Aaron Conner Dr. Hoaglund Samford University Try It Out!

Ch. 1 Highly Effective Teacher

Reflection: The book lists seven pillars for effective instruction including teacher knowledge, classroom assessment, evidence-based teaching practices, response to intervention, motivation and engagement, technology and new literacies, and family and community connections. A teacher should have in some capacity all of these traits present in their teaching style. I have personally observed my teacher use each of these pillars in everyday class activities and instruction. I am most apprehensive about fully adopting is the evidence based teaching practices. I have a tendency to make things up on the fly and usually they work but as a professional I will have to work on only using evidence based practices or finding evidence to back my teaching practices.

Try it Out: My teacher is very good at integrating technology with reading in her classroom. She utilizes the class set of Nooks and instructs the class to record their thoughts in a journal on them. The class also uses their Nooks to complete many different reading quizzes and reading games that the teacher assigns and the students have many reading enforcement games that are available for them to play in their spare time.

Ch. 5 Fluency

Reflection: Research shows that fluency practice is most effective when the reading practice s done orally, when it involves repeated readings (more than three) of a text, and when students receive guidance and feedback from their support group. Some good methods for teaching fluency are explicit instruction, model reading, reading practice, oral and silent reading, repeated reading, Fluency Oriented Reading Instruction, partner reading, choral reading, and scaffolded silent reading. All of these tactics are effective because they expose the children to the reading many times and allow them to connect to what they are reading so that they will develop a joy for the material and will actually want to know what is going on. This in turn will cause them to read smooth and fluently.

Try it Out: (4) 1. Attached is the Multidimensional Fluency Scale that I gave to a student in my Early Morning group. He performed much better than his original assessment and even maxed out the section dealing with reading pace. 2. Attached is a poem about Christmas used to teach fluency. 3. I worked with a student multiple times to select a book from the library that would fit his interests and his reading level. When I first came to Trace he was three levels behind his peers and now he is two levels behind. He is very interested in space and the military and I used that knowledge to help him select books he would like. 4. Attached are five readers theaters scripts that can be used to teach fluency from http://www.teachingheart.net/readerstheater.htm.

Ch. 6 Vocabulary Reflection: Research shows that vocabulary instruction is effective when it is taught through language interactions and repeated exposure. Some great ways to teach vocabulary include word walls, word banks, word sorts, discovery words, Clap Chant Write, Hangman, along with many other strategies. The reason why these are so effective is that the students rarely sees the strategies as laborious or even as teaching and looks at them as fun and engaging games to play. Teachers who utilize this find that their students are much farther along in their vocabulary and have a better attitude towards vocabulary instruction as a whole.

Try it Out: (4) 1. Attached is my lesson plan dealing with vocabulary according to the AL Language Arts standard for fourth grade. 2. Attached are three Frayer models showing words we learned in class. 3. At Trace Crossings, I played many vocabulary games on the Nooks with the students ranging from scavenger hunts to word searches and even action games that required the player to know and use vocabulary to solve the problem. 4. My class and I used the Nooks as technology to teach and learn vocabulary. They had games, quizzes, reading selections, and the internet all at their disposal and would use at least one of those resources each day to reinforce their vocabulary skills.

Ch. 9 Childrens Literature

Reflection: We all participated in setting up and conducting the Read for the Record event at Trace Crossings which was Wild About Reading themed.

Try it Out (2): 1. I attended a library story time in which my classmates and I read and acted out the book Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey for a third grade class. I read the book as my team members dressed up as the children and teacher in the book and Patrick played Farmer MacNuggett. We had a great time and the students loved the turkeys that we made and laughed as we told the story. 2. I read a chapter of The Magicians Nephew by C.S. Lewis to the class as a part of a lesson I was teaching on vocabulary and they loved it. They were asking me questions on what happened next and wanted to know more about Aslan and how he could create a world with a song. They then went and wrote in their journals in which they all wrote about creating a new world.