The planning and drafting lesson about one's chosen pet went pretty well as I expected. Most students filled the bubbles with at least three adjectives and wrote sentences to describe their pets. A couple of students took the challenge and wrote more than six sentences. I used a chart to help expand their thinking while they planned their ideas. I let the students come up with details about what they wanted to know about somebody’s pet such as size, color, eyes, ears, etc. Most students did a good job planning and drafting.

I payed special attention to ELL and slow learning students by giving them extra support. The ELL student and another below grade level student tried very hard to put some words and sentences down with one-on-one teacher support. They were asked to verbally express their ideas and drew their pictures first before their writings. The teachers then helped them to find frequency words in the classroom or pointed to the correct letters for them to write them down.

There are two ADHD students in class as well. I managed to help one to stay on task. But the other one was going through an emotional moment and put his head down and didn’t participate during the lesson period. I wondered how I was going to get him engaged. Fortunately, when he was calm the next morning, we had a nice talk about his pet and he wrote about his pet dog.

I think the writing went well as planned because the students were well prepared for the session. For instance, prior to this lesson, they gathered pictures of their pets and shared their pets’ information in class. I also checked out a box of pet books for them to browse through during center times. Most of them also finished their cover pages by using the computer drawings.

If I teach the same lesson again, I probably will make the following changes. For the ADHD students or any students might have trouble writing in class, I will give them a lot of encouragement first. I could deliberately display their pets’ pictures for the whole class to see and talk about a little longer when they share their pets’ information with their groups. While doing that, I would also specifically orient them to think about writing about their pets as just another way to tell others about their special animals. Hopefully, they could get more engaged in their later writing activities.

I will also arrange them to use the computer program to finish their cover page first so that they could get their thoughts a little more organized. When they started to write, they could feel more special about their project. The more engaged they could be, the better they could stay on task and write. I could also check with their parents to find other ways to help them focus in class.

This writing experience left me with more confidence in teaching writing to first graders. I learned the art to scaffold them to plan and draft their writings. I also learned that these young students could all take the challenge and make great progress in their informational writing. I feel that they are really getting a great start toward their writing endeavor.

Bondarenko-3rd Literacy Reflection

My last literacy lesson was a continuation of narrative nonfiction. The lesson started out with a mini-lesson on the narrative nonfiction trait of using voice. I started by recapping yesterdays lesson by asking “What did we learn yesterday?” Based on my responses I knew that I had to reteach some of the lesson on sequence. The students seemed to still be confused about how the sequence goes and why you have to have a beginning, middle, and then end. I think some of the students were still confused because they did not all completely finish their worksheet on sequence. One thing that I would change if I re-taught this lesson would be I would collect their worksheets and check for completion. If students had not finished the worksheet I would have them work on it before the next lesson. (Either at snack time or at recess. Because I did give them enough time and the reason that they did not finish was because they were talking or not focused.) So students that were struggling were the students who were off task for the day before lesson.

To introduce voice we used the last two sentences of the story about Sam the dog. (This is the story we used about sequence.) The two sentences were “The rescue workers saved him. They are wonderful!” Then I asked the students if they understood how these sentences were examples of voice. They looked completely confused. I decided to think on the spot and have to come up with some different examples. I brought in our theme of rescue workers to think of examples. I asked them to remind me of different rescue workers that we came up with brainstorming. We started with firefighters. I said “If a firefighter saved a kitten in a tree. How would that make you feel?” I drew some popsicle sticks and asked for ideas of how you’d feel. We did this a couple of more times with the theme of rescue workers.

Before passing out the paragraphs that they had been working on we quickly recapped nouns. The kids are really good with proper nouns and nouns. It is something that just has came easy to them. They all can raise their hand and answer “What is a noun?” And answer correctly with person, place, animal, or thing. The students job was when they received their paragraphs was that they had to add at least one sentence of voice. Most of the students really did not struggle with voice it was just the depth or quality of their voice sentence. Some of the lower students just jammed in a sentence of “I felt good.” More advanced students put more than one sentence of voice and did not just add it to the end of the paragraph but though out their paragraph.

Something that I learned about my students literacy practices is that they learn a lot through visuals and personal examples and models. If I were to give an example sentence of voice on the board this might help them. But, if I were to add an example sentence that had someones name in it or something they enjoyed the kids would remember voice for life. Something I would do if I re-taught this lesson would be that I would have picked a book to read to them (which I already do in the morning) and have it be a model for voice and one for sequence. This would have been really beneficial to them.

Material that needs to be retaught I will do the following day. If it something little I will just talk to them during snack time. If it is something big (barely any work on paragraph) they will have to be retaught during recess. I will also quickly recap the main points of todays lesson during the next lesson.

I started my writing unit for the first graders last week. The unit focuses on making an informational booklet about one’s pet, or a known pet, or a pet one wishes to have. The children brought in their pet pictures or drawings of their pets and shared their pet information within two groups for lesson one. For lesson two, I decided to take the challenge to use the computer lab for the project. The children created their own cover pages with picture outlines and typed texts of the titles and their names as the authors by using a paint program called Tux Paint. They colored the picture outlines later and the finished cover pages were glued onto their choice color background papers. When I looked at their beautifully made cover pages, I felt so proud of all the children and I shared their works with their parents during the parent-teacher conference last week.

I have to admit that it was a very challenging lesson because of the limited number of the lab computers that could be used for printing and the one-on-one scaffolding for every child. I had to test each lab computer and set it up for printing. I originally thought that the children could just use the Tux Paint to draw and print their pictures. I had to change it to be just the outline drawings of their pets since the lab doesn’t have color printing. I actually like the adapted way better because it gives the students the opportunity to color their pictures with crayons and they also learned how to make their own picture coloring sheets. Since I also had to help every student to arrange their typed titles and names (Tux Paint doesn’t allow easy text typing), it would be almost impossible for me to finish this lesson within the time frame without extra adults’ assistance. Fortunately, I got a great deal of help from one technology knowledgeable volunteer W from the community and my mentor teacher. The three of us worked together to get many children to finish their cover pages. For instance, the children who didn’t go to the lab wrote their content pages with my MT and sang a pet dog song with a dog booklet made earlier). I guided the rest of them completing theirs at other times by using the classroom computer and the lab.

One great thing about this lesson was that all the children enjoyed the experience and they were so happy to see their cover pages printed out. Even though a couple of them had to redo the cover pages due to the printing problems, they still had fun doing it. Their enthusiasm also extended to the next lesson of writing about what their pets looked like which all turned out wonderfully.

From this cover page making lesson, I learned that all children love to be engaged in activities that they could use their hands and artistic creativity. With the proper assistance, I saw young children could learn some technology skills such as spacing, capital lock, and save and print files. I could tell that drawing is an integral part of beginning writers’ writing because they used the drawings to organize their thoughts about what their pets looked like. Certain students had an easier time to use the mouse drawing their pictures with more details while a couple of others had a harder time to manipulate the mouse. With some more practices, they could all do a good job. Since they could all color and add more details later, nobody worried about how their pictures turned out.

If I ought to re-teach this lesson again, I will make certain changes. The first one is that I need to be more specific about the drawing directions because some students touched other useless buttons and had to redo their pictures. The other thing is that I could have let some students use the classroom computer for their cover pages. That could have saved some time and the whole class could have completed their cover pages earlier.

Bondarenko- 2nd Literacy Reflection

In today’s lesson we continued on the topic of narrative nonfiction. (We are going to be on the topic for one week.) The goal for the end of the week is to have the students have at least one narrative nonfiction paragraph. Todays main objective was to have the students pick a topic that they would want to write about. To go about this objective, I started out with having a anchor chart on the board. I drew a T-chart with and on one side was “rescue workers” and the other side was “the jobs they do.” I modeled the first example to the students which was “firefighters” and “rescue cats from trees.” This was a pretty slow moving discussion of ideas from the students. It seemed like if they knew a “rescue worker” they did not know “what jobs they do” and vice-versa. When completing this T-chart I was also pretty particular with what answers they came up with because they were going to be picking from this chart for their topic. Students who are more shy did struggle with this part of the lesson because they did not want to participate. Students who learned or excelled were the students who have prior knowledge with rescue workers (family members) or are outspoken enough to share their ideas.

The later part of my lesson was when the students learned about the beginning, middle, and end (or sequence) of a paragraph. I started with an example that was in the reading street program. I put the worksheet (which had boxes for beginning, middle, and end to be filled in) on the ELMO. I started modeling to the students how I would fill in my boxes according to my short story. I was asking the students if they understood how the beginning had to go first because if not it would not make sense. I soon realized that my story would be understandable with the middle coming first and then the first followed by the end. If I were to do this lesson over I would not use Reading Street’s example. I would use an example that clearly shows a difference between beginning, middle, and end. To show the importance of sequence. I learned that students found this worksheet more difficult than I expected. I had students work by themselves on the worksheet and myself and my MT came around to help and answer questions. I looked at almost everyone’s worksheet while they were working on it. But if I were to re-teach this lesson I would have collected the worksheets. This way, I could see the students who were struggling and I could re-teach to them. I am going to re-cap on this topic in tomorrows lesson and students will have more time to complete this worksheet and add more detail tomorrow.

Literacy Lesson Reflection

We started out our lesson with a discussion of teamwork. I gave examples of times that I had been involved in teamwork. After giving them examples and wait time, the the students were able to give me some examples of their own from times when they participated in teamwork. Next we read a nonfiction book about teamwork. The students were able to empathize with the people/animals in the book and they were able to tell me, without any prompting that the teammates felt proud of each other.

When we were sounding and spelling out our spelling words, I continually had to remind students to look up at the Promethean Board so they knew what sounds to say and how to spell the word. Since this was only our first day with the words, the students did not yet know how to spell them. They were having a hard time looking at the Board. I had to remind them and remind them and then I had to tell students that they all needed to be participating. So, going over our spelling words took a long time this first day.

I learned that my students need a lot of practice when something new is introduced. In my lesson, I introduced final blends. In the beginning, the students had a hard time separating the sounds in the final blends. Instead of saying /n/ /t/ they would say /nt/. But we practiced and practiced. I started out by modeling for them, then I did it with them and eventually they were able to say the sounds separately. I also learned that the students learned our sight words for the week easily. Once we went over them and we said them each a couple times, I was able to randomly point the the words and the students were able to say the words out loud.

For those students who need more practice, I will bring them to the big table during center time and work in a small group setting with them. We are always taking groups to that table during centers for reading groups, so it won't be out of the ordinary and it won't be a distraction. This will just give those students more practice and I will be able to help them individually with what they are struggling with.

One thing that was a bit of a problem throughout my lesson, was that the same students kept raising their hands to answer. When I realized that this kept happening, I gave the students more wait time and then I used the popsicle sticks to call on students. Because I had to follow the Basal, my lesson was mostly teacher dictated. If I could do this lesson or any of the literacy lessons over again, I would like to try to get the students involved more. I did when I could, such as having them say sounds with me and having them come up to write on the Promethean Board, but it would be nice to be able to get the students up and moving throughout the bulk of the lesson. I think this would improve the lesson and the students' learning because they would be able to get some energy out and they would probably be able to pay attention better. I think the lesson would have gone quicker too, because we might not have had to spend as much time on each thing.

Overall, my students were able to grasp the information given to them and they were able to produce the sounds and letters so that I knew they understood the final blends. They were also able to read their sight words. And finally, in centers, the students were able to write me a story about teamwork. The students really grasped the information, even though I had to remind them to pay attention and keep their attention. The lesson went well overall!