grasp and build upon in order to learn how to read. Among those concepts, reading focuses not just on printed letters and comprehension, but students need to be taught about phonemic awareness, the sounds of speech, and matching letters and sounds before they can move on and learn to read fluently, spell words, and comprehend a text. The earliest introduction for children to literacy is print awareness. Print awareness in children means they can look at printed text, and understand that what they are seeing are words. Students also need to be able to differentiate between the different types of printed words (such as story books versus traffic signs) and understand that both serve different purposes.

To help children learn how to read, there needs to be a strong focus on sounds of letters and speech. These two categories help students make connections to what they hear and say, to what the letters on the paper look like and what they mean. To help with this, it is a good idea to read to and have conversations with children multiple times a day. This speech and read along is the basis for students to want to develop these skills on their own. By reading to children often, and working with them on recognizing that letters make sounds, and that the letters make up words, students can continue to build on their knowledge to learn how to put together letter sounds to make up a word. As students continue to build on what they learn, they can work towards being fluent readers, spelling words correctly, and being able to comprehend text. 

Week 1: Introductions

Voki link: http://tinyurl.com/jun3qg2

If you were to write a book about yourself, what would you name it?  I would call my book “A Day in the Life of a Pitbull Mom”

Tell us on of your favorite jokes. What did the janitor say when he jumped out of the closet? Supplies!

Tell us what subject you teach, years of teaching, and how far you are in the Teacher Education or MSIT program: I am not currently a teacher, but when I graduate in December of 2017 I hope to find a job teaching 2^nd through 4^th grade. I am also interested in co-teaching classes that cater to a mix of general education and special education students. Including the summer classes I have taken, I am in my fourth semester at NYIT.

How much do you know about teaching language arts? As I continue to take classes and observe, along with the work I do as a teacher’s aide, I learn new ways every day to engage students in ELA instruction. I have also learned the importance of differentiating instruction to meet the needs of individual students while still creating lessons that work with the common core state standards. I am excited to take this course and learn about literacy disorders and ways to remedy those disorders.

How much do you know about new literacies? It is my understanding that new literacies use technology, such as audio books, to help students learn how to read and comprehend what they are reading. New literacies take print reading to another level and provide opportunities for different learning preferences to excel.

What are your concerns about taking this course? I have no concerns as this time. The only thing I can think of is being able to balance work and the other two classes I am taking, and being able to get all my observation hours done! 

Nice to meet you all! Good luck this semester!