Classroom Connection #1
Interview/Assess two to three children on how they select reading books at school/home. (May be conducted in a one-on-one or small group format)
- The Context: I chose to do my first classroom connection on February 22nd in my 3rd grade class at my field placement this semester. I talked to two different students during their Daily Five time. I talked to each student individually for five to ten minutes each.
- A Summary Statement: The students I chose to talked to were all on different levels are reading. Each student was from a different reading group that my host teacher assigned to them. One student was from the lowest level and the one student was from the high level group.
- A Description: For this activity I started by sitting and having the students read aloud a few pages in their “read to self books”. I listened to them while I also read along to myself. After I set and listened to them read for a few minutes I stopped them and let them tell me about the book. Student A said that he really liked that book that he was reading. I asked him why and he said because “it is a book series that I love”. Then I asked him why he picked out this book, he said “my friend showed me these books because he knows we both like the same books”. Next I set with student B and had her read the book she was reading to me. After a few pages I stopped her and asked why she chose to read this book or why did she pick it out? She said “ Oh Mrs. Smith* gave me three books to choose from I picked this one because I liked the cover”. This student was from the low level reading group and doesn’t seem to like reading that much. Student A was from the high level group and enjoys reading a lot.
- An Analysis: The students in this activity were excited to work with me and seemed ready to answer my questions. I hope after discussing with them about how they choose their books, they will think about that more often and want to pick books that are right for them.
- An Analysis of Your Teaching/Involvement: I liked doing this activity with the students. As a kid I always loved to read and my favorite thing to do was go to the library and pick out a new book. So it was exciting for me to see if my students were like me as a kid. If I were to do this a again I think I would talk with the students longer about their book choices. After I asked them the question we didn’t go any further than that.
Classroom Connection #2
Take observation notes on one child’s metacognition skills through a think aloud design.
- The Context: I did this activity in my 3rd grade field placement host classroom on March 15th. I picked one student from class who was in the “on grade level” reading group and sat with her for 10-15 minutes.
- A Summary Statement: During my time sitting and working with this student I wanted to see how she read, if she catches any mistakes she made and other aspects of her metacognition. I also wanted to see what her skills were like since she is in the “on grade level” reading group.
- A Description: For this most part of this activity I set with Student A and watched/listened to her read. During this time I read along with her and took notes on my iPad. As I listened to her read I watched for any times that she would stop and self correct, when she did this I would take a note of what word she was on. During this activity I also watched to see if she ever asked for help with a word or if she tried to figure them out on her own. Student A never asked for help she mostly sounded the words out or took a guess. I also took notes on the all the words she miss read, had trouble with or didn’t know so that I could see if there was a pattern in those type of words.
- An Analysis: After sitting and listening to Student A read I noticed that she is very good at self-correcting. She knows when she makes a mistakes and she stops to try and fix it. There were many times she caught herself right as she was saying the word wrong, so she would fix it quickly. Then there were a few times when she would read the whole sentence and realized it didn’t make sense so she would go back and fix where she went wrong.
- An Analysis of Your Teaching/Involvement: For this activity I believe that I did a good job listening, watching and taking notes while with Student A. My notes are clear and I can understand what they mean. If I were to do this activity again I would want to talk more with the student about her metacognition. I never stopped and asked her why she did something or how she knew she miss said a word. I think if I were to do this than I would get more out of this activity and the student would also.
Classroom Connection #3
Create and share a Brown Bag Book Club bag with a child
- The Context: For this activity I did this with my two brothers, they are in 3rd and 4th grade. I did this while home for Easter weekend, I thought this would be a great time to do a brown bag book club.
- A Summary Statement: I chose to do this activity with my brothers because I know that hey love to read and to look at new books. I also know the types of books my brothers read so I wanted to put books in the bag that they might not chose normally.
- A Description: Before leaving to go home for break I stopped in the Reflector and Columbia Public Library to pick up some books for this activity, I tried to get a set a books that were a little or a lot different from each other. I also tried to look for books that I knew my brothers hadn’t read or wouldn’t pick up on their own. When doing this activity I had the books in a bag that a decorated and set down with my brothers in their room. I told them to look through the bag and find a book that they would like to read. One of them chose “Nelson Mandela” by Kadir Nelson and the other chose “Memoir of a Goldfish” by Devin Scillian. These book choses didn’t surprise me at all. I had a feeling that these two books would be the first chosen. They instantly started reading them. When they were done they switched books and read the other one.
- An Analysis: My brothers are always excited to do activities with me that are “from college”, they think it is so cool. So they were ready to do this activity and were very involved in it. I believe seeing all the different books I brought and realizing that they liked all of them, can help they branch out their own book chose. I hope that after this they will look a different kinds of books in the library and pick books that they wouldn’t normally choose.
- An Analysis of Your Teaching/Involvement: I was excited to do this activity because throughout the semester I came across so many amazing new books that I was ready to share. It was hard to pick what books I wanted in the bag because there were so many to choose from, but I narrowed it down to only a few. I think this activity helped me learn what kind of books I want in my classroom and that students enjoy this activity. I would like to do this activity again in future.