Moving From Assessment to Instruction

This last week, I had an interesting reading conference with R.  He read two separate reading passages, one about Amelia Earhart and one about steam engines.  When we started our reading conference, I gave him a choice of which passage to read.  He chose the steam engine passage.  He had almost not trouble with miscues or comprehension, and he got through it relatively quickly.  Because we had time at the end of the conference, I also assessed him on the Amelia Earhart passage.  His ability to retell and comprehend both pieces was strong.  


Initially, I had predicted that his comprehension level would be higher on the piece he was able to choose, however, his comprehension was strongest on the Amelia Earhart passage.  This is likely because he had more background knowledge going into the reading.  


From these observations it is clear that R has a strong ability to comprehend and infer from grade level text.  He is also interested in realistic fiction as well as literature about sports.  As a result of this, possible learning objectives could be, using a text slightly above grade level for R to make inferences about the author's purpose for writing the text. Analyzing these elements of literature would also be useful in developing R's ideas and content in his writing. 

Geometry!

What I learned:
This week really helped me see the different levels that students can be at in terms of their understanding of Geometry.  In my 4th grade placement, definitely have students who, if they turned a right angle onto a different side, they would no longer see a right angle.  This is most likely because they are used to doing a lot of their geometry on worksheets.  Asking students explicit questions with one answer that only apply to the situation on the paper will not help advance them to the next level of Geometrical thinking.

Even though I wasn't able to recall many of the Geometric properties I'd learned in high school on my own, being able to have a paper in my hand to think about why I knew what I knew was helpful.  I may not have been able to do any two column proofs, but being able to hold the paper in my hand made me think further about what I knew about the shapes and lines and eventually come to conclusions based on prior knowledge.


Questions:
As teachers, is there a way to help students move from one level to the next?


Implications for my teaching practice:
Looking ahead into the spring when I take over my 4th grade classroom, I'm not sure what specific areas of math I'll be responsible for teaching.  I do know that there WILL be ways to incorporate geometry into other types of math (as well as a potential Geometry unit).  Knowing that students learn math best when they get to touch it, my Geometry lessons will not be one-dimensional.

Math Manipulatives

After getting bogged down in teaching standards and worrying about covering tested materials, I sometimes forget that math can be fun....and I like math.  I can imagine that as teachers, the way we feel about math really affects the way our students will feel about math.  If we project the image that teaching math is stressful, we project that stress on to our students.  When we were using the miras in class on Monday, many of us were having so much fun, we forgot we were doing math.  It was interesting to learn that many teachers don't take advantage of the manipulatives available to them at their schools. This seems strange considering how helpful they can be in getting students to move their thinking from concrete to abstract.  Also of interest to me was the fact that today's students don't differentiate greatly between virtual and tangible manipulatives.  This fact increase teacher access to many different ways to help students learn.

In terms of classroom application, I'm encouraged to have the access of so many materials online, even if I end up in a school or district that does not place much emphasis on learning with manipulatives.  It was encouraging as well to see that teachers who had your students in later years, could pick out which students were yours because they had a much deeper grasp of math concepts.  

Literacy Project 1

Analysis

This analysis is based off of the writing sample of one short story written by “R,” my fourth grade buddy.  The sample is taken from the rough draft of a creative writing assignment called “The Bottle.”  I believe this story was written in response to a prompt that asked students to write a story about what happens when their character finds a mysterious bottle.  I have analyzed the spelling in both the writing sample and the spelling inventory.

Meaning

In the piece of writing we chose, “The Bottle,” R has responded to a creative writing prompt regarding the events that take place after the character finds a strange bottle.  Because we spent most of our time talking to our buddy about the outline for his next writing piece, we weren't able to discuss the meaning of this piece other than in relation to the prompt.    

Six Traits

Ideas

In terms of assessing his rough draft on the ideas and content, R chose a narrow and manageable topic.  He generally stays on topic but hasn’t developed a clear theme or sense of purpose. Additionally he tends to be drawing on his own knowledge and experience, using a video game sale as the main purpose for the message in the bottle.  While his ideas are reasonably clear with attempted support, the ideas aren’t expanded upon in a way that relates to the prompt at all.  As a reader, it was hard for me to pick out which events were the most important.  Many of them did not seem related to the prompt.

Organization

From this writing smaple, R shows a strong sense of organizational abilty.  His introduction introduced the topic clearly, creating anticipation for the rest of the story.  His transistions, such as “seconds later…” and “thirty long minutes later…” and even “then…” clearly showed how his ideas connected to one another.   In this piece, the sequencing occurs in logical order.  While the writer  controls his pace fairly well, he often does not slow down and elaborate on potentially important parts of the story.  While the title is present, it mainly just restates the prompt. 

Voice 

When reading this writing sample, it was hard to pick up on a distinct voice.  His writing is sincere, but doesn’t reflect his individual perspective on the topic. From this piece, it does not appear that R took many risks in the development.  Although the piece was intended to be a creative writing assignment, he mostly wrote about what he was comfortable with and did not risk revealing much about himself. 

Word Choice
Overall, this piece displays word choice that serves to get the point across, but does not enhance the interest of the reader.  R uses words that are specific and accurate.  At times he attempts to use more colorful language but can go beyond what would be appropriate for the described situation.  He mainly uses familiar words and phrases, but once or twice shows evidence of revision to phrases that are more eye catching such as “so hungry I could eat a…”

Sentence Fluency
R’s sentence fluency, much like his word choice, is generally functional.  With a few changes, he could make this story much more expressive.  His sentences vary in length and structure, however, the included dialogue sounds slightly unnatural.  While he does attempt to vary his sentence beginnings, there are multiple sentences that start with “then…” “it…” and “I…”  He uses appropriate and sometimes creative connectives between sentences and thoughts to show their connectedness such as “Thirty long minutes later…”  These thoughtful transitions allow for some expressive oral reading, but other sentences are still stiff and choppy.

Conventions

Overall, R’s conventions are strong.  His grammar is always correct and his capitalization skills are consistent.  His end punctuation is almost always accurate, however, his internal punctuation is sometimes missing.  For example, a few of his compound sentence did not include a comma prior to the conjunction, and many of his transitions lacked punctuation.  Moderate editing, some of which is included in the sample, would be necessary before taking the draft to publication.  The spelling in this sample is generally correct.  There are a few misspelled words (their instead of both they’re and there, lightning and trafic).

Ownership

While we did not formally engage our buddy in discussion in terms of his ownership of writing, we were able to collect a few pieces of information on the topic. When we discussed the subject of writing with our buddy, he was eager to tell us about how much he enjoyed it.  He sees himself as a capable writer and speller.  He enjoys writing mostly about topics that he has some experience with such as sports and school and likes writing less in the genres of fantasy or adventure.

Spelling
I believe that R’s spelling is advanced for his age.  He missed only 2 words in his spelling inventory (pleasher and oposition).  When looking at his writing, he appeared to be using but confusing double consonants to change the sound of the vowel in the word (shinny, trafic).  He seemed to know that the double consonant changed the sound, but was confused as to whether it made the vowel long or short.  It might be useful for him to pay attention to consonant doubling (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, Johnston, 2004).  He also confused their, there and they're, catching himself once as he was writing.  

Lesson Plan

Objectives:

The student will understand the way that a double consonant affects the vowel sound in word.

Standards

3.3.2   Spells words appropriate for the grade level accurately.  

Materials

·         List of words with single consonants that cause a long vowel sound

·         List of words with double consonants that cause a short vowel sound

·         White Board

·         Dry Erase Marker

·         Eraser

Instruction

• The teacher will begin the lesson by giving the student a list of 15-20 words, of varied lengths, that either follow the rule of double consonants creating a short vowel sound or words that have a single consonant and a long vowel sound.  Some of these words will be ones misspelled in the students writing.  Using words from the student's own writing and incorporating this into the patterns in other words will make the spelling more relevant to the student (Templeton and Morris, 1999). 
• The student(s) will use a white board to put the words into categories however (s)he choses.  (Words are written out to reinforce correct spelling as well as to make the student aware of the patterns as he is writing them).  As this is happening, the teacher will be doing a formative assessment to see how the student choses to sort the words.
• After the words are sorted, the teacher will discuss with the student(s) how the sorting decisions were made.  Based on this, the teacher may ask to see if there is a different way to sort the words, or, if more support is needed, may sort them and ask the student what (s)he notices about the patterns (both in spelling and sound).
• The teacher will then explain how words with a double consonant before the vowel sound different than some words with a single consonant before the vowel.  She will then model (using words from the sort as well as new words) how she thinks aloud when spelling about the way the word sounds and how that relates to how they are spelled.
• The teacher will repeat the process, asking the student to spell the words aloud with her.
• After guided practice, the student will independently practice correctly using these types of words in his writing over the course of the week.

Assessment
Teacher will assess student ability to spell words correctly by assessing their knowledge while the student sorts the words and through a spelling test using some of the words from the word sort as well as new words that follow the same spelling patterns.  The teacher will look for correct spelling of the words both on the spelling tests and in the student's writing.  

Technology in the Classroom

After spending the last couple of weeks getting acquainted with my Ipod Touch (and reacquainted with the students in my main placement), I'm noticing more and more ways in which the Ipod Touch can help differentiate instruction. There are quite a few "endearing quirks" that would benefit from different resources that some of these apps have to offer.

While I'm not a huge fan of learning math through repetitious drill exercises, there are 1 or 2 students for whom their lack of speed with basic multiplication, division, addition and subtraction facts is significantly holding them back in learning new math concepts. The "Basic Math" app drills students on all basic math operations and could help these students improve on their accuracy and speed so that the rest of their work was hindered. This would be something they could work on while the class is finishing up on morning routines. The extra 10 or so minutes per day would help keep these facts fresh in their head.

I also have a student who is working on, in reading, reading fluently to help the text make more sense. When she reads aloud, she tends to plow through text with little attention to punctuation. The ability to read aloud, record herself and listen to those recordings could help her notice points in the text where she needs to speed up or slow down, hopefully improving her comprehension.

One student in my main placement struggles a lot with learning disabilities that affect her writing and especially her reading. She is constantly frustrated because her reading level is not near that of the rest of her classmates. She does, however, love writing and she and I have talked quite a bit about how she would much rather read books she writes herself. Her learning disability causes some difficulties with writing as well, but she loves to write and tell stories. Lately, I've been trying to think of a way to use her love of writing to help her reading as well. Using the Writer's Studio App, she would be able to create her own stories with pictures and then read them aloud as well.

Concrete to Abstract

It's interesting to me how at first it seemed so counterintuitive to go from concrete to abstract in math. It's a method we use to learn and teach most everything else, and it seems strange that we would choose to learn or teach math differently. We're often looking for someone to tell us a formula and give us the quickest way to find an answer. While there's nothing wrong with efficiency, we lose a lot of understanding by not thinking about why the algorithm we use works. Our brains are constantly looking to make connections from the patterns we see, and we can make generalizations about those patterns when we connect our concrete learning to our abstract thinking.

In terms of classroom practice, I'm seeing manipulatives in use much more often than I experienced in my own education. In my dyad 7th grade math placement, we used chip boards to teach the students the difference between the adding and subtracting of negative and positive numbers. I did notice that the teacher's comfort with a particular manipulative had a big effect on the students choice to use that particular strategy. For me there's still a question of how to know when to use them, and how long should we allow students to rely on them before we encourage them to use a more efficient algorithm?

First of all, algebra tiles are probably one of the coolest math manipulatives I've seen so far. It

I'll be the first to admit, I've always liked math. Growing up, I was what you would call a "math person.' I was very good at plugging numbers into an equation to get a right answer. Throughout this program I am continuing to learn that this is not necessarily what that is about. I'm learning about the excitement that comes with working collaboratively on a problem and then coming up with an answer in a way that means something to me. Not only do I have a better understanding of why I'm doing what I'm doing on certain problems, but I also get to share this with others and see the many different and very cool ways that others go about solving the same problem.

In terms of translating this into classroom practice, the idea of group work and collaborative problem solving seems great--in theory. It's not that I don't see the value in these types of problems or their ability to cover multiple standards at a time. In fact, it's clear that the type of learning that occurs through this type of work goes much deeper than plugging numbers into formulas and memorizing how to solve specific types of problems. It was clear both in class and from the videos that this type of teaching engages students much more than other methods I've seen. I guess what I'm wondering is how to incorporate this when working in one of many districts that adheres very strictly to a scripted math curriculum.