Tales from the Fourth Grade: For the Love of Literature

I went into the school year expecting great things from my new set of fourth graders. As all teachers will freely admit to, we spend time during the year regaling our coworkers with stories of our students, and so I already had a favorable impression of my incoming class from tidbits I had acquired. I …

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Fieldwork Reflection #4 With Picture!

Dates: Monday, April 22, Wednesday, April 24, and Friday, April 26, 2013 Site: St. Paul Lutheran School, All day kindergarten Cooperating Teacher: Mrs. Novak Total hours together: 4 hours 5 mins     Total for EDU344: 13 hrs 45 mins out of 20 hrs For Monday, I performed the second mini-lesson that I had devised for …

Fieldwork Reflection #3

Dates: Wednesday, April 17 and Friday, April 19, 2013 Site: St. Paul Lutheran School, All day kindergarten Cooperating Teacher: Mrs. Novak Total hours together: 3 hours 5 mins      Total for EDU344: 9 hrs 40 mins out of 20 hours On Wednesday, I practiced a Miscue Analysis/IRI on Luc. I used copies from the Qualitative Reading Analysis (5th ed.)  book from …

Assessing and Correcting Reading and Writing Difficulties: Chapter Eleven

Given the fact that Chapter Eleven is over forty pages long, it is safe to surmise that comprehension is one of the most important factors in reading. According to Gunning, comprehension requires at least five basic processing abilities: activating schema, “understanding key details at a literal level, integrating text across sentences and paragraphs, making inferences, …

Assessing and Correcting Reading and Writing Difficulties: Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine continues looking at the decoding of language, this time focusing on reading multisyllabic words. There are two approaches to teaching syllabic analysis: the rules approach and the pattern approach, and both techniques can be used in conjunction with the pronounceable word-part and analogy strategies that were discussed in the previous chapter. In the rules …

Assessing and Correcting Reading and Writing Difficulties: Chapter Eight

In the span of 78 pages, Gunning explains the appropriate strategies for teaching phonics, high-frequency words (also known as sight words for our ability to recognize them on sight), and fluency to struggling readers. Chapter eight begins with methods for teaching children the letters of the alphabet, starting with consonants, then working with short vowels, …

Fieldwork Reflection #1 With Picture!

Dates: Monday, March 18, Wednesday, March 20, and Friday, March 22, 2013 Site: St. Paul Lutheran School, All day kindergarten Cooperating Teacher: Mrs. Novak Total hours together: 3 hours Total for EDU344: 4 hrs 30 mins out of 20 hours I began my fieldwork at St Paul’s on a Monday in Mrs. Novak’s all-day kindergarten …

Assessing and Correcting Reading and Writing Difficulties: Chapter Seven

Chapter seven was a reiteration of what I learned last year in my Teaching Reading course. This is not to say I was annoyed at the repetition. On the contrary, I find it enlightening that so many of the same concepts were mentioned in both textbooks, because this proves just how important and invaluable these …

Assessing and Correcting Reading and Writing Difficulties: Chapter Six

In chapter six, Gunning spends more time discussing reading assessments, explaining how teachers need to not only look at how a student does on reading assessments like an IRI, but also to take into account the cognitive, school and home factors of the child. Gunning posits, “In order to get a fuller understanding of the …

Assessing and Correcting Reading and Writing Difficulties: Chapter Five

For reasons unknown to me, I found it difficult to come up with a topic to write about, which seems particularly odd since anyone who knows me realizes I am never at a loss for words. That being said, the one item that stuck out to me was the tiny blurb on handwriting, which is …