Weekly Summary #1
January 15th-17th, 2019
Meghan Taylor
Meghan Taylor
The first day of interning and observations turned out to be more than I expected. I currently homeschool a family of eight kids and worked as a classroom aide in a kindergarten classroom last year and frequent as a substitute at that school, so I expected to be more acclimated. In the first classroom, the general education first grade class with Ms. Mayer, David and I were assigned four students each to work with throughout the semester. Ms. Mayer had given us a list of 100 "Fry words," or sight words, to work on with the kids. These sight words are from a kindergarten level, but they are where the children currently are with their reading. David and I began with making flashcards to create our pre-assessment for the children, finding out exactly where they are with knowing these words. We both only got to assess two out of the four children as it was a hectic morning. The adjoining classroom was sent it due to a child with behavioral issues throwing desks and causing a scene.
As a Title I school, I was already expecting many of the children to come from lower socioeconomic statuses. This usually implies children of many diverse backgrounds and more children with disabilities. This specific classroom was diverse among races and ethnicities, with one girl starting her second week here in America as she just moved here from Barbados. Her accent is extremely adorable and the way she pronounces some words is just so funny!
Running through the pre-assessment was fairly easy, just time-consuming. There are 100 words to test each child on so the assessment itself is just laboring. Although, Ms. Mayer advised us that if a student were to miss about 10-15 words in a row, to stop the assessment altogether. This would be the ceiling that they are currently at. But, the flashcard method worked well for simplicity. It was easier to segregate each word and provide the word large enough so that they could read it. Also, the flashcard can easily convert into different games for the students in the future, so they are a good tool to have at hand.
For this following week, the goal is to finish assessing the students to find out where they exactly at with recognition of their Fry Sight words. From there, David and I can create little games or fun activities to engage the kids and to help them recognize and learn these words better. One fun game that I could start off with is the "Boom" Flashcard game. Along with the 100 sight words, I will add in one, or more, cards with the word BOOM on it. Once the student gets to this card, they can call out BOOM and keep all of the word cards that they have already gotten correct. This way, they are positively reinforcing themselves by collecting the correctly read cards and having fun while reading through the cards at a faster pace.
In the CSS classroom is where I found most of my connections to what I am doing outside of my own classwork. Homeschooling my children that I work for is definitely a difficult feat as five out of the eight children are behind, and two have undiagnosed learning disabilities. (Their mother pulled them out of their school when their teachers suggested writing IEPs for accommodations for the children.) The CSS classroom is 4th and 5th graders and the one girl I work with is currently in 4th grade. By seeing how these children read to me and their difficulty connecting main ideas and key details from the passages clearly shines through to me that my own fourth grader needs more reading help. Her mother and I try to read with her and create activities as often as we can, but I am interested to see what these teachers implement to help their students so I can do something similar for mine!
As a Title I school, I was already expecting many of the children to come from lower socioeconomic statuses. This usually implies children of many diverse backgrounds and more children with disabilities. This specific classroom was diverse among races and ethnicities, with one girl starting her second week here in America as she just moved here from Barbados. Her accent is extremely adorable and the way she pronounces some words is just so funny!
Running through the pre-assessment was fairly easy, just time-consuming. There are 100 words to test each child on so the assessment itself is just laboring. Although, Ms. Mayer advised us that if a student were to miss about 10-15 words in a row, to stop the assessment altogether. This would be the ceiling that they are currently at. But, the flashcard method worked well for simplicity. It was easier to segregate each word and provide the word large enough so that they could read it. Also, the flashcard can easily convert into different games for the students in the future, so they are a good tool to have at hand.
For this following week, the goal is to finish assessing the students to find out where they exactly at with recognition of their Fry Sight words. From there, David and I can create little games or fun activities to engage the kids and to help them recognize and learn these words better. One fun game that I could start off with is the "Boom" Flashcard game. Along with the 100 sight words, I will add in one, or more, cards with the word BOOM on it. Once the student gets to this card, they can call out BOOM and keep all of the word cards that they have already gotten correct. This way, they are positively reinforcing themselves by collecting the correctly read cards and having fun while reading through the cards at a faster pace.
In the CSS classroom is where I found most of my connections to what I am doing outside of my own classwork. Homeschooling my children that I work for is definitely a difficult feat as five out of the eight children are behind, and two have undiagnosed learning disabilities. (Their mother pulled them out of their school when their teachers suggested writing IEPs for accommodations for the children.) The CSS classroom is 4th and 5th graders and the one girl I work with is currently in 4th grade. By seeing how these children read to me and their difficulty connecting main ideas and key details from the passages clearly shines through to me that my own fourth grader needs more reading help. Her mother and I try to read with her and create activities as often as we can, but I am interested to see what these teachers implement to help their students so I can do something similar for mine!
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