Domain 1 - Reading Assessment

Kimberly Taron
Domain 1: Planning Organizing and Managing Reading Instruction Based on Ongoing Assessment
Competency 2: Reading Assessment
Grade Level: 5
ELD Class

I observed reading assessment in my 5th grade tutoring class.  The teacher in this class covers "monitoring of progress assessments" with her students by monitoring AR (Advanced Readers) test scores and the weekly progress made by her students.  After the students read a book of their choice, they take an AR test on comprehension.  The computer keeps track of all their scores and the level of difficulty gives a higher score.  She keeps track of if students are adequately progressing and meeting her standards and also if they are meeting their own goals that they set for themselves every week.  She prints out a list of all the student scores every week and assesses which students are not meeting the class standards.  The highlighted names are students whose scores are not up to what they need to be so she will have them do book club and have more time with me in the morning reading.  She also meets with each student individually every Friday to communicate with them about their assessment results and to discuss whether or not they met their goals for the week.  If their goals were met, they discuss what they did to meet their goals and set new and more challenging goals for the following week.   If the students did not meet their goals, they explained why they thought that happened to the teacher and then together the teacher and student came up with new goals to write down for the next week and talked about what they needed to do to reach their goals. Meeting with the teacher weekly to discuss goals and strategies gives the students a sense of responsibility and motivation because they need to monitor and assess themselves and report to the teacher. 

Instructional Setting:  The setting provides many supports for the students to meet their weekly goals.  They have a class library where they have a multitude of books of different levels, genres, and interests for the students to choose from.  They are given silent reading time in class every morning and opportunities to take AR tests throughout the school day.  They have teacher support and written goals to refer back to throughout the week. 

Domain 2 - Word Analysis

Kimberly Taron
Domain 2: Word Analysis
Competency 7: Syllabic Analysis
2nd Grade

INSTRUCTION: This week, I observed the teacher working with the students on vocabulary.  The teacher had the students open up their vocabulary notebook, where they fill in each vocabulary word, the definition, a synonym, an antonym and in the last part, they break up the word by syllables.  They do this both visually and as a listening activity.  She has the students clap their hands as they say each syllable of the word together.  She then says, how many syllables are there in this word?  How many times did we clap?  Sometimes the students have to repeat the clapping sequence before answering.  This is a way to show students how to find syllables in words.  They then draw a line in the word to separate the syllables.  Throughout this process, she reminded the students of some of the rules when dealing with multisyllabic words.  For instance, the students were reminded that when two consonants are in the middle of the word, they are twins and they fight so they need to be separated.  Therefore, that is the spot where the syllables are separated.  This was a great trick to help the students remember this rule.  She also helped them pick out prefixes and suffixes to separate the syllables.  She was reviewing and reinforcing things they had already discussed as a class in a prior lesson while applying it to these vocabulary words.  She wrote along with the students on her own vocabulary sheet on the overhead projector, so the students could follow along while listening and could write at their own pace by looking back at her sheet.   

INSTRUCTIONAL SETTING:  The instructional setting provided some evidence of support for this lesson.  The teacher was writing on her own sheet to help the students follow along on the overhead.  This was visual support and helped the students follow along and see the words and syllable separations that the teacher was talking about. 

Domain 5 - Comprehension

Kimberly Taron
Domain 5: Comprehension
Competency 14:  Instruction and Assessment-Understanding and Analyzing Narrative/Literary Texts
Grade Level: 2nd Grade
           

Story Map for "Sheila Ray the Brave"

INSTRUCTION:   I observed the teacher teaching her second graders "Instruction in the Elements of Story Grammar" including teaching literary genres and utilizing story maps to recall specific details.  This is part of Competency 14, Domain 5 - Comprehension: Instruction and Assessment-Understanding and Analyzing Narrative texts. First, the teacher read the students a story called Sheila Ray the Brave.   This story was part of a series that the students had been reading in their class with the teacher.  She read the story slowly and let the students look at the pictures.  Her reading pace was a form of scaffolding that aided her ELs in the room time to take in what she was reading. Seeing the illustrations while she read was a support for many of the students to help them follow along.  When she was finished reading, the class discussed the book for a few minutes.  They discussed the characters and what happened in the story. 
Then, each student was given a story map which had a spot to fill in the characters, setting, problem, and solution (see photo on right).   This story map visually provided the structure to work from when further discussing the story as a class.  The teacher provided support in this lesson by first reviewing the meaning of each of the elements of the story.  She asked the students, "Who can tell me what the setting would be for a story?" and the students would respond that it is where and when the story took place (this was also posted on a poster in the room).  This way everyone was on track and knew what they were looking for, and they were able to move on getting to the answers together.  The class-with help from the teacher on the overhead projector-filled in each of the elements on the story map by discussing and coming up with the answers for each together.  This story map is an way of organizing the information for students and is a great supportive material for the visual learners in the class.  This map provided an overall visual for the students so they could see the connections between the different components of the story, which is also a big help for struggling readers.


INSTRUCTIONAL SETTING:   

The instructional setting I observed provided supports for the learning in terms of comprehension.  The story map was a supportive document that provided visual organization for the students.  There was poster with the definitions of the different elements of the story that students could refer to when discussing each element of Sheila Ray the Brave with the teacher and deciding what to put into their story map.