TE842 - Strengthening my Reading Instruction
As part of this reading course we were asked to find parts of our reading instruction that were affirmed by our coursework and parts of our reading instruction that we questioned how to do better. Because of this course I continue to have my upper elementary students read with kindergarteners because I found many studies where this benefited all students involved. I also implemented a few student-led vocabulary practices into my class. This past year my students were responsible for the creation of a word wall as well as a homophone book. I find myself thinking of this work quite often as I make instructional decisions throughout the year.
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TE848 - Implementing Writing Partnerships
Writing workshop is one of my favorite times of the day in my classroom. I love conferring with kids and seeing them grow confidence in their writing abilities. I wanted my students to use their writing strengths to help others as well through writing partnerships. Through my own writing and my own writing partnerships I understood first hand how powerful partnerships can be to both the writer and the partner. I researched how to implement writing partnerships into writing workshop and how to get partnerships to support each other throughout the year. I came up with a year long plan for writing partnerships and found some natural stages partnerships go through.
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TE846 - Supporting struggling readers
Sometimes we have a student that is a puzzle for us. We try everything we know of to support that child's learning, but we don't see a sustainable difference. Through this course I added other strategies to my 'teacher bag of tricks' that I could mindfully use to support my most puzzling students. Through learning more about how struggling learners learn I feel more confident in my abilities to teach them in a way that they'll benefit from the most. In this case study I worked with one of my students to support their reading fluency and comprehension. I tried new strategies I hadn't used before but will use again.
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TE842 - Implementing Reading Partnerships
In this course I kept noticing that student talk was brought up in several studies we read. I made it a goal for myself to allow my students to talk more about their reading and to talk about their reading in a meaningful way. My research helped me build a partnership year-long timeline as well as how to get students talking at a deeper level though heavy teacher modeling.
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TE836 - Finding a place for classics
I have always had a bin for Newbery award winning books in my classroom library. Students would occasionally peruse that bin but few would read those books. I learned that my students are generally too young for the type of books that win the Newbery award. Because of this course I now showcase smaller award winning books at their reading level. Before this course I didn't really have a bin for classics but they were strewn within other bins of books. I made the decision to showcase classics at my students' reading levels and to have a separate section of my library for them. I learned that classics are important to introduce to children and to use in my reading instruction.
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