Guzzardo Target Area

1.     Describe your target area for guided lead teaching.

My target area for my guided lead teaching is families; How families are different, who makes up a family, etc. While teaching about families we will also look at concepts of print and breaking words apart by syllables.

2.     Approximately how much time per day is allotted for your instruction in this area?

About an hour in the morning

3.     Which Common Core State Standard(s) will you work toward?

o    RF.K.1 Demonstrate understanding of the organization of basic features of print

o    RF.K.1(a) Follow words from left to right, top to bottom, and page by page

o    RF.K.1 (b) Recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters

o    RF.K.1 (c) Understand that words are separated by spaces in print

o    RF.K.2 (b) Count, pronounce, blend, and segment syllables in spoken words.

o    RI.K.5 Identify he front cover, back cover, and title page of a book

o    RI. K.6 Name the author and illustrator of a text and define the role of each in presenting the ideas or information in a text

4.     How will teaching in this target area provide opportunities for students to learn important content and/or skills that relate to their lives?  In what ways does this learning include learning literacy, learning about literacy, and/or learning through literacy?

My students can relate the topic of families to their lives because they each come from a family. They will be able to connect the stories and discussions in class to their own families. I plan on having the students share about their families in class to help learn about the differences in families.

The target area of families includes learning about literacy. I will be using several books about families in my unit. While reading and working with these books students will be working on learning concepts of print. We will look at the basics of a book (front cover, pages, text, pictures). We will also be looking at the arrangement of texts on the page (right to left, top to bottom, spaces between words). Looking even closer a the text on the page we will work on breaking words up into syllables.

My students will also learn through literacy in my lesson. My students will learn about different families and what they look like by working with several books about families. These books will guide discussions about families.

5.     What types of classroom talk take place within this target area? To what extent is the talk teacher-led, student-led, or focused on higher-level thinking? What norms for interaction would you like to build within your classroom as you teach in this target area (e.g., see ideas in Chapter 6 of Strategies that Work, the Berne & Clark 2008 article, or draw from some of the readings done in TE 402 on classroom talk)?

Currently there is no talk about families in my classrooms. Students may share things that they do with their families or that draw pictures of their families but there have not been any whole class discussions on the topic. During my unit the extent of the talking in discussions will be teacher-led. I will ask students to share their thoughts on things such as their own families and differences among families. As a class we will build discussions about families but they will remain teacher-led while building off of the students’ ideas. During these discussions, my students will use the norms of the classroom about raising their hand and having a turn to talk. Students will quietly raise their hand, put their hand down when someone is called, and listen to the person who is speaking. During my unit I would like to introduce the norm of building off of what others say. If one student shares something about their family I would like another child to be able to build off of what they said or expand on that same idea. This may be difficult for kindergartens but I think it will be a good beginning experience for them in building discussion skills. This may also help to keep the discussion flowing.

6.     Which ‘core practice’ do you want to work on developing/improving as you teach in this target area (refer to document “Resources for Developing Core Practices”)? How will focusing on this core practice contribute to your own professional learning?

From the “Resources for Developing Core Practices” document I want to work on improving acquisition, use and assessment of foundational skills. Within this I would like to specifically work on concepts of print and word separation (by space and syllable). Focusing on these things will contribute to my own learning by helping me learn how to break down the knowledge I have of text and teach it to students who it is unfamiliar to. Concepts of print have become so familiar to me through all my years of school that I do not think about them when reading text. I need to be able to step back from what I know and break it down so that students can learn and understand the different concepts of print. I think this is a great skill that teachers need to learn for all subject areas.

7.     What resources within the community, neighborhood, school district, school or classroom do you have to work with in this target area?

A huge resource for me is my mentor teacher. She has already given me her social studies book that has a unit on families and several stories books on families. She has also offered any of her other books on families to me. Since she has taught this target area before she has many resources that I am allowed to use to help with my unit. The local community library is also a great resource for me as it contains even more books on families that I could use in my lessons. The internet is another great resource for me to use for gathering information or ideas about families, as well as concepts of print.

8.     What additional resources do you need to obtain?

o    With the amount of resources that my mentor teacher has offered to me I do not think that I will need to find other resources to use. An extra resource during my lesson may be the parents of my students. I need to talk it over with my mentor teacher but I was thinking of incorporating pictures of the students families into my unit. In order to do this I would need the parents help and support.

9.     How will you pre-assess your students in your target area?

I will have the students draw pictures of their families and introduce their families to the class. If possible I will have the students bring in pictures of their families as well. I will also use questions to pre-assess my students. I will ask them things such as what they know about families and differences they may have noticed about families.

Dealing with concepts of print, my mentor teacher has already done a pre-assessment of the students on this. I will look at her results to see where the students stand in the area of concepts of print and text knowledge.

10.    What else will you need to find out about all students in your class to help you develop lesson plans for your Guided Lead Teaching?

It may be beneficial for me to find out ahead of time which students come from single family homes, have separated parents, live with both parents, live with relatives, etc. Although this may help with my unit I am not sure how I would go about finding out this information. It may be that it is easy for me to learn this information during my unit through discussions with my students about their families.

I may have to a pre-assessment of my students’ ability to break words apart into the syllables. They have done a few class activities of this together but a pre-assessment would give me a better feel of where the students are at. This will also inform me of how much I need to break this down for students and how fast or slow I can proceed with it.

11.    What else do you need/want to learn about the ‘core practice’  to support your planning and teaching?

I think learning more about how to teach breaking words apart by syllables would be helpful. The more I know about how to teach it, the better I will be able to teach it.

12.  What concerns, if any, do you have about planning and teaching your unit?

My biggest concern is going to be making sure that my students get something out of my lessons. I want to make sure that my lessons are not redundant and boring so I need to make sure and focus on different aspects of families and concepts of print during each lesson. I think both of these concerns will go away as I start to plan my unit.