Your Name: Lauren Brown

Inquiry Two, Part A:

Discuss Your Target Area and ‘Core Practice’ for Guided Lead Teaching

Talk with your MT about your idea, and use the information you gained from Inquiry One to respond to the following guiding questions listed below.  Email your responses to your instructor before our Week 4 class (September 26) AND post them on your book club blog:

1.     Describe your target area for guided lead teaching.

Reading and Writing

Reading Street will be used and I will be starting with Unit 2 Week 2; in fluency we will focus on expression, will work on oral vocabulary/concept development, and in text comprehension we will work on drawing conclusions through story structure and questioning.

For writing, my MT follows Lucy Calkins curriculum and will be following their writing workshop; primarily prompts followed by strategic writing format to follow (Narrative, opinion, and informational).

2.     Approximately how much time per day is allotted for your instruction in this area?

Currently, we allow 1.5 to 1.75 hours a day for reading and writing (sometimes even more)

3.     Which Common Core State Standard(s) will you work toward?

4.RL.4, 4.RL.7, 4.RIT.1, 4.RFS.3,  4.RFS.4, 4.W.1, 4.W.3, 4.W.5,  4.W.8, 4.W.10, 4.SL.4,

4.     How will teaching in this target area provide opportunities for students to learn important content and/or skills that relate to their lives?  In what ways does this learning include learning literacy, learning about literacy, and/or learning through literacy?

Through teaching the described target areas, my students will become proficient in comprehension and the appropriate strategies to apply. Writing will become more fluent in practice through prompts and peer review and conversations.

5.     What types of classroom talk take place within this target area? To what extent is the talk teacher-led, student-led, or focused on higher-level thinking? What norms for interaction would you like to build within your classroom as you teach in this target area (e.g., see ideas in Chapter 6 of Strategies that Work, the Berne & Clark 2008 article, or draw from some of the readings done in TE 402 on classroom talk)?

Currently, in my classroom it is both teacher-led and student-led at times. During reading time, my MT relies a lot on the curriculum to guide his teaching and will often do worksheets related and/or use the computer to go over information instead of himself prompting thoughts and conversation. Students are only given a short time to discuss connections and thoughts with the given vocabulary words through whole class discussion and small group work. From what I have observed thus far, the current teaching style for reading is teaching for the weekly Reading Street test. By this I mean it is the same weekly routine of pre spelling test, vocabulary words/work, the big story, review, and then test. Therefore, not much higher level thinking is occurring and as a result students are not being challenged enough to create a substantial impact in their literacy learning.

I would like to create some norms for interaction within my classroom as I teach. For example, from this week’s reading I really liked the emphasis on small group work and discussion to prompt literacy learning. Small group work, in my opinion, is a way to reach both my introvert and extrovert students in their learning styles. Modeling and group norms would need to be dealt with before I had my students partake in any activities that I plan for them.

6.     Which ‘core practice’ do you want to work on developing/improving as you teach in this target area (refer to document “Resources for Developing Core Practices”)? How will focusing on this core practice contribute to your own professional learning?

Reading comprehension/strategy instruction; and writing instruction

In reading focus on interactive read aloud; and in writing focus on conferences

Focusing on these target areas and core practices will contribute to my own professional learning because I will be implementing new norms in our weekly routine that will further my learning and understanding of the curriculum and of my students. Interactive read aloud will allow me to model strategic thinking for comprehension and promote a more engaging discussion of text. Conferences will allow me to individually assess and motivate students in their writing.

7.     What resources within the community, neighborhood, school district, school or classroom do you have to work with in this target area?

In my classroom, I am able to use a computer, elmo, and smartboard to help technologically aid me in my literacy teaching. The school/school district has the Reading Street curriculum in place and assessments/lessons to follow. Within the community there is the local library that I am able to access; as well as, my own school library and librarian that could be of help in planning lessons.

8.     What additional resources do you need to obtain?

I currently do not need additional resources; but, I could search for higher level tasks/thinking tasks for my students to do for practice when students finish their assigned work during work time.

9.     How will you pre-assess your students in your target area?

I will use my students past weekly tests and writing samples to pre-assess my students.

10.    What else will you need to find out about all students in your class to help you develop lesson plans for your Guided Lead Teaching?

I would like to find out which of my students like to read/write in their spare time. I would also like to know which of my students struggle in fluency, comprehension, decoding, ect..

11.    What else do you need/want to learn about the ‘core practice’ to support your planning and teaching?

It seems as if the core practices overlap; I need to learn how to make my lessons be interconnected as well.

12.    What concerns, if any, do you have about planning and teaching your unit?

I do have some concerns about planning/teaching my unit plan. One concern is keeping the routine of my MT while still implementing some of my own ideas and plans without overwhelming my students. Another concern is knowing the content well enough to teach effectively (which will take a lot of prepping and planning on my part).