Week 3

1.      Shared Reading

    How does this activity engage students who are at different levels of literacy development? 
This activity engages students at different levels by making connection between consonants and vowels. Students are asked to explore the rules of pronunciation. Ms. Perez also categorizes pronunciation under each alphabet (word wall) represent by a concrete stuff, for example, O is Octopus.

During her explicit phonics lesson, how does Ms. Perez support students' problem-solving skills? 
Ms. Perez presented examples of changing the alphabets before the vowel and let the students seek for the regular pattern of pronunciation. She also support students who have difficulties learning new knowledge. She didn't simply give out an answer, she pointed out the student's thought and gradually guided them to the right direction instead. The pronunciation of "dot" is a great example.

Based on what you saw in the video, what are the different ways that shared reading can be used to promote literacy? 
Shared reading can be used to introduce new words, phonetic symbols, synonym and antonym. We can do sharing in spreading new learning materials. Students are able to learn from each other by sharing thoughts. They know better how to introduce a new concept to each other.

2.      Guided Reading

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?

Verbalization helps students retain information which they think is important. It also makes them build up concrete concept from abstract thoughts.

Matching words with pictures is a way to help students connect concrete images with abstract alphabets. Students were asked to make up their own poem with known words which trains their ability of sentence structure. She also taught them how to take notes including underlining with color pencils for different contents.

3.      Differentiated Instruction

How does Ms. Perez organize her classroom to support a wide range of learners? 
She provided different games for students to get involved in learning tasks. Students with different levels of learning abilities are given different kinds of tasks to accomplish.

How are reading and writing connected in classroom activities?

Students can choose to read books that interested them, then they wrote poem by themselves. They imitated the structure of initial text through this activity. They read the materials first and taking notes on what they have read. After that, they are able to apply what they absorb to what they want to express.

4.      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?

Ms. Perez was doing informal assessment in all of the activities. Students were required to answer different questions and she judged their performance during the process. After her assessment, she adjusted her teaching process and speed. Students were also divided into small groups which is better for her to provide appropriate instruction.

How can ongoing assessment be integrated into your own classroom practice?

In my future teaching, I think I will also follow some of Ms. Perez’s teaching framework. We are going to share something first, then I will guide students to do their work independently. I will check each of their work as an informal assessment. For students of different level, I would create different strategy for them to adapt better learning.

Importance of informal assessment:

According to the learning of the 6 videos, I conclude that formal assessment is based on data made from tests and informal assessment is based on students’ performance. Formal assessment is a kind of overall evaluation of students’ ability and informal assessment aims at a certain aspect of student’s.

With the informal assessment, teachers can track students’ learning progress frequently, diagnose specific problems and help them to overcome them. As it is mentioned in the second video, children don’t have time to waste. Problems need to be solved once it’s found. It also offers teachers valuable information to make findings on students’ characteristics.

Informal assessment is less stressful to students, it can be a few questions and it can also be a study game. It’s actually an interactive process that students might not even realize it. Informal assessment is particularly important in language learning. It does a great job in using students’ interest to motivate and encourage students. As a kind of flexible assessment, teachers are always able to make adjustment to adapt students’ needs.

Last but not least, standardized tests do not necessarily reflect student’s true abilities. In the forth video, it is said that high IQ doesn’t guarantee reading success. Some students are doing pretty well in the tests, but they are really slow decoders. Problem like this can only be found in an informal assessment. In order to provide a well round education environment, we should emphasize informal assessments.

Week 2

My Understanding of the ELA Instruction:

    Reading, writing, speaking, listening and language are five essential components in learning any language. ELA instructions are also based on the five main elements. Learning a language is to train children to read can help them learn to make connections among different ideas and create their own ideas. By reading, children can gradually build up their ability to discern and logicality. Writing is always related to reading which requires learner’s ability to plan, revise, edit and so on. Writing makes people thoughtful and having a better comprehension of what they learn. Speaking and listening are the most basic skills during our daily communication because people live and work together, and they need to express, share and integrate information by what they see or hear. Any of the above skills are built on the language which specifically means vocabulary and grammar.

My Reflection of the video:

This video reminds me of a book written by the director of Education Bureau of Shandong Province, China. The first time he came to Colombia University for the visit and exchange program, he brought a video taken in a traditional Chinese classroom. After all the professors watched the video, they just couldn’t understand why almost the whole process was focused on the teacher instead of the students. This directly pointed out the problem in the Chinese classroom. Chinese teachers consider themselves as the main role in the class; they regard the classroom as a place to show their performance but not the place to spread knowledge. It is quite different in this video; I am able to see different children’s reaction in the class. I found the teacher is doing pretty well in stimulating children’s motivation of learning. She said: Their role increase and my role decreases.

Another issue mentioned in this video is about students’ diversified abilities. Some of them came with vast vocabulary and great experience, but some came with small vocabulary and much less experience. This is a challenge that every teacher would face. As a qualified teacher, she needs to control the balance between both kinds of students.

About the Sample Lesson Plan:

The sample lesson plan focuses on students’ ability of reading, listening and writing. The whole process is divided into four sessions which mainly includes selecting a passage from their favorite book, creating poem with found words and phrase, present their poem in front of the class, listening and making reflections on each others’ performance. It is always highly motivated for students to choose their favorite stuff, including books. Students are able to have a better understanding of their favorite book throughout this. Creating a new poem require students’ ability of making connection as well as their imagination. Making a presentation in front of people aims to build up students’ confidence and expression force. The last step is very important because all of the students should pay attention to others’ work and share their comments that require their ability of analysis. I believe young kids would really enjoy the class full of creativity.

Self-Introduction

Hello everyone. My name is Jingyi Yuan. I am an international student from China. I am currently studying at NY and I have already been here for 2 years. I like to watch movies and go shopping in my spare time. I also spend much time with my 7-month old Labrador.

I haven’t been teaching yet, but I hope that one day I can either teach English in non-English-speaking country or teach Chinese in the US. So this course would be perfect for me. This summer, I volunteered in a language school as an English teacher. I taught students from Grade 5 which brought me a lot of new experiences and lots of fun. Language arts sounds like an interesting course because we do have different means of expression on the same thing which might cause quite different understandings. Through the learning of last semester, I define new literacies as new forms of literacy existed in the information and technology times. It is always related to digital technology.

Hope to have a great time learning with all of you guys!

Here is the link of my Voki