Professional Documents
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Student Overview
Sarah is a third grade student attending a Title One elementary school. Last year,
she was dual identified as ELL and Special Education. She struggles daily with
language, writing and reading. Currently, Sarah receives small group reading support in
the special education classroom, small group reading, ELL support, and LLI (Leveled
Literacy Intervention). Sarah reads at a 1.8 level. Despite her challenges, Sarah has a
lot of great strengths that she contributes daily to her education. Sarah is excellent at
decoding, which allows her to have a high accuracy percentage during fluency
assessments. Also, when the text is read to her, Sarah can comprehend on grade level.
According to the student interest interview, Sarah really likes to do art. Her favorite
types of book are ones about animals. When Sarah is not at school, she enjoys being
Lessons
The four lessons completed with Sarah focused on language expression and the
with. The books chosen for the lessons were non-fiction to help build Sarahs prior
knowledge.
Phonemic Awareness and Phonics For any multi-syllabic word in the text, students
are to count the syllables in the words. With single syllable words, students are to find
Vocabulary Key vocabulary words for the text and reinforced with visuals.
Fluency Books are read twice. First, the book is read together. Then, the student
Comprehension Series of questions are discussed with students. Student can verbally
respond.
Reflections
The resources I used the most for planning my lessons were, Literacy
Development with English Learners and Writing Between Languages: How English
Language Learners Make the Transition to Fluency. Also, I used articles from
during the lessons, which is what I did. It helped Sarah better understand the words
a word. Master phonemic awareness is essential for efficient reading and learning the
alphabet code of the English language (Helman, 2016, 144). Phonics cannot be busy
work. Often teachers have students copy random spelling words, but this is not
effective. Phonics work needs to be engaging and purposeful, which can be done with
hands on activities like word sorts, games, students using their bodies and voices, as
well as interactions with fellow students (Helman, 2016, p. 173). Though vocabulary is a
key part in balanced literacy, you can never have too much emphasis on vocabulary
vocabulary instruction. This will also help make phonics more meaningful and
Vocabulary
The question often asked by teachers regarding vocabulary instruction is, What
words do I choose to teach? Teachers need to find a happy median of words that are
essential to the text, words that will increase academic language and words students
will see elsewhere (Silverman & et al., 2016, p. 238). The vocabulary instruction chapter
offered a lot of great ideas and suggestions to help students retain vocabulary. But what
stands out is using multiple modalities for instruction. This applies to all literacy content
areas. Teachers can take the following steps when teaching new vocabulary words: 1.
Say the word and have students say it back. 2. Show the word and discuss word
patterns and sounds. 3. Provide an easy to understand definition of the word. 4. Show
actions and pictures of the word. 5. Provide examples of the words across the content
areas.
Fluency
The lesson plans focused on FOOR, Fluency-Oriented Oral Reading, for fluency
instruction. With this method, students read a single type of text over the course of the
week. Every day, there is a new way of reading the text. Whether it be chorale reading,
echo reading, partner reading and independent reading (Montero & Kuhn, 2016, p. 199
200). The goal of repeated reading is to increase the speed of word recognition and
make decoding of the words automatic, thus enabling the students to concentrate on
the meaning of the text (Rubin, 2016). Being able to read fluently is an essential skill to
help kids build vocabulary, comprehension and interest in books (Montero & Kuhn,
2016, p. 201).
Comprehension
Comprehension is a very difficult task for students, especially when they cannot
accurately and fluently read the text. With comprehension, it is essential to do a think
own (Brock & et al, 2016, p. 226). Also, it is essential to provide tools and resources to
assist with comprehension. In one article, they recommended using summary frames as
a method to increase comprehension (Honnert & Bozan, 2005). The final suggestion is
Like comprehension, learning to write is a hard skill to learn and teach. What
resonated was the Valdes Model for writing. This model requires to start instruction with
what students know. To enhance writing development, we need to start from what
students can do. We must not only legitimize any transition in their development but
also provide support and guidance as they hone their writing skills at each transitional
stage (Fu, 2009). In the Fu text, it stressed that it is important for students to write in
their native language first before writing in English. I thought this was very interesting,
but also appropriate. At the elementary level, not many students come in as a fluent
writer in their native language since they are so young (Fu, 2009).
References
Fu, D. (2009). Writing Between Languages: How English Language Learners Make the
Honnert, A. M., & Bozan, S. E. (2005). Summary Frames: Language Acquisition for
Special Education and ELL Students. Science Activities: Classroom Projects and
Rubin, D. I. (2016). Growth in Oral Reading Fluency of Spanish ELL Students With