Week 3 - Assignment 1

Shared Reading:

·         Ms. Perez calls the students together to one corner of the classroom and has them all read a poem out loud together. This helps engage students of all levels because each child according to their level tries to read the poem together with the class.

·          Ms. Perez always includes some sort of phonics lesson into the poem they read. After reading a poem about Hot Dogs, she focused on the letter “o” sound and had the children think of more words that end in “ot”.

Guided Reading:

• ·         Ms. Perez has a few students that are on similar reading levels read the same book together. She goes around to listen them read and pronounce each word out loud properly.
• ·          Students are encouraged to not give up when they aren’t sure what a word says, but to instead think about what each sound letter makes and break up the sounds until they can figure out what the word is.
• ·         When students verbalize their strategy in how they figured out what a word says, it helps the idea really go into their head so that they’ll hopefully remember to do the same next time they have a similar problem. (ie - sounding out letters in a word instead of giving up)
• ·         I also noticed that Ms. Perez doesn’t let her students get frustrated or give up by making sure to avoid situations that will be too difficult for her students to accomplish. For example she made sure to cover a hard word in each of the children’s book in advance, and then had them guess what the word would be. Once they each took a guess she let them take a peek at the first letter of the word to give them a hint and encourage them.

Differentiated Instruction:

•       Ms. Perez divides her classroom into different stations with different reading activities. Students have their name written by the station they are to work at, according to the child’s reading level.  Each station caters to the student’s level so that they can gain more in their reading skills.
• ·         Students that are on a much higher reading level than most first graders were given an activity according to their capabilities. Ms. Perez  gave them a high level book about spiders, and students were taught how to take short notes on what they read. Ms. Perez guided them and helped them make their own mini book from the notes they had written after reading the book. She also helped them divide their notes by sections of what it’s about.
• ·         After reading a poem about fish that the students really enjoyed, Ms. Perez gave them a chance to add a line to the poem and draw a picture about. This is how Ms. Perez connects both reading and writing in her classroom.

Assessment:

• ·         Ms. Perez has created her own very clear assessment chart to see what level of reading each child is on. On her chart she writes each child’s name, on the other side she lists many names of level reader books, in order of their level of difficulty. She uses this chart in the beginning of the year and several times throughout the year to see if the child can read the books that are on the normal grade 1 level, to assess their level, and see if they are progressing in their reading skills.
• ·         In my own classroom I think I would use a similar assessment chart as Ms. Perez uses because I feel it is extremely clear and can really give the teacher an understanding of the child’s reading skills and level.

I

 I really enjoyed watching Ms. Perez interact with her students. She has a expectation from them that they each become the best readers they can be, no matter what level. I really feel she wants whats best for her students and it's obvious that she will do anything in her capabilities to help them become great readers.