Veronica
·
Veronica is a stand out student, but often in more ways than
one. She is creative having been
observed creating elaborate illustrations thinking out side of the box on
assignments. She is usually enthusiastic
in sharing her ideas, as one of the students who consistently raises their hand
to share during class discussions.
However, Veronica is also a stand out in less positive ways. From time to time she can be seen in
arguments with classmates, or simply folding her arms and refusing to do the
work assigned by the teacher. She can
easily become distracted during independent work time, starting conversations
with fellow classmates. Substitute
teachers often report finding her hard to manage and having an attitude
problem.
·
Veronica is below grade level in her reading but quickly
improving. The MT reports that she is
very capable of reading, but has trouble understanding the text and needs further
instructional practice with comprehension.
The MT has mentioned that Veronica often reads with great fluency, but
will forget to mention main parts of the reading when asked to retell or
explain. The MT asked me to create a
lesson to help Veronica learn or practice using some comprehension strategies
to make it easier for her to be able to retell events of a reading.
·
Katherine Stahl discusses in her 2004 “Proof, Practice, and
Promise: Comprehension Strategy Instruction in the Primary Grades” about how
important it is to develop comprehension skills at an early age. For Veronica, as a third grader moving into
fourth grade, it is even more important that she improves her comprehension
skills because “often, students who engage in comprehension activities are more
likely to understand and recall more of
what they read” (Stahl, 2004). In
selecting an appropriate focus and instructional strategy for Veronica, I had
to think about what her strengths and weaknesses were. Veronica easily gets distracted when she has
to engage with basic and repetitive worksheets and book work. However, when a lesson is engaging and
interactive and student focused, she is most always vey engaged and
participatory. And since “visual imagery
instruction seems to help younger readers and older reasons” (Stahl,
2004). I decided to look into
incorporating video into the lesson to help Veronica become engaged. “Children with limited literacy backgrounds
and young children may have difficulty sustaining attention on the type of
lengthier, complex story that is necessary for comprehension instruction. The richness of video as a medium and its
familiarity to children has made it an effective tool in the development of a
visual representation especially for young at-risk readers with limited
literacy backgrounds.”
Mary
·
Mary is a wonderful girl.
She is always smiling and has a very positive attitude about
school. She can be seen working well
with others, and has been observed helping her twin sister who has visual and
cognitive impairments. Mary is also very
quiet. If you were not specifically
observing her, you might not even realize she is in the class. She follows classroom rules, is very easily
managed in the classroom, but often doesn’t speak up to share her ideas in class.
·
Mary is well below grade level in reading and writing. Mary was born 8 weeks early along with her
twin sister. She also has a visual
impairments and slight cognitive impairments, but not to the extent that her
sister does. This often means that resources
and attention goes to her sister, and less attention is available for Mary. The MT said she is very concerned for Mary,
and wants her to be able to catch up and get to a point where she can become
confident in her reading. She
specifically said that Mary is having trouble connecting to the stories they
are reading. She will lose focus and
when asked to predict, she doesn’t understand the concept, or has trouble
taking her prior knowledge and applying it to guess what will happen next.
·
Paul Neufeld in a 2005 article “Comprehension Instruction in
Content Area Classes” explains that predicting about a text is a combination of
using answers to questions posed during the overview/reading process and prior
knowledge of a topic. Mary has had some great
experiences so far, and is familiar with a wide range of topics, but getting
her to connect those ideas to a story is what she has been working on. Mary is unaware of what “predict” means and
will need guided instruction to practice predicting, the goal being to help her
learn a strategy to improve her reading.
“Predictions can then be used as the student reads to test whether or
not the text is making sense. In other words, the predictions become hypotheses
to test as the student is reading” (Neufeld, 2005) and this would be very
helpful for Mary as she improves her reading.
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