Week 8

• Discuss the components of an effective writing program and why they are important.

The three components of effective writing is 1.) personal connections- it's important for children to be able to personally connect with their writing. ex; personal narratives 2.) writing conventions- we have to make sure what conventions each students need to be working on; they would do editing and revisions on works.  3.) inventions-  give students invent or producing their own writing pieces. These are important because it gives you a better view of how the students understanding is. You will know what they get and what they don't get.

• How might you rearrange your schedule to create more time for students to write in general and, in particular, for students to write about their personal experiences?

I would have them write in there journal before the end of each day to one, practice their writing, and two, find out how much they know.

• How can you create ways for students to make personal connections in different subject areas through writing?

You can have them do responsive or reflective writing to something they have read or you have read. It can be about a book, a article, a political issue (if at that level), etc.

• How can student work help you decide which conventions to teach?

You would see what is the most common convention that needs to be addressed by looking at all the students first work and base your teaching off that.

• When can you promote student inventions and experimentation with different formats in writing?

COCA

Concepts of Comprehension Assessment (COCA) is intended for first and second graders and helps provide information about how they coprehend informational texts. There are two forms of COCA that can be used, Dragoflies and Salmon. The COCA gives you opprotunites to ask their students question during the reading of the text, that with the students answers can give you an insight on the students comprehension and knowledge and informational text. The prompts for these questions assess these four dimesions: comprehension strategy use, knowledge of informational text features, comprehension of graphics in the context of text, and vocabulary. I like the design of the Dragonflies book because it has the student fill in the blanks of the book, it lets you see if the students can figure out what words fit in.

Week 5:

I really liked this video, it was cute. I like how it got children together that all had similar problems; they hated reading. They were embarrassed by how much they could not read, it frustrated them so much. During the beginning they had these children make a video, using clay figures, about their experience with reading in the classroom. This gave them time to discuss themselves with others and see that they are not alone with their struggling in reading and they get to collaborate with each other to show this. I liked that they got to do this, your never alone with your reading and there is always someone there that can help you.

Discussion question: How would you help an English Language Learner in your classroom(aside from the ESL teacher if they had one)?

Week 4:

R4 Reading
Read-Relax-Reflect-Respond
This is called the R4 approach, which gets the students' reading at home with the parents involvement. During the Read & Relax period they find a comfortable spot at their home and read. They want their 4th graders to at least do 80 minutes of reading a week, have them record it in a log and have their parents initial each time they do. Then during the Reflect & Respond period they are given prompts to to think about their reading and maybe learn why the author might have written that. I think this is a pretty effective way of getting your students and their parents invovled in their reading. Then having them respond helps you to see how much they understand what they read and if they comprehend it.

Week 2: Online Video

The video was about reading assessments that shows future teachers how to assess their students reading and key points to look for while doing this. The video gave helpful tips on what to look for when trying to learn a student’s reading level. While assessing the student we must look at vocabulary, fluency, context, etc. Teachers should know what a student’s reading level is because they can better help the student if they do know. We as teachers have to make sure the student understands the lesson in its entirety.


I learned that assessing a student’s reading level can be pretty difficult to do. Only with proper tools and key elements can you really decipher what their reading level is.

While doing observation last semester, the teacher let me grade the students practice ELA test. These test were put together by the 3rd grade teachers with examples of their own from what they have seen the ELA test to be like. Either way, I graded these test and got to see how some of the student’s processed their reading, most of the students got the right answer because they were underlining the key points in the story to answer the questions and others answered them by something they remember reading which was usually the wrong answer. With this I was able to see the class reading levels in whole.