Final Reflection Part 2

             ·         Summary of the survey answers from your colleague

The survey answers from my colleague were that she felt supported and found observing me teach the lessons were the most valuable part. She wishes she could have observed more, but the sub shortage and COVID restrictions made it difficult. Things like explicit instruction of rhyme were something she never knew she had to teach. She also found it interesting that I had research to back up my strategy and not just a blog. She said that she liked that she can apply what she learned. I need to be more authoritative, though, because I do know what I am talking about.

·         What you did well and what you would change in the future.

The feedback I got from my mentor and colleague was that I collaborate well. I can get and apply feedback. I can help others buy into the common goal. I will freely share credit and acknowledge others' strengths. I feel like I communicated well with families. The county health department put one of my students on quarantine during the intervention cycle. I was able to communicate with the family and adapt his plan to meet his needs. I need to work on becoming more assertive and confident in my role. I have a quality knowledge base that others can benefit from.

·         How the process of supporting a colleague with setting literacy goals for students as well as providing research and resources will shape your future practice as a reading/literacy specialist

The process of supporting a colleague with setting literacy goals for students as well as providing research and resources will shape your future practice as a reading specialist by making me aware that not everyone bases their instructional strategies on research. She was genuinely surprised that there was research rhyme instruction. It also reminded me of the importance of sharing quality research and resources, not just something that shows up at the top of the list on google.

Final Reflection Part 1

·       Summary of your discussion with your mentor following the creation of the intervention reports

My mentor and I frequently talked throughout the intervention process. Following the creation of the intervention reports, the discussion included analyzing the data from the most frequent progress monitoring and comparing it to previous data. We discussed the revisions that needed to be made to the intervention plans and the next steps that could be taken. We also discussed how results would be shared with the families.   

·  Your opinion of the entire intervention process with each student, including developing interventions, implementing interventions, and progress monitoring/assessing

In the past years, my school’s intervention process was haphazard and inconsistent. Teachers would use their best judgment and take what data they had to SST regarding students they were concerned about, and then the team would ask what things had been done to support the student. Then the teacher would be sent back to try the suggestions of the committee and gather more data. Six more weeks would be lost. This year the intervention process has been streamlined and made consistent. Each teacher has been collecting the same data on the same data cycle. Then it’s compared across the grade level. Then the grade levels are instigating consistent research-based interventions. We have seen drastically improved results. Teachers, including me, are ecstatic with the results and not losing precious time trying to get what the committee wants. So, in my opinion, the changes that have been made have had a radically positive difference in the process and a positive impact on the student’s literacy skills.

·  The importance of communicating with families throughout the intervention process

The importance of communicating with families throughout the intervention process keeps parents involved and engaged in the process. It makes them feel like they are a valued part of the team and empowers them to continue learning at home.

·  How this process will affect your future practice as a reading/literacy specialist, specifically pertaining to working with students who are struggling in reading or writing

The intervention process will affect my future practice as a reading/literacy specialist, specifically pertaining to working with students struggling in reading or writing, because it supported me in understanding how vital a consistent process is for intervention is.

Post-Assessment and Evaluating Interventions

• Brief summary of the data analysis and discussion with your mentor
• Discussion of how working with your mentor throughout the intervention process has helped you more effectively meet the needs of each student.

Data Analysis and Discussion with My Mentor

Student one was able to correctly identify 26/26 lowercase letters, 26/26 uppercase letters, and 25/33 sounds. That’s a consistent knowledge of lowercase letters. A gain of one upper case letter and consistent knowledge of 25. Student one lost three sounds in the final assessment from the previous progress monitoring. It’s a gain of five sounds from the beginning of the intervention. After a discussion with my mentor, it was decided that intervention is going to continue to support student one with automaticity of the letters. 

Student two did not make progress towards the goal of producing a rhyme. Technically he did produce a rhyme for two of the words but student two parroted ones that were part of the whole group discussion earlier in the day. After a discussion with my mentor, it was decided that intervention is going to continue for student two but the activities being done are going to change based on the no change in the data. 

Student three was able to isolate the initial sound in 8/10 words. This is an increase of one initial sound from previous progress monitoring and two sounds from the baseline. After a discussion with my mentor, it was decided that intervention is going to continue for student three because the student missed over 70% of the intervention in person-days. 

It was a delight to learn from my mentor and learn from her. She is a data whiz. I learned a lot about how to use our data program to more effectively apply that data. I also learned a lot from her about taking into account the whole child and not just what is reflected in the data. Just looking at the data of my students you would never know that one just transitioned out of foster care and one was quarantined and is overcoming COVID.   She reminded me how important it is to consider those things when analyzing the data. 

Further Implementation and Colleague Support

 

The strategies and resources for rhyming that I provided to support the selected colleague were:

·         Reading Rockets Rhyming Page or the Onset and Rhyme Page

o   Reasoning: Reading Rockets is a reputable peer-reviewed easy to use page. Reading Rockets offers research-based resources that are up to date with current best practices. Reading Rockets provides concrete things to do and explains them in an easy-to-understand way.

o   How this will Help: The videos and explicit instructions for better ways of rhyme, instruction will support the teacher in understanding how to help her students understand how to produce a rhyme.

·         Florida Center for Reading Research’s Rhyming and Onset and Rime center sections

o   Reasoning: Florida Center for Reading Research is a well-respected, research-based resource. The website has a wide variety of activities that can be easily differentiated for students. These are some of the same activities listed on the Reading Rockets Website above. They are written so that even a novice can understand how to use them appropriately.

o   How this will Help: By giving the teacher various resources (variety of games on the site), she can find ones that best engage her students. Also, giving her a resource supported by the other resource provided builds on that knowledge and helps her make a connection.

·         A Fresh Look at Phonics, by Wiley Blevins pg. 5, 13 & 187-188

o   Reasoning: Wiley Blevins is considered a world-renowned expert of phonics. His book is explicit as it outlines what educators are doing incorrectly during rhyme instruction. He also lays out ways to fix that so that rhyme instruction can be efficient and effective. Also, giving her the page numbers and not the whole book is less overwhelming.

o   How this will Help: Teaching her how to efficiently and effectively provide rhyme instruction will support students in understanding rhyme. The students may not be understanding rhyme because of a lack of quality instruction. Reading this text will help fix that by supporting the teacher in understanding how to teach rhyme and onset and rime effectively.

·         IMSE Orton Gillingham Rhyming Activities

o   Reasoning: Orton Gillingham is a well-respected, research-based, established approach to literacy instruction.  It used proven techniques and strategies to support all learners especially those with dyslexia.  

o   How This will Help: The video supports the teacher, who is a visual learner and often struggles with reading things like the teacher’s manual, to see what activities and interactions are supposed to be like during quality rhyme instruction.

Intervention Implementation and Colleague Support

 

In a review of a colleague’s recent classroom literacy assessment data, four out of her ten students scored less than 30% on the grade level rhyming assessment. Two additional students scored less than 60%. Three more students scored 80% and one student scored 100%. With the data showing that 60% of her class is not meeting the standard and 30% meeting the cutoff it was decided that some whole group extra literacy support is needed in the area of rhyming.

This colleague and I set goals for what we wanted to accomplish by providing this extra literacy support. Those goals were:

·         At least 80% of her class will be able to produce a rhyme, consistently when given a familiar word with 100% accuracy.

o   Daily whole-group “Rhyme Time” instruction will be done following the outlined lesson structure below. The class will be progress monitored bi-weekly.

·         At least 80% of her class will be able to break apart words into the onset sound and rime.

o   Daily whole-group “Rhyme Time” instruction will be done following the outlined lesson structure below. The class will be progress monitored bi-weekly.

Lesson Structure:

April 19-Star Light, Star Bright

April 26-Mary, Mary Quite Contrary

May 3-There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe

May 10-A Tisket, A Tasket

May 17-Wee Willie WInkie

May 24 Mary Had a Little Lamb

 

Kindergarten Rhyme Activities for Whole Group Instruction

 

Materials-

Pocket Chart, five picture pairs of rhyming words from the nursery rhyme, five pictures non-rhyming words, thumbs up for rhyme and thumbs down for non-rhymes posters, sentence frame

**Andrea will provide the picture cards that are discussed in the article for the following poems.

 Monday-Read the Nursery Rhyme to introduce rhyme and emphasize the rhyming words.  Have students then rehearse the rhyme once or twice.  

            “The words mat and sat rhyme because they both end in /at/.  Listen, /m/.../at/, mat.  /s/.../at/, sat.  Do you hear /at/ at the end of mat and sat? Yes.  The two words rhyme because they both end in the /at/ sounds.”

 Tuesday-Recite the Nursery Rhyme.  Then, introduce the five chosen rhyming words and the five words that correspond.  Pronounce each rhyming pair and ask the children to point to each picture as you say the words.  After saying each rhyming pair, emphasize that the pair rhyme because they both end in the for example “/at/ sounds.”  Use sentence frame to support students in being able to justify why words rhyme.  Now, have the students say each word pair chorally.

 Wednesday-Recite the Nursery Rhyme.  Mix up the rhyming word pairs.  Place one picture in the chart at the top and place the remaining cards at the bottom.  Have a student say the matching rhyme.  If the students need help, have another student/teacher assist them and explain to the class why the pair rhymes. Repeat with the next four pairs.  Then add in the five picture cards that do not rhyme to the existing pairs and mix up the pictures. Put your thumbs up and thumbs down posters at the top of the pocket chart. Place the cards at the bottom of the pocket chart.  The teacher names two pictures and students take turns telling whether or not the pictures named rhyme.  The teacher restates using the sentence frame why the words rhyme or do not rhyme. Place the pairs that rhyme on the thumbs upside of the pocket chart and pairs that do not rhyme place on the thumbs downside. 

Thursday-Recite the Nursery Rhyme.  Take out a rhyming pair.  Explain that all the rhyming pairs both end in the same sounds.  Now write the “rimes” on the whiteboard.  Then place different letters in front of the “rimes” so students can generate new rhyming words.  Use real and nonsense words.  Use the sentence frame to justify why the words rhyme.  In addition to consonants, you can use blends or digraphs.

 I was able to support my colleague in identifying a lagging skill that many of her students shared. With so many students lagging in the same skill this suggests that the lagging skill may be caused by lack of effective instruction. I was also able to support my colleague in building an instructional plan that uses research-based practices.  

The successes and challenges of in providing this support were:

·        1.  I am not overly assertive or confident in my role as a coach/someone to provide instructional suggestions. I still feel like I must back everything up with research. I know my suggestions would come across better if I was more confident.

·      2.    I was able to model the lesson each day for a week in her AM cohort. She said this really helped since she is a visual learner.

Importance of Communicating with Families

Quality two-way communication between schools and families is essential for a student's success. The more families and teachers share pertinent information about a student, the better prepared both will be to support the student to achieve academically.  

Family involvement support teachers in focusing on teaching. By having more contact with families, teachers learn more about students' needs and the home situation. Teachers can then use that information to meet those needs better. When families and teachers have an open communication line, it is easier to share information that will benefit the child. Often, the child's family doesn't know that they are struggling or don't know how to support them at home. The teacher needs to see the family as a team member and keep them informed of the plan and how to help.

Communicating with families aligns with the COE Professional Dispositions of Learners because it is interacting appropriately and effectively with students and their families. It is also communicating properly, frequently, and effectively because you need to support the families in understanding what is going on with their child and keep them updated on the progress being made. When a teacher gets to know their students' families to align with professional dispositions, it allows them to see the student beyond the academic picture (Grand Canyon University, n.d.).

Every day, teachers collect and use student data. Some of the data is confidential and otherwise sensitive. Student data always needs to be accessed, presented, and used responsibly. Student data needs to be acquired respectfully and equitably. It needs to be kept confidential and used appropriately to guide instruction and support the student in getting a higher quality education. To ethically share data, it should always be private and individualize for each student. Students and students' families should not have access to other students' data.

References

Grand Canyon University. (n.d.). Professional Dispositions of Learners. Phoenix; Grand Canyon University.

Clinical Field Experience A: Observations, Data, and Pre-Assessment

I collaborated with my mentor to identify a group of three students with varying abilities in the classroom who need extra literacy support. I spent time observing these students this week during their literacy block for three small group lessons and three whole group lessons over three days. 

During my observations, I took note of each student’s behavior, participation, learning style, literacy strengths and weaknesses, learning challenges, social interactions, distractions, perseverance, stamina, and motivation. These observations are all included in the Literacy Work Sample.

AD will need further screening for a visual processing disorder such as dysgraphia. However, for this project, the targeted extra literacy support is going to be for her lagging phonemic awareness skills.

While I observed during the literacy block, I found that if WC was given extra time to process information or instructions were presented in an alternative way, he could complete the task. His extra literacy support may be additional phonemic awareness instruction, or it could be an alternative assessment.

LD struggles during the whole group phonemic awareness lessons. He does not have the stamina to maintain focus for the entire ten-minute lesson. Because of this, he is falling behind in his phonemic awareness skills. A one-on-one or small group-focused lesson may meet his needs better.

Because of how late we are in the year, the amount of instruction these students have received, and the mountain of research to support the importance of phonemic awareness, these students were selected for their lacking phonemic awareness skills. These students are progressing phonologically. They have a knowledge gap in some phonemic awareness skills. This gap should be filled with some explicit targeted instruction, allowing the students to have a solid literacy foundation to continue building on, hopefully without the need for further intervention. The school data team had already decided to administer three phonemic awareness assessments, onset sound, ending sound and rhyme production,  for upcoming progress reports. The data gathered from those assessments will be used to guide instruction.