Week # 3/Assignment #1: Assessment Driven Instruction Video

Shared Reading

• On your Observational Checklist (PDF), note the Essential Components that are addressed during the first part of the shared reading activity. How does this activity engage students who are at different levels of literacy development? Some essential components include using sight words, high frequency words, rhyming words, and poems that are in the kid’s interest per week. Ms. Perez then pulls out phonics lessons from the group shared reading. Word walls are also included in the classroom where they can associate the vowel sound with a specific word. This activity engages students who are at different levels to allow students to be grouped and join in on the lesson even if they are on different levels of literacy development. It’s an interactive reading experience while guided and supported by the teacher and other experienced readers. Students can observe the expert reading with fluency and expression with immediate feedback as they develop the skills.
• During her explicit phonics lesson, how does Ms. Perez support students' problem-solving skills? Ms. Peres randomly picks students to answer questions in relation to her lesson and is the student picked does not have the right answer Ms. Perez still supports the student by saying “I know what you are thinking, the letter does look like a B but it is backwards as a D, by understanding what the student may have been thinking and correcting it. Ms. Perez then challenges the students within their range of learning, for instance adding consonant blends in the phonics lesson.
• Based on what you saw in the video, what are the different ways that shared reading can be used to promote literacy? By using whole group lessons and whole group shared reading. Shared reading allows the educators to see how much the student understands and what they may be struggling with. Shared reading allows the student to hear language while observing phonological representation/awareness, directionality while reading, and concepts of print.

Guided Instruction

• Why does she think it's important for students to verbalize their strategies? What else do you notice about how she helps students build meaning in text? Ms Perez believes the more students verbalize they get internalized and then students start the verbalize the strategies that they use. In addition, Ms. Perez also questions the readers and implement guided reading to help students build meaning in the text. Ms. Perez also uses the student’s prior knowledge from previous lessons to help connect their knowledge to the text. Ms. Perez also allows the students to interact with each other in groups to come to a group conclusion. The goal for guided reading in Ms. Perez case is to allow students to have different strategies to rely on when reading a text. Picking the right text for the group is important and knowing the children to meet their needs during instructional time.  

Differentiated Instruction

• How does Ms. Perez organize her classroom to support a wide range of learners? Because of the wide range of learners, Ms. Perez uses paired shared reading, whole group shared reading and whole group lessons while guided and supported by the teacher or experienced reader this way students can observe the expert reading with fluency and expression. Ms Perez also incorporates learning centers where students can get different things out of the activities based on their needs and the skills they bring into the activity.  Different activities are available in the classroom to allow the students to reinforce the skills they are working on.

• How are reading and writing connected in classroom activities? Reading affects writing and vice versa and reading different genres of books helps students learn text structures and languages they can transfer to writing. In addition, phonics skills are reinforced when students read and write the same words.

Assessment

• How does Ms. Perez use ongoing individual assessment to guide her instruction? How can the class profile be used to help group students and differentiate instruction? Uses formal and informal instruction. They come in with all different skills, thus during the first week of school Ms Perez do individual assessments and then again in December to see how far the students have gotten and what they have learned. Based on the information Ms. Perez gets from the assessment she then proactively starts thinking about different activities she can implement in the class to support the students needs. Ms. Perez revisits the assessments in March and at the end of the year to see if there is any improvements or additional implementation needed in the classroom. This way Ms. Perez can track each child’s progress. By tracking the student’s progress Ms. Perez uses a chart to see how fat each student progresses through the year starting from the bottom of the chart to higher levels of the different titles of the books on the development reading assessments. Once all the assessments are finished Ms. Perez the fills out the graph. Ms Perez then uses the assessment data to create instructional lessons based on what she will teach and how she will teach it.
• How can ongoing assessment be integrated into your own classroom practice? Ongoing assessments can be integrated in my classroom by creating a portfolio for each student to revisit and see the progress of each student throughout the year and or having a record of the student’s response during informal assessment questions and monitored at the beginning of the school year, mid-year, and end to see progress.