Class Obervation on Reading Comprehension Skills

Many ninth grade students carry a heavy burden with them as they enter high school. McCallumore and Sparapani (2010) point out that these students are coming from middle school with low reading comprehension level; therefore, they are behind before they begin. The study continues with data from the Southern Regional Education Board that 51% of teachers in high school believe their incoming freshman are ill-prepared with the background knowledge needed to enter high school.

The class had a work day to make progress on one of their final papers. There were varying degrees ability that I observed. There were students in the classroom who had no problems achieving the goal while others struggled. It seemed that the majority of difficulties stemmed from a specific skill deficit. For example, their assignment was to write a paper about a controversial issue, choose a side, and use scholarly sources. It seemed as though none of the students had real difficulties in forming their opinion on the controversial issue, but when it was time to sift through the sources there arose difficulty for the students. I believe this difficulty stemmed from a reading comprehension skill deficit that I have observed in multiple students during my observation. The students would have no problem reading through the various articles, but it was difficult for them to identify what parts of the article were important to include in their paper. For example, I watched a student intently read through an article for at least 15 minutes, but he still rose his hand for help. Once the teacher had come to his aid to point out areas of the article that were relevant for his paper he had no problem articulating them into his paper. I believe he just had issues with comprehending the material that was presented to him. This appeared to be a common theme within the classroom I observed. It also

The Common Core State Standards place importance on the ability for students to understand and analyze key ideas in text. Students who have reading fluency are able to read text at a steady rate, summarize supporting details, and analyze different points of view. To assess a student’s fluency rate, teachers can measure WCPM, the words read correctly per minute in 2-3 grade-level passages. To assess reading comprehension, teachers can ask students to read and summarize short passages, then rate the student’s summary of the events and characters on a 7-point scale.

When I first began learning how to read and write, I often found myself struggling to grasp the concepts. Looking back on my experience, I can recall how a lot of the other kids in my class encountered no difficulty. Compared to the majority of them, I worked at a slower pace and required more frequent help from my teacher. Eventually, it got to the point where I questioned if the idea of being able to read and write independently was even possible. Although I was struggling and would often get down on myself, I never let the obstacles I encountered stand in the way of advancing my skills. As a learner, I desired to improve and believed that I had the ability to do so. Therefore, I took action and began receiving help from my older sister.

Mary Smith has been struggling with her academics and speech abilities. She is currently getting extra help in reading and math once a week, as well as going to speech therapy once a week. In my field class I have two students that I take out into the hall every Thursday. Both students are behind in reading so I give them extra time and attention. Mary Smith and my two students in the classroom both need extra attention to get the correct amount of help they need. My host teacher shows deliberate practice by having the kids read a story every day during quiet time to help improve their reading skills. The practice is key because practice is a sure way to become competent. She also helps the kids with growth mindset during reading time because

As a child growing up, I never really enjoyed reading or was ever good at it on my own. I never could understand the words and what they were trying to say in a story. I was able to read the words but putting them together was always tough for me. Whenever my teachers would ask me to summarize what I read, I would panic and break down greatly. I never could remember what I was reading after I had read it to myself or even aloud. This always caused a great amount of stress for me, especially having to read aloud to the class. I was never good at reading aloud and always felt so embarrassed to do so. I would despise going to class because I always seemed to get called on to read aloud the most. In elementary school we would get taken out of class

Since, I will be teaching Math 4-8, I will be using the Think-Pair-Share strategy to encourage classroom participation in order to solve mathematical problems. I will give students a problem, and students will have time to think about it individually. Then they can work in pairs to solve the problem, which will allow them to express their ideas, consider those of others, and discuss possible answers. Finally, the students can share their answers, and ideas with the class.

The central focus of my learning segment is to learn about the relationship between cause and effect, sequencing, and timelines. As we near the CRCT, the students need to be able to describe the relationship between causes and effects. The students will also be able to write their own sentences and stories using different cause and effect strategies. The learning segment will be broken down into four different days, the first day will be focusing on finding cause and effect relationships in literature, the second day will use historical contexts for cause and effect and sequencing, the third day will use science to explain why sequencing is important, and the final day will focus on how personal behaviors can have different effects on the classroom and school. Each day my lessons will delve deeper into the meaning of cause and effect. By the end of the week, my students should be able to explain how their own behaviors affect the classroom and school. The students will work on building their own stories using different cause and effect signal words.

The activity was for my student to make up his own story problem using a given theme and to make up two numbers to get to a number of the given sum. During the activity my student was somewhat successful with finding two numbers that made the sum he was given, but often times got confused on the wording of the sum problem. For example he would write “ I have 2 socks if he got 6 socks” then would stop. Through out the process I had to be say things like “I don’t know what I am suppose to solve” or “What is suppose to go at the end of the problem?”. After I’d ask those problems my student would usually try and charm me into giving him the answer, but I would just act super confuse and try and guide him into the answer. After many redirections and questions I could successfully help him make a story problem that made sense, but it took around ten minutes to successfully do this. I learned that my student knows how to solve problems, but sometimes he would get caught up in the detail of spelling a word, how he wrote a word, or would get distracted. I also realized that he can struggle with the foundation of a story problem and how to construct one. This semester I plan on helping my case study student successfully write story

Education has an immense impact on the human society. The quality of human resource of a nation is easily judged by the number of literate population living in it. This is to say that education is a must if a nation aspires to achieve growth and development and more importantly sustain it. In today’s world, the role of education has become even more vital. It is an absolute necessity for economic and social development, and the single most important predictor of good jobs and high income at the individual level. In the United States, the Department of Education aims to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering

The selection of activities that I have prepared for this lesson would be beneficial to the student’s learning, because they would be able to practice and even test their knowledge on how to divide. In the introduction lesson, I have a warm up problem for the students that involved dividing 15 by 5, which is a math fact that they would have been introduced to either in a multiplication unit that would be before the division unit, or would have seen this problem within a division worksheet.. Having the students then divide themselves into groups of 3 gives them a real world scenario of what division looks like, and gives them a way to conceptualize what division actually is. This could be a way that students understand division, by having them group

“I don’t understand math.”, ‘’I hate word problems.”, “I don’t even know what the problem is asking!” If you are a math teacher, surely you have heard these comments, or some variation, from students more often than you would care to. Although you empathize, try to explain mathematical concepts in different ways, perhaps, you do not always get the positive result you were looking for which is for your students who struggle to overcome mathematical hurdles. Well, have you ever considered that their problem with math may be related to reading difficulties?

One of the problems that we asked was lucie has been saving her money and wants to buy 2 Harry Potter books. Each book costs $12. How much money will lucie need to buy 2 books? The students used 2 different strategies to solve this problem. Both strategies lead the students to the correct answer. Students were also able to explain their strategies to their classmates who used a different strategy. This allowed for all the students to understand the different strategies. We then ask for students to solve the same type of problem with different numbers. We also asked for them to use a different strategy. At the end of the lesson students had a better understanding of multiplication problems. We will continue to work on these types of problems on our last visit.

Mr. Mike is a math teacher I am observing at International High school. He has what it takes to be an effective teacher. His first class starts at 9:15 am every day; he arrives to class early to get everything set up before the students come in. Students arrive to class on time; Mr. Mike already has the question for the new topic on the smart board. He starts his lesson by recalling what they learned in the previous class. Then he introduces the new topic along with an interesting story; which seems to grab student’s attention. Mr. Mike shows a tremendous understanding and knowledge about the topic. The topic is about a word problem where students have to guess how many people could fit on a table if they keep adding tables together. Students have to draw a diagram of the situations; then they have to find a formula to illustrate the problem. After finding the formula, they have to use it to calculate how many people could fit if there are 50 or more tables together. Mr. Mike explains the problem in details. The project he uses reinforced students to use different representation of these mathematical problems. Every student completed the assignment. As a class, they discussed the problem and to assess learning Mr. Mike provides them with a practice test where they had to make up their word problem and solve it in the same manner as they did before.

After the survey was over, Lucy was walked back to the class where she laid down and began to read a book right away.