ELL Case Study

ELL Case Study

SOLOM Matrix

Writing Sample

The Blue Jay

DIBELS Assessment Report

DIBELS Assessment Report

QRI5 Report

QRI5 Assessment Report

Phrase Cueing Lesson

Technology and Education

After reading about educational technology and browsing several examples, it seems that the importance of technology in education is twofold: engagement and preparedness. Technology has great potential top engage students in the material to a degree that may have been otherwise impossible through traditional mediums. For example, many students dislike writing assignments. Technology like UDL book builder allows students to create and publish digital books that can include animations and audio. Many students who would otherwise be disinterested in writing may jump at the chance to publish their own UDL book.

Preparedness for the future is the second reason that technology is vital in the education field. When high school students graduate, they are entering a vastly different world than their parents entered upon graduating high schools. A vast majority of jobs use computers in some capacity. Thus, it is a necessity that students have experience using common technologies such as word processors and Excel. Furthermore, with the emergence of websites like YouTube, students with experience in video recording and editing have opportunities to create their own careers and become their own bosses. Due to the constantly changing and evolving nature of technology, it is more important than ever that teachers are knowledgeable and skilled with the most current technology in order to prepare their students for life after school.

UDL Book Builder Lesson Plan

Prezi: Using Technology to Support Literacy

Prezi: Using Technology to Support Literacy

Graphic Organizer Lessons

KWL LessonVenn Diagram
Main Idea Lesson

Week 10: Assignment #5

Writing About A Complex Text

QR15 & DIBELS

QR15: The QRI5 is an informal reading inventory that looks to show the conditions when a student can recognize words and comprehend a passage properly as well as the conditions when students cannot recognize words and comprehend a passage properly. 

DIBELS: DIBELS is a set of procedures used to assess students’ literacy skills from kindergarten through 6^th grade. As DIBELS is designed to be used regularly, thus, the assessments are typically only 1 minute long. 

Similarities: Both QR15 and DIBELS are designed to determine which students are having difficulty in their literacy development. Thus, there is crossover between the types of skills both assessments target such as reading fluency and comprehension as well as word recognition. Neither program is designed to be an intervention program.

Differences: The assessments in DIBELS are designed to take typically 1 minute to administer. QR15, on the other hand, tends to take at least 15 minutes to implement depending on what is being assessed. Also, DIBELS is a norm referenced assessments, meaning that there are benchmarks that DIBELs is looking for students to achieve by certain steps in their academic career. QR15 only compares students to themselves. For example, a 4^th grader who reads at a 2^nd grade level will be assessed at a 2^nd grade level rather than a 4^th grade level. Finally, DIBELS is only designed for k-6^th grade whereas the QR15 is designed for K-12^th grade. 

Implementation in the Classroom: Though DIBELS and QR15 are different, they can both be used in the classroom. DIBELS is designed to be quick. Teachers can use DIBELS to assess students on a regular basis to determine if they are on pace in regards to their literacy acquisition. Since the QR15 takes a bit longer to implement, it can be a great tool to use after using DIBELS to determine exactly where the problem areas lie for a student. For example, if a DIBELS assessment deems that a student is not reading fluently, a teacher could assess the student with the QR15 to determine at which reading level the student is currently at. With that knowledge, the teacher could assign the student with appropriate level texts that will not bore or frustrate the student.

Visual Phrase Cueing Lesson

Candidate’s Name: Damien Beckinger

Grade Level: 2 (Can be adapted for other grades)

Title of the lesson: Visual Phrase Cueing

Length of the lesson: 45 minutes

Central focus Model proper fluency and phrase cueing through visual aids

Knowledge of students Students have practice reading grade-level texts and have seen proper fluency models

Common Core State Standards CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.2.4 Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.2.4.a Read grade-level text with purpose and understanding. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.2.4.b Read grade-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.2.4.c Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.2.1 Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about grade 2 topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.

Support literacy development through language (academic language) Encourage fluency through creation of phrase cues

Learning objectives Students will be able to distinguish between fluent and influent reading Students will understand how to separate phrases within a sentence Students will practice working in a group setting

Formal and informal assessment Informal Assessment: Students present how their group separated phrases in front of the class. The class and teacher will determine if the phrase cueing was done correctly, if not corrections will be made.

Instructional procedure: Instructional strategies and learning tasks Gather the students in the classroom for a whole group reading of a grade level book. Read the book to the students to model proper fluency. Then tell students that they are going to become part of the book. Hand each student a piece of paper with a word from the book printed on it. Separate students into groups based on the page the word appears on. Have a group of students come to the front of the room and give them new words that will be used as an example. The students should stand in the order that creates a sentence. Have the students stand far apart and read the sentence with long pauses in between each word. Ask the students if this is fluent reading? Then have the students stand extremely close to each other and read the sentence very quickly. Ask students if this is fluent reading? Ask students why the past two examples did not sound like fluent reading. Explain that sentences are separated into phrases that are easier to read. Tape a piece of ribbon or string to the word that begins the phrase and the word that ends the phrase. Do this for all of the phrases in the sentence and then read the sentence properly. Ask students if this was fluent reading. Have the students return to their seats and distribute tape and string to each group. Allow 15 minutes for students to create their phrase cues. Once every group is finished, have the first group come to the front of the class and present their phrase cues. Ask for a volunteer to read the sentence, and then ask the class if that was fluent reading? If not, determine what changes need to be made and have another student read the sentence. Repeat this until the story is finished. Ask students what they did in this activity that made reading easier. Explain to students that even if they do not have ribbon or string, they can use make believe ribbon or string in their heads when they read in order to separate phrases.

Instructional resources and materials Curious Firsties Blog (Lesson adapted from here) Grade level book Word printouts (prepared before lesson String or ribbon Tape

Dr. Hui-Yin Hsu Spring 2014

Phonics Assessments and Activities

            I am observing in a 2^nd grade classroom and most of these skills should be mastered by the 2^nd grade. Thus, I observed a student during daily reading and writing activities in order to determine mastery rather than assessing a student on these skills.

            Every day, students have free reading time. Typically, a writing component is attached to the free reading. For example, on this day, students were to write about character personality traits that they noticed. I used these activities as an opportunity to observe for mastery of print awareness, sounds of speech, phonemic awareness, and phonics.

Print Awareness: As the student is in 2^nd grade, she was very accustomed to reading books and read the book from left to right and top to bottom.

Sounds of Speech: The student correctly recognized and pronounced all of the sounds and words in the book.

Phonemic Awareness: In the few times that the student came across an unfamiliar and difficult word, the student was able to separate the word into phonemes and pronounce it correctly.

Phonics: The student spelled most words correctly, only having a few mistakes with words that have irregular spellings. For example, the student wrote “mean” as “meen” as it follows the same sound pattern as “seen”. 

While in general, this student did not need much additional help in these skills, there are numerous websites available with activities than can help younger or struggling students work towards mastering these skills.

 ABC Fast Phonics: This site used cartoons and audio to teach basic phonics principles beginning from “sounds and letters” to “common words”.

Earobics: This site has several games that teach phonics. Games are tiered by difficulty from beginning, to intermediate, and advanced. Games cover several subjects from letter-sound correspondence to sentence word order.

Sadlie-Oxford: This site has phonics activities and games separated by grade level. Examples of the games include “Alphabet Zoo”, where students place animals in the zoo based on the beginning sound of their name and Memory Games of various sorts that deal with sounds, words, and rhymes.

Clifford Interactive Storybooks: This Clifford activity has students grouping objects that begin with the same sound. The activity is fairly short, but can be played over and over with different sounds.

Intervention for Mary

11. Instructional focus based on the assessment results

·         Mary was able to read the passage with good accuracy, but struggled with comprehension. In particular, Mary had difficulties remembering any details beyond the main ideas of the passage. Thus, I suggest giving Mary phrase-cued text lessons. These lessons focus on breaking up the phrases of a passage in order to highlight the details that often hide within phrases,

22. Length of Intervention (How many weeks? Daily lessons? How long is the lesson while maintaining the rest of your class?)

·         Phrase-cued text lessons should be implemented 3-4 times a week in 10-15 minute segments. After two weeks of phrase-cued text lessons I would give Mary a passage that is not phrase-cued in order to assess her ability to pick out the details without the help of phrase-cues. Depending on the results, I would determine whether Mary needed further intervention.

33.  Intervention structure (intervention components, such as repeated reading, decoding, encoding, expository structure and details, writing…)

·         Typically I would model a massage first, and then have Mary read the passage. Then, we would discuss details of the passage. If necessary, Mary would reread the passage 1-2 times to understand the most important ideas.

44. Create one sample mini-lesson that addresses Mary’s areas of need. 

·         Find a passage and mark the phrase cues. I chose a passage on Lewis and Clark.

More than 200 years ago, / in 1804, two explorers made an important journey. // They were named Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. // Today, / people know a lot about the places they visited. // But 200 years ago there were no maps of that part of the United States. // They would travel by boat. // They were going to see where a great river went. // They were traveling on a river called the Missouri River. // They took many people with them to help. // There were more than 40 people on the trip. // First they had to pack a lot of food. // They took many supplies with them. // They had three boats. // It was summer. // They traveled slowly. // They had to row their boats on the river. // They would only travel a few miles every day. // They traveled for months. // Then it was winter. // They made a camp for the winter. // They camped along the river. // They waited for spring. // Snow and ice made it hard to travel in winter. // Native Americans helped them along the way. // They helped them get food. // And they showed them where places were. // The explorers had never been to this area before. // The Native Americans had lived there for many years. // A Native American woman helped them travel. // She became their guide. // Her name was Sacajawea. // She traveled with them for months. // It was hard work. // The explorers needed her help to find their way to the West. // They wanted to find out how to get to the ocean. // As they traveled, / they made maps. // Their maps showed the way the river went. // It passed through grasslands. // Then they were in mountains. // When they got to the mountains, / they had to leave their boats and walk. // It took more than a year for the explorers to get to the ocean. // When they got there they had made maps that would help many people. // But they had to bring the maps back. // It had taken more than a year to make this first part of the trip. // It took a long time to get back. // When the explorers came back, / they had been gone two years. // In 1806, they returned. // They were heroes. // They would not make such a great journey again. // They had done their job. // Their maps would help people settle in the new land. // Long after their trip, people would build roads to the west. // They would travel quickly by car. // Today people can travel their route by plane. // If you look out the window from the plane you will see those high mountains. // You will see what a difficult journey it was. //

·         Explain to the student how the phrase cues mark natural pauses in the reading and that there are often key details in the phrases.

·         Give the student a copy of the phrase-cued passage and have him/her to read along while you read the passage aloud one time.

·         Ask the student to read the passage aloud.

·         Ask the student comprehension questions about the passage.

                                                              i.      What was the passage about?

                                                            ii.      Did Lewis and Clark travel alone? Who helped them?

                                                          iii.      Did they travel in winter? Why not?

                                                          iv.      What were they doing on their journey?

                                                            v.      How long did the journey take them?

                                                          vi.      Why was their journey important?

·         If the student cannot answer these questions, allow the student to reread the passage 1-2 more times, stopping to discuss key details with the student.