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Instructional Inquiry 1 st Grade General Education Classroom Janey Barrett
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Page 1: Janey Barrett Instructional Inquiry

Instructional Inquiry 1st Grade General Education Classroom

Janey Barrett

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Literacy Instruction Methods“Mrs. Jones” uses both The Daily Five and the CAFÉ Menu in

her classroom for literacy instruction, which is used throughout the school community.

With the help of the Literacy Coaches within her school, she also uses a program called “Visualizing and Verbalizing” to help her first grade students develop comprehension and higher order thinking skills.

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Materials

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BooksAt this point in the year, Mrs. Jones is using mainly fiction books for her read alouds and mini lessons.

On the back wall of the classroom there are three rows of shelves that serve as the class library.

Books are sorted into marked baskets. Some of the baskets are are marked with certain authors, certain types of books (books about animals), or by book series (Clifford the Big Red Dog books).

Other baskets are marked with a letter that corresponds with student reading levels. These

books are available for students to pick “Good Fit Books” from for their reading boxes and book

bags.

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Charts and Displays• Anchor charts for Daily 5

• CAFÉ Menu

• Word Wall

• Class created list of common words for September and October

• Posters reminding students of strategies to use when they come to a word they do not know

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Other Materials• Writing Folder- Students can

get one of these and use as a divider to create their own writing space. Inside there is

a list of common words, examples of punctuation and some topic ideas for

Work on Writing

• Listen to reading- CD’s, players with headpones,

computers

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Assessments

• Student Observation/ Listening to students read

• Conversation with students about books and strategies

• Parent input from nightly reading • DRA assessments- must be completed three

times a year, other times are as teachers sees fit

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GroupingRead to Someone

- Students are able to pick their own partners

Small Group Instruction- grouped by reading level (Leveled by Letters)

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Goals and Expectations

• Mrs. Jones wants everyone in her students to increase their independent and instructional reading level by at least two letters (reading level)

• She wants students to increase their reading stamina

• Her goal is for students to develop and use more strategies to help them improve their reading.

• She expects students to follow Daily 5 procedures

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Values

• Mrs. Jones strongly values student choice as she believes this leads to students finding more enjoyment in reading

• She finds great value in students reading not only in school, but at home with an adult in their life

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Home to School Literacy Connection

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One way that Mrs. Jones fosters a home-to-school literacy connection is through the book bags that students take home every night. Each day students visit the class library to choose a “Good fit book” to take home that night. Students read the book with parents or another adult that is at home. The adult they read with must then fill out a chart with the date, name of the book read, they must say if they thought the book was too easy, too hard or just right for their child. They can also write any other comments they may have about that night’s reading and then sign their name. By asking the parents/guardians to respond to the child’s reading, Mrs. Jones is getting a little more assurance that her students are reading at home and is also getting the adults at home involved in what their child is doing in the classroom.

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Another way that Mrs. Jones fosters a home-to-school literacy connection is by having mystery

guest readers come into the classroom on Fridays. These

guests are parents/grandparents of the students. They provide

some clues about themselves for Mrs. Jones to read so the

students can guess who the mystery reader is that day. The guest reader brings a book to read to the class at the end of

the day on Friday.

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Analysis of Texts Read

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Stellaluna• Mrs. Jones read this as a read

aloud/mini lesson over the course of the two days I was observing. She was introducing the “Retell Rope” strategy to help students retell a story. First she introduced how use the retell rope and then read the beginning of the story. On the second day Mrs. Jones began by having students tell what had happened so far in the story based on the elements on the retell rope (characters, setting, problem 1, problem 2). She then read the rest of the story and then had students retell the rest of the story.

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Stellaluna Continued

From what I observed, this was a good book choice for this purpose. The book had a few main characters for the students to identify and only one main setting. There were also 3 main problems throughout the book which was a good number because students could get used to using the Retell Rope by looking at it to remind them what needed to be in their retelling and that there could be more than one problem, but there were not so many problems that they could not remember them at the end. It also served the purpose of fitting into the what was going on around the students since it was close to Halloween and bats are usually associated with Halloween.

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This book was read by Mrs. Jones to her students as a read-aloud for enjoyment. She informed me that most of her read-aloud books in October have to do with some Halloween theme. The students were very entertained by the story about Clifford as a puppy going to the pumpkin patch. Afterwards, Mrs. Jones invited some of the students to share their own experiences of visiting a pumpkin patch or going on a hayride. This allowed for some nice text-to-self connections so that even though the read-aloud was for enjoyment, it was still encouraging some deeper thinking.

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This is another book that was done as a read-aloud for students to sit and enjoy. Students were again very

entertained by this book and were laughing out loud at some of the lines in the book as well as some of the

pictures. For that reason, this was a good book choice because it served the purpose of entertaining the

students.

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During the Daily 5 time I tried to observe some of the books that students were reading, as well as the books they were choosing for their book boxes and their take home book bags. Although I did not see what every student was reading, I did see many books, which consisted of a number of Dr. Suess books and Clifford, two students were reading an Arthur book and one student was reading a book about space.

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Dr. Suess books are great for emergent readers because of the text structure. The rhyming and repetition throughout the stories are examples of supportive text structures. Students also seem to enjoy them because of the silly stories and illustrations.

Arthur and Clifford books are most likely popular with some of the students because they watch the tv shows or movies and therefore find the books interesting.

I thought it was interesting to see a student, especially a first grader, choose a non-fiction text to read. This should be encouraged occasionally so that students are getting used to reading different types of text.

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All of the books that I observed students reading during Daily 5 were books chosen

by students. I was curious as to if there were problems with students choosing

books that were not really “Good Fit Books”. Mrs. Jones told me that at this point in the year she has a pretty good

idea of what is a “good fit” for each student and she also has a good idea of

the students who often try to choose easier or harder books. Therefore, she

does not check on the books students are reading everyday, but does evaluate their choices when she has individual meetings,

or if she notices the choice a student is reading is not a good one, she will review

with them what a “Good Fit Book” is.

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Analysis of Instructional Time Spent in…

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Whole GroupMrs. Jones generally has three whole group literacy times during the day. The first happens at the end of “Work on Writing” and the class simply comes together and she picks five student to share the writing they were working on.

In the middle of the day between special and lunch there is a 20 minute mini-lesson time which is generally used to introduce or re-teach a strategy to be added to the CAFÉ Menu. This mini-lesson is also sometimes for writing instruction.

At the beginning of their Daily 5 time there is another whole group mini-lesson which either reinforces the strategy from the middle of the day, or teaches a new one. This is also the time that the Literacy Coach will use to come in and teach something, like the Verbalizing and Visualizing.

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These whole group instruction times seem to be effective. They are only about 15-20 minutes long (except the sharing writing which is only about 5), helping to keep the focus of the young students throughout the entire lesson. It also helps to make them effective by having one in the middle of the day and then another whole group instruction time later in the day that can be used to reinforce the earlier lesson if needed.

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While observing this class, I was also able to see one of the reading teachers teach a lesson from the Visualizing and Verbalizing program. The teacher first talked to students about what it is important to describe, such as what is in the picture, the colors, the background etc.. She then turned to a random picture in the book that comes with the kit and had students describe it to her (through prompting) so that she could form the picture in her mind. The students seemed to really enjoy this and they did very well with it. It helped them to realize that when you are writing or telling a story, you need to include a lot of detail so that the reader can get a picture in their mind.

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Small Group

Mrs. Jones does have guided reading groups that are based on student reading levels. She meets with each group twice a week during one of the Daily 5 rotations. Mrs. Jones works with the students on reading, comprehending and answering questions about appropriate instructional level texts. She uses Fountas and Pinnell leveled readers for these instructional groups. These small group meetings are only 15 minutes long, which helps to keep students engaged during them.

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Individual• During Daily 5, Mrs. Jones has individual conferences with

students when she is not doing guided reading. Currently the conferences are just to talk to students about the books they are reading, but they will become more strategy directed as the year goes on.

• During Work on Writing Mrs. Jones tries to talk to a few different students each day about their writing.

• Other individual conferences are based on the need Mrs. Jones sees. If she has a student that is struggling with something, or needs to revisit how to pick a good fit book, she will have an individual lesson with them

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As is common with individual instruction, some students receive more in Mrs. Jones’ room than other students do. The students who seem to have a greater need have more one-on-one instruction than those students who excel at reading. This seems like a fair practice. There also seems to be a good amount of individual attention/instruction within the classroom.

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Considerations/Suggestions for Extending Literacy Program

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My first suggestion for Mrs. Jones would be to incorporate some more small group instruction into her literacy program. I think that the students would greatly benefit from more than just 30 minutes of small group instruction a week. However instead of having it be another guided reading group time, it would be more beneficial to have strategy groups in which students are all working on a certain strategy. Students could bring their own books to read while working on the strategy, which would also be another time that Mrs. Jones could check the good fit books that her students are choosing.

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Another suggestion I have for Mrs. Jones is to begin incorporating more non-fiction texts into her lessons and read alouds. It could be about one every other week, but it is important that students begin to see those types of texts as well as fiction. This will help to expand the student’s knowledge of books and help them to learn about the topics of the texts. She could connect them to science lessons they are doing, or to what is happening that month in the world.

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I think that it would also be helpful for Mrs. Jones’ students to begin connecting their writing to what they are reading in some way or to practice writing to a prompt. Currently their in their work on writing they are able to write about anything they want, which I do think should be the majority of their writing at this level. But I think that it would also be beneficial for them to occasionally write to prompts.

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Overall I think Mrs. Jones has a very strong literacy program within her classroom. I think that her home to school connection is wonderful, especially the guest reader part. I also believe that her workshop method that she has in her classroom works very well. There are just a few things that I suggested that I believe would make the literacy program even stronger.