Weekly Summary #5

Weekly Summary #5

February 12th-14th, 2019

Meghan Taylor

     This first week of lesson planning and administering the lessons went a lot smoother and better than I imagined it to be.  On Tuesday, I worked with both of my students who were there, one was absent, on short 'a' CVC words that end in 'ad.'  By using Elkonin boxes, we first decoded the words, then they had to encode them on their own.  The only words, out of the eight real words, that caused them trouble was 'bad' and 'dad' simply due to the mix up of their 'b' and 'd' letters.  Just by sound, they could spell the word, just not write it in the correct way.  From there, we the kids read a book individually.  We started with a picture walk, then they read it on their own.  I realized that this was still too difficult for them, even though it encompassed the sight words that they had "mastered" due to their pre-assessment and short 'a' CVC words, so I changed this for Thursday.  First, I read the book to them after the picture walk, then they read it individually.  When I was reading, they kept track with their fingers so they could recognize the words for when it was their turn.  

     On Thursday, we had the same general idea.  This time, we used short 'a' CVC words that ended in 'ag.'  Then, we moved to the next book in the sequence with the guided reading from me.  We finished the lesson by returning to the same book as we read on Tuesday.  This way, the students could increase their fluency of the text.  Since today was Valentine's Day, it was a lot harder to keep one of my students on task.  He was bouncing off the walls and screaming everything out.  I cannot imagine what the rest of the day would have looked like after they exchanged Valentine's and candy.  

     Next week, I want to do more than one ending for the CVC words we are working on.  Now that the students, aside from the one that was absent for both Tuesday and Thursday, understand what we are doing with the whiteboards and 3 boxes (Elkonin) I think we can encompass more sounds.  I definitely want to finish up all the short vowel 'a' by the end of next week.  

     In my CSS classrooms, it has just been a struggle trying to get many of the kids to work.  While some are completely independent and will work on assignments on their own, the others will not even pick up a pencil.  Finding the motivation to get them to work is beyond exhausting.  But, once they start working it is amazing!