This class was very informal with lots of sound advice and counsel.  Always work with mentor teacher and do what they do.  For advice, ask mentor teacher plus two other teachers.  If a student does not ready by third grade, then reading will be a continued struggle.  Read aloud to students everyday.  If a child can't put puzzle together, they can't read.  Keep portfolios:  student portfolio-use a binder, not confidential which contains beginning, middle, and end.  Data folders: students graph their work, samples of writings like how many letters they know.  Cumulative folder:  permanent folder, facts, grades, attendance, or promoted grade.  Greatest resource is the library; librarians can pull books for teachers.  Be nice to librarians, custodians and secretary.  Find level of comfort in the classroom.  Students will like what you like.  Nothing is wrong with worksheets.  Are you teaching standards?  Writing is learning to read.  If students can't understand; do a mini-lesson.  Balanced reading was very informative:  independent reading, shared reading, read aloud, writing, guided reading, and phonics/word study.   There were the development reading stages:  emergent, early, and fluent readers.  There were the cueing prompts like syntactic (structure), graphophonic (visual), and semantic (meaning).  These prompts helps the teacher whether the students understand what they're reading.  The different types of assessments were helpful:  formal, informal, formative and summative assessment.

 

 

I observed three classrooms for reading.  One class each student read aloud and then called on someone else to read.  The teacher used ACE which stands for A is answer the question in a complete sentence; C stands for cite evidence; E stand for expand or explain.  The story that was read was "Through Grandpa's Eyes"; about a blind man.  There were questions that needed an answer like:  Does being blind stop you from doing things?  One class read the Weekly Reader and answered the questions.  The teacher walked around while she read the article; she read about Rosa Parks and how she would not give up her seat on the bus.  She asked the students how they would feel if they could not ride the bus.  The last teacher that I observed have been reading about whales.  The teacher wrote vocabulary words and their definitions.  They discussed all this before reading the book.  The teacher wanted the students to understand the vocabulary words before reading the book, which made sense to me.

I had an assignment where I had to read a book aloud to the students at different grade levels.  I read to the 5th grade class and I was surprised when the students listened and enjoyed the book.  I read aloud to lower grade levels and they are used to read alouds and they were not surprised, but expected it.  Students would comment when they made a connection with a past experience or recent experience.