Nan Miller’s spider web organization tool was helpful for her lower level reading and writing students, however, if Nan differentiated insher truction, provided more redundancy, and engaged all her students, her lesson would have been more successful. Nan remained optimistic that using spider maps would be a challenging and fun way to assist her students to organize their thoughts before writing, and she brought her excitement and enthusiasm into the classroom. This is extremely important because “Students consistently learn more and appreciate the content more when teachers display enthusiasm in their teaching” (Mastropieri & Scruggs, 82). Another positive aspect of her lesson was that she gave her students positive reinforcement and encouragement. …show more content…
While she did check for understanding by asking the class “are you with me?” throughout her explanation, Nan received numerous individual questions from her students asking for clarification after the instructional portion of the lesson (page 105). To create a better learning experience for her class, Nan should start implementing systematic teaching principals such as employing redundancy to better assist her students who struggle with completing the spider map. Many students “require additional opportunities to hear, see, and practice lessons before mastering objectives,” and because of this, some students in the lower level reading groups would benefit from more repetition in their instruction (Mastropieri & Scruggs, 81). One way Nan could implement more redundancy would be to create an example spider map with the class focusing on a room all students are familiar with, such as the classroom. By creating a spider map together, students not only would be able to practice developing their organizational skills, but the clarity of the lesson also improves as students are able to ask questions as the lesson progresses. In addition to this, Nan could have students such as Jason, who have high organizational skills assist struggling students. Doing this also helps differentiate her lesson as it allows students who have mastered this skill to solidify their
Below grade level students will be given further instruction from the teacher during the activity. The teacher may remind the students to use the strategies listed on the anchor chart. The teacher may ask the student key/probing question to discover more about their thinking process and provide further instruction where it is needed. The teacher can assist student’s who are still struggling by folding their paper, placing the students focus on a particular part of the activity
Ignorance is the most fatal flaw in human nature. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, he expresses through his characters that ignorance is the worst of all flaws. Each of the animal characters in the book, symbolize specific characteristics that are found in humans. Mollie, Benjamin and the sheep are the main animals that have the greatest ignorance and can bring harm into the farm. Mollie, the mare, represents the young people of the times.
After completing all the assessments and the parent interview, reading and writing activities were differentiated and conducted during whole group and small group instruction. Bear (Laureate Education, Inc, 2009c) discusses using the RRWWT Framework for guiding instruction for students. During the Read To activity, the Emperor’s Egg (Jenkins,) is read whole group to the students. This is an information text which uses labeled diagrams and captioned pictures throughout to provide additional information about the topic. During the Read To, students are following along in their basal as I read, and I have students discuss the diagrams of the Emperor Penguin. Drawing attention to the diagrams and teaching the students how illustrations and diagrams within text can aid in their understanding of what is being read seems to help the struggling reader. Using the visuals such as the diagrams helps this
The student enjoys drawing and creating pictures, so I used this strategy to best help the student understand the events in one of her favorite books, Wonder by R.J. Palicio. The student enjoyed this activiy, which motivated her to push to find the challenge and interpret how the character responded to the challenge. After extra assisstance by asking the student to dig deeper about what was happening in the event, the student was able to create a picture of a conflict and how the character responded to the conflict so yes, the student did meet the objective. I did provide modifications for the student, she needed help with unknown words that we defined beforehand. She also needed extra assistance with looking deeper in to what is happening and finding the theme of the story. I re-defined the difference between the theme and the main idea which helped the student correctly find the theme of the story.
In the article, Spider Files, James McDonald and Lynn Dominguez describe a lesson on students having first-hand experiences with spiders in order to debunk student misconceptions. They mention that misconceptions children have are very hard to change because they become habits (McDonald and Dominguez, p.73, 2012). Some of the misconceptions they touch on are: all spiders make webs, spiders are insects, and most spiders cannot bite humans because their fangs are too small (p.73, 2012). For the engaging part of the lesson, McDonald and Dominguez had students answer what they know about spiders, draw a picture of a spider, and describe where a spider lives (p.74, 2012). Through these questions, the teachers were able to trigger the students’ curiosity.
There are many nature preserves in New Jersey, a state with a thriving deciduous forest biome. On one of my visits to the Zaitz Woods Nature Preserve, a 150 acre area of forest only a few minutes away from my house, I walked into a spider web that spanned from one side of the trail to the other. In movies, such a large spider web would definitely have been the web of a huge, monstrous spider, but it is never so in real life. This led me to wonder about spiders and the spiderwebs they spin. Why do large spiderwebs always mean that there is a huge spider nearby in movies? Do larger spiders actually make larger webs? Spiderwebs are unique structures made only by animals from the order Araneae, which are the species of spiders that spin silk made
When you walk into Mrs.Connors classroom it is surprisingly quiet for a second-grade classroom. Mrs.Connors has been a teacher for fifteen years, and in her current classroom, she uses the Lucy Calkins method of teaching. Once the mini-lesson is over the students do independent work and the room is silent at that point. She is required to teach this way but over the years has found it to be the most effective way and has seen a lot of growth in students. The only time she can work around the curriculum is when there are students who are below reading level or are an ELL student where they can use easier books. She does have one ELL student in her classroom who does use these easier books during independent reading. Overall, she believes a lot
Educating when all is said in done is an ethical endeavor. An educator's obligation is to improve the educational world of their students (Borah, 2012). One way this is conveyed is through teaching reading. Reading is one of the most important skills an individual can possess and requires many resources to promote success. Although an educator main goal is to provide reading excellence among their students, this cannot be completed without the assistance of a reading coach. A reading coach job is specialized in identifying reading challenges and aiding direction to classroom educators (IRA, 2000). Below I have created a graphic organizer that will compare and contrast the roles that a teacher and reading coach projects in implementing successful
The definition of what makes a beautiful woman has been shown to change according to geographic location and the period of time. From the ancient world to modern day society there are many examples of how the perception of beauty has changed from ideals in times such as 25,000 B.C.E. The world has been known to judge women by expecting them to look or act a certain way, though some society’s definition of beauty is altered slightly. Several of these changing beauty ideals can be seen in the art for the different time periods. One country may have glorified slim women, while another may have valued heavier ones.
From this, it is easy to see how a student can misinterpret learning concepts or the world at large when leaning heavily on visual cues. At the same time, I learned the need to speak clearly and to watch for signs of understanding or confusion in the student. Finally, I learned to not just have the student repeat the word back, but rather to talk with the student for further signs of understanding. When the student lacks the vocabulary or is inhibited to say he does not understand, it is up to the teacher to identify a lack of
On my last visit to Makefield I taught a lesson on reading comprehension by introducing main idea and supporting details to the first grade students. One positive aspect of the lesson came at the very beginning. After asking students if they were familiar with the term ‘main idea’, I displayed an image of a busy park onto the board. The picture of the park was covered in dark circles that hid some of the details of the picture. One at a time I removed the circles to reveal a piece of the picture and had students explain what they saw. After all of the circles were removed students were able to see the big picture. Using the picture of the park helped students visualize how small details make up the main idea, which is like the bigger picture.
Using organization strategy, I always require my students to use their notebook to organize what they have learned from a lesson. They could write or draw what they have learned. I model what they are to write or draw, and then later allow them to represent what they have
My visual interpretation, I have decided to create a spider and the web as a center focus that creates and attaches to the ideas of agency, identity, culture, and structure. The spider represents the dominant group (white race) creates these labels on how the world should look and be like. It weaves these invisible norms, just as a spider weaves an invisible web to trap their prey.
Daily independent practice allows students to maximize the volume of their reading and writing (Allington, 2005). This center offers all sorts of materials to encourage children to write, spell and create. Markers, pencils, pens, and crayons are easily reachable on the shelves for the children at any time. In addition, each child is offered to choose from a variety of different color papers, different size paper as well as papers with lines to support controlled writing. In this center, children can find different tapes (scotch, electrical tape, paper tape etc), staplers, hole punchers, paperclips, scissors, clipboards, notepads as well as alphabet posters in upper, and lower case letters. Furthermore, the children can find there posters with sight words such as yes, no, to, from, with, mommy, daddy, sister, brother, I love you, and all of their classmates’ full names (in upper and lower case letters). In this center each child has his/her own mailbox where they are offered a possibility of sending letters/notes to each other. To support and encourage written communication among them, we placed different post cards, envelopes, and little note pads right next to the mailboxes. In addition, each child has his/her own meaningful vocabulary posts (10 words and 10 pictures i.e. siblings names, favorite food, favorite superhero) that were created by parents during curriculum night. Children can use them at any
In the real world, the daily interactions and experiences in which we use language, writing, reading, mathematics, science, and social studies do not occur in isolation. Rather, we draw upon our knowledge and understanding in each area as we explore, investigate, and learn each day: "Just as scientists use mathematics and language arts as tools, children should have opportunities to apply and enhance their mathematics, reading, and writing skills while investigating the natural world" (Bass, Contant, and Carin, 2009, p.231). In the classroom, the primary focus is the learning of each student. The teacher follows the required benchmarks designated by the school district as they apply directly to their grade level of instruction. To help keep the students and the teacher on the right track and at the right pace, each educator must write lesson plans as a guide toward discovery. This final lecture will take a backward look at the various topics discussed over the past 7 weeks. Using the ideas and concepts that have been presented will result in integrated lesson plans that will excite the learner and create an enthusiastic classroom learning environment.