Observe and Analyze Two Different Elementary School Classrooms

Before a lesson “teachers should identify and clarify unknown words… They should be pronounced, defined, and made visible so students have the knowledge base to derive meaning from what they are attempting to decode and comprehend” (Fite, 2002). Fite (2002) states the importance for students to define new terms in their own words in connection with examples they thought of which connects the two in order to construct meaning from print.

I gathered student written inventories and held personal interviews and conversations with students and their families in order to help my students grow and mature in their vocabulary usage. This information told me they value who they are and what motivates them so I could design innovative practices and utilize proven methods of vocabulary instruction that promote learning for all my students.

Show the list of words to the student and have the student attempt to read the words.

For example, if the word nucleus was used (identified or written), then it would be in the color green. All of the words had a specific color whether it is on the word wall, flip-charts, notes, or drawings. This seems like an extremely effective strategy due to students visually seeing the image/color to gain knowledge. The three learning strategies were utilized during the lesson, which supported the students in learning materials easier. The teacher visually presented the notes, while she verbally explained the information, then the student’s experienced hands-on learning when they were completing graphic organizers in small groups. The students were given guided and full notes during the lecture. The guided notes required the students to fill in the blanks with the missing words. Other students were given guided notes as well as full notes. In that situation students were encouraged to highlight the full notes in front of them and then transfer the information to the guided notes blanks. These notes were given to students who were struggling or had an IEP. It was great to witness a teacher utilizing a variety of strategies to help the students learn together.

One of the steps in the “TeachLikeThis” video was asking students to make a simple graphic or picture that represented the new term. Fisher and Frey mention a similar approach when they discussed how David Simon modeled the word “orbit” for his class.

Teaching in the classroom every day provides a certain intimate perspective for educators into the needs of their students and school. This perspective is far different than that of a school district board member. This was just one important lesson I learned while attending my local school board meeting in December of 2015. This reflection will discuss the content of the meeting including the items addressed, attendees, presenters, agenda items, and how I will apply what I learned from this meeting as an educator in a special education classroom.

Students listen to the teacher and look at the pictures on the board. They try to guess the vocabulary items. They examine how they will use these words in sentences.

This video is discussing a technique you can use when teaching the vocabulary pillar of reading. The teacher is having her three students’ create a Word Snapshot. The Word Snapshot is a graphic organizer that requires the students to choose a new vocabulary word and create a picture and sentence using the word. The Word Snapshot also has the students identify synonym and antonym for the vocabulary word as well as connections. For these particular students they were only required to create a sentence and picture, but if they wanted to push themselves a little bit further they could find a synonym and antonym for the word. It was also great that the teacher had an example of a Word Snapshot she created since it allowed for the students to see

For my second classroom observation I decided to go back to Shandin Hills Middle School. While at Shandin i had the honor to observe my eighth grade honors algebra one teacher, Mrs. Shanti. Mrs Shanti at the time that she was my teacher, taught the only honors algebra one class on campus but recently due to Common Core, Mrs Shanti is now a intermediate seventh grade math one teacher. It was rather interesting in seeing how Mrs.Shanti taught intermediate students opposed to honor

Procedures: This goal was addressed through storybook readings, direct teaching with pictures and objects, paper and glue activities, looking at singular and plural picture cards, and in spontaneous conversations during free choice and on the playground.

On a sheet of paper students will write down the word spoken by the instructor, spell it correctly, and give the correct definition for that word. Say each word out loud and students will write the correct information on their sheet of paper.

Go over some words, does not matter which ones, to show students how they would use a word

The text listed several ways that teachers can demonstrate the purpose of words and written language. Without being in my own classroom where these patterns are established, there was just a couple that I could get accomplished in this one lesson. I attempted to read a predictable book and help the students write a patterned book. Beforehand, I wrote out a word from the story to add to the word wall, but the teacher didn’t have a dedicated word wall. She did have several items in the classroom labeled though. The word that I wrote out was “brown”. After showing it to the children and putting it up on the board, one boy jumped up out of his seat and pulled a piece of paper out of a container. It was a brown piece of construction paper with the word brown on it. He made the connection and was able to read the word or at least recognize it. Conversely, while trying to create the concept of a word, I used the wrong terminology while trying to get the students to find rhyming words in the story. I asked if they heard “anything” that sounded the same at the end; I should have asked if they heard “two words that sounded the same at the end of the words”.

What I taught them prepared them for continued learning on animal classification and prepared them to start plant classification because the familiarity of classification as a whole. In my lesson I incorporated a phenomenon discussion to get the students to start thinking scientifically by questioning. I used a PowerPoint in order to focus the students’ attention and to visualize the topic I was discussing. The use of the instructional model impacted student learning through being an important resource for the students. The students had a reference to see how to convey information in written form or how to write expository writings. Having the model allowed the students to be more comfortable with informational writing and to be able to focus on understanding the content. The prewriting graphic organizer was used in order for the students to be able organize their ideas and know what they are writing about before they begin their rough draft. This impacted student learning by helping them produce a better and more thought out writing. My plan was for the students to listen to the book being read and be able to get the majority of the information from my reading, which was also projected on the board. This was not the reality and the students needed the photocopied versions of the book to finish their prewriting. This turned out to better support the learners by having that resource available and the students were then able to

3. Go over the new vocabulary the following lesson. It is very important for the students not to lose touch with what comes as novel information. Assigning homework tasks where learners will supposedly use the new words is not sufficient because not all of the learners do homework regularly. Thus, the teacher should begin each new lesson with a small retrospection of what was covered in class before and engage all the students in this activity, which can be turned into a game. This technique is also known as “schemata activation”.