This year we have been using the data we receive from far to determine where to start students off for DRA testing. Using this Data takes the guessing game away from were to test those students at the beginning of the year and throughout the year as we continue testing. Rather than just trying a level high then their previous if fair (or iStation) is showing that they have made significant gains it would save us on time to test them on more of a on level text. Not only does it save the time but having that consistent data to be able to refer to when discussing student achievements would come be very beneficial.
This year we have been using the data we receive from far to determine where to start students off for DRA testing. Using this Data takes the guessing game away from were to test those students at the beginning of the year and throughout the year as we continue testing. Rather than just trying a level high then their previous if fair (or iStation) is showing that they have made significant gains it would save us on time to test them on more of a on level text. Not only does it save the time but having that consistent data to be able to refer to when discussing student achievements would come be very beneficial.
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A Mighty Girl Bridging The Gap In Unfair Representation Of Diversity On Children's Literature2/15/2015 Last month blogged about an issue that has been haunting me for some time now. I find that children's literature has an unfair representation of diversity. Whether that diversity is racial, poverty, or even gender. Literature seems to focus heavily on white male protagonist. Just think of all the children books that have made it to the top of the charts and become well-recognized books. Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Dairy of a Wimpy Kid. All of these books feature a white male protagonist. Of course there are book that break this mold but they don’t come by as often. As depicted in the graphic below the number of books about white characters grossly out numbers the books about any and all other races. Even within the copious percentage of books written about white characters, the break up of these books by gender is lacking. According to an article by the Huffington Post "What Does it Mean that Most Children's Books Are Still About White Boys?" over half of the books feature a male character as the lead. I find this particularly dissatisfying when I think of my classroom (which has more female student) and my little sister. I don't want any of them to struggle to find a book that they can identify with the main character. I have finally found answer to issue. A site called A Mighty Girl. This site works to empower and inspire young female readers by providing them with literature, toys, music , movies and more. I implore you to read about this site and check it out. As an educator I plan to utilize this site to find books that not only represent girls but also books that represent different social issues. A Mighty Girl has a whole section dedicated to just this, below are the different social issues the site has began to categorize by. I have used this feature to find the next book for my Literature Circle group. I am happy to announce we will be reading Glory Be by Augusta Scattergood. Though I have found a way to get female representation I am even more motivated to find sites and resources that share A Mighty Girl's vision. I would love to find a site that helps teacher, students, and parents find books so that every student can read book about characters they can identify with.
We only have a few more weeks until the students are starting to take the FSA assessments. The first of these being the writing assessment. Next week we began breaking out instruction apart so we can meet all of the students needs. In order to help them in the areas that they need the most help in, as I talked about in my previous post. Because the students can either get an opinion or an informational piece we will be working on one of these pieces every week. We will switch back and forth so they are getting ample time with each mode. Though we are trying to prepare them for this test it really feels like a shot in the dark since we have never seen the test. Hopefully what we are doing is helping them become better writes in addition to helping them succeed on the FSA.
In my program we are being given time to do CFG’s (Critical Friends Group). I am pleasantly surprised at how this is working for me. I feel as though I have been given a formal outlet to express concerns so that I can really try and solve them. As apposed to just talking to others and never really coming to a consensus on what should be done. In the few weeks that we have done the CFG I have made headway to solve a major problem I have been facing all semester. I have also been able to help my colleagues with their issues. I am excited to see how my possible solutions help them become even more successful. Yesterday I got an opportunity to be a judge at Hillsborough County’s S.T.E.M Fair. As a USF student I was partnered with a teacher leader and we judged ten different group projects. We were assigned fourth grade life science, and I have to say I was definitely blown away! All of the students took such pride in their work. They were all very passionate about what they were talking about; they were able to explain to me exactly why they choose to do there project. It just shows me how important this process is to these students and how much of an impact it has. This one-day, even if they don’t win, experience could be what pushes them toward a S.T.E.M. career.
In this experience I also noted the difference between a student chosen and a teacher chosen project. Though both projects invoked passion in the students, regardless of who chose it these students were all excited to share what they did. However the ones who thought of it themself really were able to discuss the real world applications. They were also the ones who were able to tell me how they would change the project to find something else out. These students really took ownership of their work. I think this is so important to be aware of, when I am teaching next year I need to take their ideas or wonderings and find a project that works for them. Yes they can be passionate about one I give them but it just wouldn’t be the same. I also realized I am become a part of the education community. I knew many more people at the S.T.E.M. fair then I thought I would. From seeing and recognizing the leaders in the community like Michele Wiehagen to seeing other students at USF from several different programs. It made me realize how important keeping and maintaining a professional appearance will be in the education field. I am looking forward to participating in further events in the years to come. How did your peer support you in data collection?
In this program I am very fortunate to work with a resident from another school. When I get to collaborate with Rebecca Fiore I feel as those we make a great team. Rebecca assisted me in creating and modifying my assessments. After administering the assessment she took her time to help me look at the student responses. First we would find the students that completely got the concepts, and then all of the other students got sorted out from there. We took the responses and tried to find patterns, did they not understand the question? Were they confused about something particularly (an example would be the group that was confused on the difference between luster and color.)? Though she wasn’t at my school or in my classroom we had lots of meaningful conversations to analyze student responses. From there I bounced ideas off of her, to see what would work best for my students. With in this discussion we came up with plans to help the students understand their misconception and helped them get back on track. How did you analyze your data? As I said before I looked at all of the student responses and then saw how I could best support my students. We looked for patterns in the students responses and put them in groups that would best support they’re learning. We determined what they were missing and then we figured out what they needed to know so we could set a plan to best support them. What does your data tell you? It told me what my students didn’t understand so that I could better support my instruction. What progress have you made toward meeting your goal? I feel as though I haven’t fully met my goal. That being said I am beginning to understand how to utilize assessments to support my instruction. I was shocked to see how many of my students were missing pieces. For the most part they got the core concept but there were little things impeding their full understanding. Though they may have been “little” things if they go unnoticed they will build up and stop the student from progressing. This applies to all subject areas not just science. How can you continue to develop this practice in literacy instruction? I plan to continue using assessments in order to better my student’s instructions to make sure I see the things that are missing so I can fill in those gaps. When it comes to literacy I will have to look into other forms of assessments to use rather then the concept cartoons and more formal assessments I am using in my science instruction. For my science content coaching I set a goal to start implementing assessment in order to better instruct my students. For the first assessment I need to see if my students understood what properties were used in order to determine minerals and that they could distinguish between the properties luster and color. Here is the first assessment I created: This is the second one I created and administered: Their are three main reasons I changed the assessment to the second one:
Here is the results of my assessment: I separated the students based on how they responded. Which broke them into six groups.
In my classroom we recently had a writing assessment, where the students were exposed to the new format of the FSA writing test. In this test they will have to read three passages that are related to the prompt and then they will write their response. This is the second one this year and the results didn’t yield what we expected. The students didn’t preform substantially better than they did the first time. Despite the fact that we have been catering our writing instruction to match this form of testing, we have deducted that this form of instruction is not benefiting our students the way we need it to. Fortunately because our classroom is part of the UTRPP program we have the opportunity to do something that will truly make a difference in our students learning.
From here on out our students will no longer participate in whole group writing instruction based on their needs. We will be breaking students into writing groups, similar to a guided reading model. The students have been broke into one of three categories with the expectation that they will be drifting between these throughout the week. These categories include, Prompt, Planning, Editing, Elaborating, Source Citing, and text coding (for the reading passages). In all of these the student will have the same prompt and performance task. They will just be getting to the end in a different manner. In prompt the student will be working to decode and understand the text. Planning we will be finding effective ways for the students to plan and how to improve these skills. Editing is helping students take their final piece and be able to improve it themselves. Elaborating, we will be helping this student expanded on their ideas to strengthen their pieces. Source citing is an important part of this new testing format and most of the students are having a hard time including this in their pieces. We will be working with the students in order to show them how and when it would be appropriate to do this. Finally some students don’t understand how to include the information in the text that is provided within the test. After reading the prompt they will be working to code their text for the information they are looking for. In order to achieve this the groups will be broke up between my CT and myself. While the students are broken up into their groups I will be meeting with one while Mrs. Grant meets with another. We will be rotating groups throughout the process and moving students to different groups as we see fit. Hopefully this model will be what the students need. If we find success in this we will be following this model until the final FSA writing assessment. Just before break finished I finish Maniac Magee with my reading group. I began the search for a new book and I discovered something that I am not too happy about. So many children’s books have been written, and for different reasons. I am trying to find a book that is grade level appropriate yet it is challenge the students thinking. I have found that most of the book that are accomplishing this goal are about one type of character. A white male, even books that have focused on racial discrimination are told from the perspective of a white male. In my group I have three boys, white, Asian, and black, and three girls one white the other two black. By reading books like this with my student I am only meeting one of their needs. Only one of my students is seeing a character who is of the same gender and race of them. I think that this is creating a misrepresentation of the real world. Maybe its because I don’t know of enough books and that that is where this is all coming from. The books about girls are generally light hearted and don’t stir controversy to cause the students to think about. When there is a girl as a main character in the story there are just there to help the male protagonists along, not show casing their own story line. When there is a character other then white that is what the book focuses on, it’s not the material it’s the fact that the book was written about a black boy or a Asian girl and how they are fitting in. Of course there are books that exceed this flaw but they are outnumbered by to many of these misrepresenting books. I am now making it my goal to find books that break through these barriers and make sure they are represented in my classroom, weather they are being used or if they are in my library at my student’s disposal.
As the year comes to an end, so did my literature circle group this year. We explored using technology and really got to delve in to some controversial and meaningful conversation about Maniac Magee. It was a blessing to be able to go through this with this particular group of students and I am excited to see where we are going from here. One book that they are asking me to read with them in Percy Jackson because I read it a similar group last year. I want to keep with the theme of challenging there thinking and I am not sure that Percy Jackson can accomplish this. I am contemplating having a lunch time book club. Where is if they read the book and we read it together then they can eat lunch and talk about the book. Then I could use a different book for my enrichment group. I have a few ideas. I would like to do Hoot because it challenges students to think about the environment. Another that I would love to do is Wonder, this is a book that I haven’t read but have heard great things about. Another topic that I would love to discuss with them is perspective. We touched on it in Maniac Magee but I would like to really look at how one character( or person) views something one way and another character interprets it completely differently. I am unaware of any book that I can use to accomplish this, or maybe some kind of text. If you have and suggestions I would love to hear them!
For a few weeks I have been working on my resume. The thought of this freaks me out every time I think about it. I have always felt that all I would have to show for it was my hours logged through the UTRPP. Which definitely is not a small feat but not as impressive as what some of my peers have accomplished. When it came to actually sitting there and writing what I have accomplished I got to see that I do have a lots to be proud. What I am most proud of is my teaching philosophy. I wrote it and rewrote it many times. I feel as though it captures exactly how I feel as a teacher, and what I want my classroom to look like. I think that my experience could use more work but I have time to work on that. I would love any and all feedback that I can get on this. I really want it to be something that I am proud of and that I can truely show off in the months to come.
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