Taking a closer look at Text Features

 This week in my classroom we are studying money. When we teach kindergarten students new things they are so excited! Books are a great way to introduce new concepts, even in math, science and history. 

For my diverse learners there are many different types of texts about money to choose from. This first text I found, Follow the Money! is a very fun story about the adventure that a coin has during one day. I think that an ELL student would love the pictures and plot of the story. I think that they might have a hard time with the fast pace of the story. This coin in on the move and he gets traded between many different merchants, store owners and even put into a laundry machine. I decided to save this text until the end of the unit. 

   This text is a non-fiction text about money. It is a much different approach to teaching about coins. It shows each coin on the page and tells about the details of the different coins. It has big pictures and shows the details of the coins in the pictures. It also shows kids and adults holding the money. 









This is an example of a page from the text, Sorting Money. I think that this will be a great text to introduce students to the different types of money. It will help to front-load students with all of the information through out the unit. There is a lot of difficult vocabulary in this text, but we can go back and talk about each coin in detail during the unit. 

 This book will be a fun story to read at the end of our unit. I think that I can even make a game or center to show all of the different places that quarter visits. The students will have so much fun re-telling the story. 

Blogging Reflection

Keeping this blog throughout this course has been an invaluable learning experience. I have always considered blogging to be a great outlet and a wonderful way to let your voice shine. I am so glad that this course as given me the opportunity to try blogging. I have decided that I would like to continue blogging beyond this course. I would like to transform my blog to become a place for my parents, peers and families to visit in order to learn more about the things that are happening in my classroom. I try to be a voice for my diverse students who face so many challenges during their kindergarten year. I feel as though a blog would be a great way to bridge the connection between home and school.

Sheltered Lesson

After watching a series of videos about comprehension sheltered lessons for ELL students, I have a few take aways for my own classroom of diverse learners. It is always great to be exposed to best practices in the field for different types of learners because what is good for one student could be beneficial to another (for different reasons). 

1. Expose students to difficult vocabulary prior to reading. A great way of doing this is by taking photos of the vocabulary and making poster sheets for the students to look at. I liked this idea because one photo of a park may not look like a park your student has been to, but if you find 3-4 pictures of different parks it might really help them to understand the word. 

2. Give clear and specific directions to students. Have them written and also show students what you want them to do. This is the sheltering of the lesson, where you are leaving little room for confusion or error for your students. You can also have students repeat the directions to each other. 

3. I loved the idea of having students stop to share their own ideas, traditions and opinions. This helps to build connections in the middle of a story. The teacher in the video made a list of these ideas. I think at the Kindergarten level you could have parents send in a list or picture of a tradition that they have helped students with prior to reading a story about a holiday. 

I am looking forward to bringing these ideas to the diverse learners in my own classroom! I hope you find them helpful!

Comparing Running Records

This past week I compared running records that I took from two different ELL students. I was analyzing their miscues for meaning, syntax and visual cues. I was looking for trends in each individual student's running record as well as trends between the two students' records.

I choose to compare students that were at a similar reading level and I found that their miscue's were reflective of their habits and not necessarily their native languages. For example student A has a habit of inputting words when she doesn't know a word. On the other hand, student B has the habit of skipping the word when she doesn't know it. Both of these are traits of low level readers who need more clear word attack strategies.

I feel as though both of these students could be coached together in order to build a toolbox of strategies that they can go to when they arrive at an unknown word. Some students struggle in reading because of their native language but many of the mistakes that exhibit are similar to other readers at similar levels. We need to continue to expose them to strategies and skills that will get them to the next level.

Learning vs. Acquisition

This is a topic that I have posted about previously, stating that in my classroom I strive to have my students write through process writing or an acquisition of skills in writing. I feel as though students who are given an explicit task such as exercises or drills are just trying to learn a new skill. For example; look up words in the dictionary to write definitions, read in round-robin fashion or listing vocabulary words. Students at the high school or college level are often given these types of tasks. 

In my classroom I try to use acquisition tasks such as; making a Venn diagram to compare two stories, identify words on a big book page that start with the same sound, or write rhyming poetry and then discuss different spellings for the same sound. By doing activities such as these my students are learning and practicing skills but they are embedded in fun, engaging and entertaining activities. They often are learning and acquiring new skills without even realizing. 

These are both of the ways that a child or an adult can develop a second language skills as well. They could emerge themselves in acquisition activities such as traveling abroad, visiting a restaurant or playing a game. The other option is the learning approach where you complete drills or task based activities to learn the skills you need to speak the language. I know what I would choose if I needed to learn a second language, but I suppose everyone learns in different ways! 


Freeman, D., and Y. Freeman. Essential linguistics: What you need to know to teach: reading, ESL, spelling, phonics, grammar. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Making Meaning in Difficult Situations

I recently went to one of my favorite websites and found that I had pressed a button to translate it to another language. I was caught very off guard and wasn't immediately sure how to change it back. I realized how our student's must feel when looking at a difficult piece of text. I decided to use my context clues to help me navigate the webpage. The visuals were more helpful than ever before! I was using those clues to help me navigate around the webpage; just like our students must use the visual clues in our classroom to help them navigate through our instruction!

I found that there was very little I could comprehend without support. I needed a strategy to help me. I decided to search some of the words online to try to translate them! That was a big help! I also asked a friend who was working near by to see if they knew the meaning of any of the words in the heading. She was able to help a little. Using a friend and an online resource were both helpful and enabled me to find what I needed to translate the webpage.

Being put into this situation, although frustrating, was inspiring because it allowed me to step back into the role of a pre-reader. To feel their frustration and angst will help me to be more patient with my students in the future.

Diversity in the Three Little Pigs

In kindergarten this week we are learning about the Three Little Pigs. I love reading this text, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, by Jon Scieszka. It is so fun for them to hear about the story from a different perspective. It is always fun to read it and then have them discuss whose side of the story they believe. It really helps to give them the power to make their own decisions about their reading. 

When thinking about our students and their different backgrounds, there are often so many different ways to tell a story. No one way is the best way or the most traditional way to our 21st century students. 

Are your students talking more then you?

In my readings for my graduate school class this week I read about something called the "two thirds" rule (Edwards and Mercer 1987). This refers to the fact that the teacher is taking up far more of the talking time in the average classroom then the students are. Most of the time, or 2/3 of the time, the teacher is lecturing or asking questions. A classroom program that supports more diverse learners would create more opportunities for varied and organic interaction patterns to occur (Gibbons 2002).

Therefore my New Years Resolution in my classroom is to turn the tables! I hope to have my students talking two thirds of the time and to limit myself to only taking up one third of the talking time. I hope that I can encourage my group of diverse learners to be working and talking more then me!

Writing in a Kindergarten Classroom

In my classroom there is a acquisition perspective to the writing process ( Freeman 2004). What this means is that students will produce writing as they are developing the skills needed to write. The teacher is constantly creating authentic conditions for students to express themselves through writing and classmates as well as the teach as helping students to correct their writing. The teacher gives mini-lessons on all areas of writing and help students to keep focused on the content of what they are writing, not just the form (Freeman 2004).
In my experience this style of teaching writing leads students to be creative with their writing and not limit their ideas because of their ability to write or spell a word. It also leads to a lot of sharing and group work which is very fun for young students. Kindergarteners, first graders as well as second graders are so eager to share their work with peers, parents or teachers.

Starting the New Year

To start the year off our staff had a number of professional development sessions to get our New Year off on the right foot. I was able to have some powerful conversations with a few of my lower elementary teammates about their teaching philosophies. It was interesting to learn more about our different approaches to planning, project-based units and assessments in our classrooms. 

Another kindergarten teacher and I were able to have a great discussion about our use of our literacy block and how we reach all of our learners. We discussed some of the changes that we are making at the start of the New Year to make sure we are accommodating all of our students. We are both going to adapt our Daily 5 model in order to make it a little more kindergarten friendly. We are going to practice read to self and read to someone in a whole group setting in order to build stamina with these difficult tasks. We also talked about different ways to have the students practice these activities. Then we thought we could build in some different choice centers during the daily 5 block that they would be really excited about. 

It was so nice to have the time to collaborate with my teammates. It makes me feel ready to start the New Year off on the right foot! 

Introduction

This is a blog which I will be posting reflections from my teaching and work with diverse learners. I appreciate any comments and feedback!