Reading and literacy workstations
(Daily 5 rotation) takes place from 10:15-11:40 every day. Then, after lunch a
story is read by one of the students for ten minutes a day. Afterwards, RTI and
phonemic awareness are practiced from 12:30-1:10. At 1:40, writing takes place
and that lasts for 25 minutes. I think it is a healthy balance of literacy and
the children seem to be able to pay attention for the entirety of each lesson.
Washington’s literacy instruction
encompasses fluency, accuracy, comprehension, and vocabulary awareness. Their Daily
5 rotations are, “read to self”, “read to others”, “listen to reading”, “writing”,
and “word work”. During their phonemic awareness lessons, they use the parts of
the arms to “chop” words up by their sounds. This helps the students spell the
words. I was able to watch students come up to the board to spell out the words
after chopping them and most of the students were able to spell the words
correctly. I was able to see how effective this strategy was for this specific
group of students. I haven’t seen much writing practice in the classroom yet
other than spelling smaller words but I look forward to seeing it. I know that
the students write a few sentences after a lesson to reflect upon what they
learned.
During literacy instruction, my
teacher asks guiding questions such as, “What do you see in the pictures?” and “Why
do you think ___ happened?” She also
goes over vocabulary words from previous readings as well as talks about the vocabulary
in the literacy piece that they are about to read from. My CT uses a lot of
summarizing from previous stories when the lessons interconnect. Prior to
reading, she focuses students’ attention and calms them down so they can pay
attention during the reading. I was really impressed to see how well the
students were able to remember what they had previously learned. For instance,
they remembered facts about George Washington’s upbringing from days prior that
they had read in a story.
Students in Miss Killian’s classroom
are really good at comprehending texts and literacy pieces. She will ask the
students questions about previous texts and they will be able to summarize everything
that they learned from days before. The students love actively participating in
literacy activities and they are more than willing to raise their hands to
share their thoughts and findings. I hope that my future students will be just
as eager to share their thoughts as my clinical students are.
I think that the students have a
great deal of passion for literacy activities. You can tell they really enjoy
their literacy throughout the day. I enjoy watching the students learn literacy
because they are so excited to partake in the activities. I think their
instruction is varied and it is effective for the students. I definitely think
their literacy practices are developmentally appropriate. I love seeing
students raise their hands to participate. There have been a few times were the
readings were targeted for the teacher to read due to its difficulty, but
students were more than willing to try and read the passages. Some students
were successful in reading the challenging passage and it was really fulfilling
to be able to experience that. When I have my own classroom, I will definitely
make sure to encourage students to participate in skillsets that they may not
feel 100% confident with, but to try their best. This is a very important
message for me to drive home to my students.
At my last clinical site, I got to
experience Daily 5 reading rotations just the same as I have experienced at
Washington. The only difference is that computers were a part of the Daily 5
rotation last semester and computers are not part of the Daily 5 rotation at
Washington. The guided reading was done in small and large groups throughout the
day in LaSalle, whereas the reading instruction at Washington is mostly large
group from what I have seen. There is a reading interventionist that works with
four children every day in small groups and individually at Washington. I recall
learning about Daily 5 a lot last year in Dr. Sanden’s class. That was
something that we acknowledged would be a big part of school’s curriculums in
the coming years and it is interesting to see it already being put in place. I also
see a lot of scaffolding with reading in my clinical setting. If a student is
having a hard time reading or spelling something, my CT will “chop-it” or break
it up for the student and then the student will do it independently afterwards.
I will be able to use the knowledge
that I receive from the classroom, my clinical site, and my CT to better shape how
I will use literacy in my classroom. It is nice to see literacy in a classroom
because you can see firsthand what works best and what I think was most
effective with connecting to the students. I also look forward to seeing more
literacy practices in my student teaching classroom in San Antonio. I think it’ll
be interesting to compare the two different states to one another and see what practices
are similar and what are different. From there, I can have an even vast knowledge
of what practices are successful and use that in my professional teaching field.
Overall, I think
my literacy experience has been successful thus far. I look forward to seeing
more practices of it in my future. I hope I get to see some of the interactive read-alouds
that we discussed so heavily in Dr. Sanden’s class. A lot of the literacy
lessons we learned in Dr. Sanden’s class were fun and educational. I was able to
see a lot of retelling these past two weeks and I really enjoyed seeing
something firsthand after we have talked about it for several weeks in Dr.
Husband’s class. I like how Washington uses the idea of “chopping” a word up by
phonetic sounds. This helps them spell the words and provides a great
foundation for the beginning concepts of spelling and understanding how certain
sounds can make a word.
Word Work
Daily 5 Rotation Schedule
Run two 15 minute sessions during this time. Set timer for
rotation.
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Read to Self
Read to Others
Listen to Reading
Writing
I really liked seeing the visual of the Daily 5 schedule. I
think it is helpful for students and teachers to have a visual reference in
order to gauge their attention and stay on track with the task at hand. Daily 5
is a fun way to engage students in literacy practices. They really seem to
enjoy their literacy blocks each day.
