Inquiry 2: Part A questions

1.     Describe your target area for guided lead teaching.

·       I will be creating a unit on characters for my Guided Lead Teaching. In this unit, readers will talk and think about the characters in their books. Key concepts of this unit are; collecting ideas on graphic organizers/post-its, comparing and contrasting characters within texts and across texts, creating conversation about the characters in texts, making inferences about characters and retelling using story elements.

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

·       Everyday we have 20 minutes for a read aloud which is immediately followed by 40 minutes for Reader’s Workshop. I will be able to read texts with good examples of characters during the read aloud and follow that with a mini lesson.

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

·       RL.2.3 Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges.

·       RL.2.6 Acknowledge differences in the points of view of characters, including by speaking in a different voice for each character when reading dialogue aloud.

·       RL.2.7 Use information gained from the illustrations and words in a print or digital text to demonstrate understanding of its characters, setting, or plot.

·       SL.2.2 Recount or describe key ideas or details from a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media.

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?

·       Characters are vital to stories and to how readers understand a text. They are found in a wide variety of genres and allow authors to get across their messages, illicit emotion and guide readers through their stories.

Readers will develop theories and grow ideas about the characters in their texts. They will learn how to have conversations about characters with their reading partners that involve an exchange of ideas. Readers will learn about literature by identifying character traits by inferring from text, study how characters handle situations they face and compare a character from one book to a character from another book, or from a student’s life. Readers will study the changes in the character across the plotline of the book and think about a character’s motives by thinking about why the character acts as he or she does.

Readers will learn through literacy by forming theories about specific characters in their books. As children continue to read in a text, they usually revise their theories as they follow a character through different situations and encounters. What is motivating the character? Does the character change across the plotline of the book(s)? How do secondary charters affect the main character?

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)?

·       Throughout the lesson, there will be a balance of teacher-led talk and student-led talk. The read alouds and mini-lessons will be teacher-led with opportunities for students to talk. After the mini-lesson the students will be reading stories to themselves or to a partner. The format for our read alouds now is to read the text to the students, then have to students turn and talk to a neighbor with about the prompt they were listening for (example: what do you think the author’s message is?) and finally they get in a large circle and listen to each others ideas. I love that this that has been established as a class norm because it encourages discussion instead of the typical lecture format seen in most classes.

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?

·       I would like to focus on developing structures that promote purposeful talk. As I mentioned before, some of these structures are already in place but I would like to try more. I have never been in a class that used paired reading, jigsaw discussions or book clubs. I think these can be great assets to comprehension and I would like to try them to grow myself as a teacher and widen my knowledge of facilitating such structures.

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

·       There are leveled reading books in our library that I will have to go through to find ones with good/strong characters in every reading level. We also have two reading interventionists and a librarian at our school that I can connect with for advice. I am also using Waterford School District and Oakland Schools Curriculum guides to help shape my unit.

8.     What additional resources do you need to obtain?

·       I need to find the books that I will be using for my read alouds. My teacher has a very large supply of books of all genres and topics so I know I wont have a problem getting enough books—the key will be finding the best books for each mini-lesson. I also need to find books for each of my distinct reading levels of my students for the partner or group share aspect of my unit.

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

·       Currently, my students have been told to follow the character in order to find the author’s message or big idea. Through observation, I have noticed that the students can find the big idea of the story but cannot use examples of how the character helped them do that. This unit will be much more explicit for them in terms of what they need to look for and give them examples of how characters shape stories.

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?

·       I need to know how much prior knowledge my students have with characters and hope they shape texts. If they have some prior knowledge then I build off of that instead of doing things that will be boring to them since they already know it. If they don’t have any prior knowledge, its fine, I will have to make sure I do a thorough job scaffolding their understanding. 

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

·       My main concern that I need to clear up with my MT is that our Reader’s Workshop typically consists of a mini-lesson and then 25 minutes of silent reading from their leveled books to gain stamina. I need to see if these 25 minutes are required everyday or if I can use that time to do a partner or group read instead. I am also concerned about finding enough low-level books that have good examples of characters in them so I need to start looking right away.

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

·       As for the actual teaching of the unit, I am concerned with my classroom and time management. I have slowly begun to take on more responsibilities in the class that have allowed the students to see me as a teacher too so hopefully they respond well to my lessons and respect me as their teacher. Planning out how much time each activity and transition will take will also be a challenge. I hope to get advice from my MT for this.