Blog #10 Homework

Based on my previous experience as a Kindergarten teacher, I know students come from a wide variety of backgrounds and family situations. Some parents work late and students stay with other family members, baby sitters, or after school programs before going home. These students spend very little time with their parents or guardians and when they do there is not much time for homework. There are parents who request additional homework for their students believing that busy work will make them more successful. There are students with parents or guardians that want to help, but do not feel like they have enough of an education to assist their children. There are students with older siblings who take on the role of parent to answer questions and listen to their reading. There are parents with patience and encouragement just bubbling from them and there are parents whose frustration and attitude toward learning influences how their children view school.

One of the professional development meetings I attended in my second year of teaching, forced me to think about any worksheets or assignments I sent home in folders overnight. I was sending occasional practice for handwriting, addition, and occasional projects. But there was a trend in who completed these items. Students, who had a support system at home, finished and brought the homework back completed and correct. Students without that structured system came back with unfinished or unfilled in homework. The students with the support system did not need the extra practice because they were getting what they needed regardless of what I sent home with them. Students without that modeling at home could use the practice but were not benefiting from the take home assignments. I decided to make independent reading practice the only homework because theoretically, students could do this without assistance and their recorded reading growth would reflect whether this practice was being accomplished or not.

This meant parents and students would not have the added pressure or disappointment of getting homework finished and returned. There was no worry about not understanding assignments or concepts because they knew there would be one book every night in their folder to read. One long term consistent assignment to help build a habit of reading.  A parent came to me saying that she was able to enjoy her children in the evening without fights about doing a worksheet. It seemed that the relationship between the children and their parents was more relaxed as they had more time to spend together for fun before supper and sleeping.

Meaningful homework to me is something that will encourage and build a skill set. Worksheets and projects outside the classroom can become unnecessary and without purpose. Some students may accomplish their homework by themselves, but some will be completed by their parents as I have had admissions about in my first year of teaching. If students ignore homework because of disinterest in the subject or assignment, then the project is not meaningful. If students complete it only to get the points and move on, then they did not connect personally with it. This is why independent reading books that are sent home need to be just right books. They are on the student’s reading level and are a subject area of interest to them. The student needs to have some say in what they are reading to be invested and it is our job as the teacher to build their excitement about topics that they may overlook at first sight.  The You Tube video below summarizes the discussion about finding just right books while at the library.

My objective for any student practicing their reading at home is for them to become independent at this skill. An English Language Learner will need to be interested, feel a desire to progress, and have proper scaffolding to prepare them for the book. At the beginning of the year, there might be mostly picture books with very simple and concise sentences to assist with vocabulary development. The books might be in their home language for a certain period of time to help parents know what the home procedure for independent reading will look like and so they can discuss the content. This might mean using the classroom budget to buy literature or checking out books from the library. The teacher could model what appropriate homework behavior would look like at the beginning of the school year for parents to see their role in action. The teacher could also video tape a skit with help from the school to be shown and translated at the bottom of the video.

The teacher would be providing feedback for parents who do not speak English through a chart with different colors and pictures to convey what level students are at in different categories in their reading. In their take home folder, a calendar of events is placed on the left and a reading chart is placed on the right with the independent reading book in a Ziploc. The teacher will initial the chart with the color that coordinates to the student’s level or progress. Then students will be sent home with monthly notes that will summarize progress and goals specifically. These notes could be translated with help from the district. The calendar and chart would be updated online through the school grading website. There is a system called TeacherEase that allowed me to do something similar. Or these could be emailed to parents when the month begins and ends as a PDF. The following link is for the website I have used to help communicate with parents in the past.

https://www.teacherease.com/common/Login.aspx?toolbarlink=true

Blog #9 Graphic Organizers

So...the conundrum of deciding what books to use and what text features to compare in my graphic organizer assignment was primarily decided based on the grade level equivalency and whether I had these books on my personal shelf.

Amelia Bedelia’s First Apple Pie by Herman Parish has a Grade Level Equivalent of 2.1. This is a fall themed story of Amelia spending time with her grandpa and grandma as she learns about apples and how to make apple pie. Amelia takes what people say literally, which is a great way to start conversations with ELL students.  This is also a childhood book friend of mine, so nostalgia points.

According to the Book Wizard on the Scholastic website,  Pumpkin Circle by George Levenson has a Grade Level Equivalent of 2.4. This book gives a pictorial time table of the process a pumpkin goes through to become a fruit from a seed and what pumpkins are used for when they are in the seed stage and fruit stage. This was a book I bought during my first year of teaching to supplement my kindergarten science curriculum. See the following link, if you wish to look up more information for teachers about children's books.

http://www.scholastic.com/bookwizard/

In my first graphic organizer, I decided to compare the books' organization of information. This will help students to know what to expect from both types of texts and help them find meaning for comprehension later on. Unfortunately, the blog page would not cooperate when I tried to copy, paste, and attach the graph. The picture shows how students would be able to compare and contrast the information from both texts with oral discussion or pictures if they are at the early stages of English Language Learning.

The fictional story has a beginning which gives the reader context and sets up the problem. The story elements are completely different than a non-fiction book which gives a main idea with details listed to teach the reader about something real. The middle of the story usually is growing the characters and the problem is getting out of hand or ready to be fixed. The body of a non-fiction text has a variety of details to support the main idea. The ending of the story wraps up the problem giving it a solution, while the text, Pumpkin Circle, restates the main idea in its conclusion. The teacher may put this graphic organizer on a Smart Board or projector screen. The instructor could print and hand out copies to the students after reading both books as a class. 



 

This above chart design could be given out to be filled in by the students with sentence starters or cut out pictures of ideas and subjects from the books being read for that day.

 

The second graphic organizer is a way to show how information is presented in a story versus a non fiction book. This would be used to model a comparison before having students read two more books and fill out these parts on their own. Depending on their grade level and level of English fluency, students could use one or two word answers to fill out the chart. This is designed to compare non-fiction and fiction texts side-by-side as students look at these specific examples with pictures and illustrations from the books. This should assist students with learning English as they apply the knowledge they learn in an organized format. This graph could be adjusted to be pictures that are drawn or glued to each section. The concepts of problem and solution can be thought out through several examples from real life, other subject areas, or books. For instance an addition problem must be solved with a method to get answers. However, these are more abstract concepts, so using gestures, play acting, and movie clips might also help to assist with main idea and details.

 

Blog #8: Observation of Sheltered Lesson Videos

The teacher has prewritten information on the white board for ELL students to refer to during class. She seems fully engaged in teaching students what they need to know to be successful. It is unfortunate that she does not have access to a projector or Smart Board for this lesson to be more interactive and include more visuals, but we are not always given great resources.

Prereading in this lesson includes making a goal of learning about inferences. The teacher also reviews reading strategies, such as connect to background knowledge. She writes vocabulary with their definitions on large paper and has pictures of these things passed around the room. She asks them to review what they know about these things and points out good word choice as they describe them. She gives them synonyms if they cannot think of some. There is also real life examples of what the words mean.

During reading, the teacher will make sure students know where they need to be in the book to read. Everyone reads aloud when they read and follows along with their eyes and fingers. The teacher asks students to sing a song from their own language that is referenced in the book. She made the content understandable by scaffolding what they knew from personal experience and other books they have read to what they do not know in the text. The teacher pauses and asks questions about the text to have students think about the content and understand what it means by making visuals and inferences. She helps students use strategies by pointing out a few bits of information to prompt their thinking. They can reference the vocabulary pictures and definitions on the board. She gives them wait time to think of a response or answer.

After reading, the teacher reviews their objective, reading strategies used, learned vocabulary, and content in the text. The students are given a task to complete on their post-its to share as a class when finished.

Students interacted well together and seemed engaged in learning. They were more advanced ELL students, so they had quite a bit of vocabulary already to help with this lesson. The teacher must have done a good job setting up procedures at the beginning of the year for students not to talk over each other and behave well in class.