CSTP 3: Understanding & Organizing Subject Matter for Student Learning
I. Data Collection Paper (Language Arts)
3.2 Applying knowledge of student development and proficiencies to ensure student understanding of subject matter
I am currently working in a bilingual kindergarten class at Olivewood Elementary School in National City. Classroom instruction is 90% Spanish and 10% English, following the traditional transitional bilingual program schoolwide. Every student in my class is an English Language Learner (Spanish is their native language) and 100% qualify for free or reduced lunch. For a lot of these kindergarten students, this is their first exposure to the English language and I feel honored to be a part of their academic, social, and emotional learning in Spanish and in English.
In order to gather information about the reading comprehension strategies that students in my classroom are currently using, I first interviewed my cooperating teacher Señora Carmen Alejandro. I created the following survey and asked her to check which strategies she has explicitly taught in the classroom, strategies the students use while reading, and to rate which strategies she thinks are most commonly used among the students. Here were my findings:
I found it very interesting that according to Señora Alejandro, making connections is the most common reading comprehension strategy among students. When I asked her to explain why, she said that this group of students loves to share personal stories and relate what’s happening in the book to something from their life. Because these students are still learning to read independently, this data I collected from my Cooperating Teacher is based on whole group read alouds and small group reading centers. This knowledge laid the foundation for my subsequent observations over the past two weeks.
Every Tuesday and Thursday for the past two weeks I have been observing and recording which specific reading comprehension strategies I have noticed the students verbally using during read aloud time with Señora Alejandro in the mornings and afternoons. Of course, because instruction is 90% Spanish, I observed the read alouds in Spanish and later “interviewed” students in small groups completely in Spanish. Everytime I heard or saw one of the strategies being used by a student or whole group, I would put a tally mark on my recording sheet. Here is what I found:
Visualizing: 5
Predicting: 7 (only when prompted by teacher)
Making Connections: 10
Determining Importance: 5
Questioning: 5
I found that the most natural and common reading comprehension strategy for the students was making connections. In fact, this was the only reading strategy the students used on their own without prompting from the teacher. For example, when we read a book about a young boy who lost a tooth, the students were noticeably eager to share moments from their lives when they had a loose tooth or when their older siblings lost teeth. The teacher had barely shown the cover page of the book with a picture of the boy and his loose tooth when six hands immediately shot in the air wanting to share. I was impressed with this class’ willingness to share their ideas, participate in discussions about the book and connect it to their lives. The other reading comprehension strategies I observed (predicting, visualizing, and determining importance, questioning) all resulted from direct teacher prompting. For example, the teacher would ask “¿Qué crees que va a pasar?” (“what do you think is going to happen?”) at pivotal moments throughout the read aloud story. The majority of the students who raised their hands were able to formulate accurate predictions based on the pictures from the story. Additionally, at the end of the story, the teacher would often ask the students what the book was about. I believe this is a form of encouraging the reading comprehension strategy of determining importance. The majority of the students who raised their hands were also able to respond with a short, paraphrased summary of what they just read.
The students in this kindergarten class, like most four and five year olds, love asking the question, “¿Porqué?”. They are curious about the world around them and I think we should encourage this quality in young kids. During the read alouds however, I noticed only a few children asking questions when they did not understand something from the text. This surprised me because I had assumed that questioning would’ve been the most commonly used strategy. As a student teacher in this class, I hope to create lessons in the future that encourage the use of asking questions in order to better understand the story.
Finally, the last strategy I used in order to collect and analyze data was a direct interview with the students. The reading strategies I had observed during read aloud were only based on students’ verbal responses, but I wanted to develop another way to collect data that tapped into what reading comprehension strategies the students were using in their heads. One afternoon during reading centers, I worked with groups of five students and read aloud a book about a group of friends going to a championship soccer game. With each group I asked them direct, easy-to-understand questions in order to better understand which reading strategies they are using mentally (without specifically naming the strategy itself).
1) When I read you this book, did you like to picture what’s happening in your head to help you understand?
2) When I read you this book, did you look at the pictures to guess what’s going to happen next?
3) When I read you this book, did you try and think about what the main idea was?
4) When I read you this book, did you think of questions in your head?
5) When I read you this book, did you think of a time in your life that you felt these same feelings? Or a time when you also played soccer or saw someone win
a championship game?
I put a tally mark next to the strategy associated with each question mark and my results closely reflected my observations during whole group read alouds. Here were my findings from most commonly used strategy to least commonly used strategy: Making connections, predicting, visualizing, questioning, determining importance. I chose to display this data in a bar graph in order to visually see which strategies the students use the most.
As a future teacher, I think collecting data like this is incredibly important because it shows what the students’ strengths and weaknesses are and how you can direct your teaching to best reach the students. Knowing which strategies are the most common and enjoyable for students will help me plan future Language Arts reading lessons accordingly. Furthermore, I believe it is important to practice “inquiry-based teaching” by taking on a researcher’s role as a teacher to better inform your teaching strategies. In order to do so, observation and interviews are necessary. In this data collection analysis, I combined a variety of strategies to obtain the data including a teacher interview, whole group observations, and directly questioning students about how they read during small group reading centers. Here is the final bar graph that I created to best display my findings:
3.2 Applying knowledge of student development and proficiencies to ensure student understanding of subject matter
I am currently working in a bilingual kindergarten class at Olivewood Elementary School in National City. Classroom instruction is 90% Spanish and 10% English, following the traditional transitional bilingual program schoolwide. Every student in my class is an English Language Learner (Spanish is their native language) and 100% qualify for free or reduced lunch. For a lot of these kindergarten students, this is their first exposure to the English language and I feel honored to be a part of their academic, social, and emotional learning in Spanish and in English.
In order to gather information about the reading comprehension strategies that students in my classroom are currently using, I first interviewed my cooperating teacher Señora Carmen Alejandro. I created the following survey and asked her to check which strategies she has explicitly taught in the classroom, strategies the students use while reading, and to rate which strategies she thinks are most commonly used among the students. Here were my findings:
I found it very interesting that according to Señora Alejandro, making connections is the most common reading comprehension strategy among students. When I asked her to explain why, she said that this group of students loves to share personal stories and relate what’s happening in the book to something from their life. Because these students are still learning to read independently, this data I collected from my Cooperating Teacher is based on whole group read alouds and small group reading centers. This knowledge laid the foundation for my subsequent observations over the past two weeks.
Every Tuesday and Thursday for the past two weeks I have been observing and recording which specific reading comprehension strategies I have noticed the students verbally using during read aloud time with Señora Alejandro in the mornings and afternoons. Of course, because instruction is 90% Spanish, I observed the read alouds in Spanish and later “interviewed” students in small groups completely in Spanish. Everytime I heard or saw one of the strategies being used by a student or whole group, I would put a tally mark on my recording sheet. Here is what I found:
Visualizing: 5
Predicting: 7 (only when prompted by teacher)
Making Connections: 10
Determining Importance: 5
Questioning: 5
I found that the most natural and common reading comprehension strategy for the students was making connections. In fact, this was the only reading strategy the students used on their own without prompting from the teacher. For example, when we read a book about a young boy who lost a tooth, the students were noticeably eager to share moments from their lives when they had a loose tooth or when their older siblings lost teeth. The teacher had barely shown the cover page of the book with a picture of the boy and his loose tooth when six hands immediately shot in the air wanting to share. I was impressed with this class’ willingness to share their ideas, participate in discussions about the book and connect it to their lives. The other reading comprehension strategies I observed (predicting, visualizing, and determining importance, questioning) all resulted from direct teacher prompting. For example, the teacher would ask “¿Qué crees que va a pasar?” (“what do you think is going to happen?”) at pivotal moments throughout the read aloud story. The majority of the students who raised their hands were able to formulate accurate predictions based on the pictures from the story. Additionally, at the end of the story, the teacher would often ask the students what the book was about. I believe this is a form of encouraging the reading comprehension strategy of determining importance. The majority of the students who raised their hands were also able to respond with a short, paraphrased summary of what they just read.
The students in this kindergarten class, like most four and five year olds, love asking the question, “¿Porqué?”. They are curious about the world around them and I think we should encourage this quality in young kids. During the read alouds however, I noticed only a few children asking questions when they did not understand something from the text. This surprised me because I had assumed that questioning would’ve been the most commonly used strategy. As a student teacher in this class, I hope to create lessons in the future that encourage the use of asking questions in order to better understand the story.
Finally, the last strategy I used in order to collect and analyze data was a direct interview with the students. The reading strategies I had observed during read aloud were only based on students’ verbal responses, but I wanted to develop another way to collect data that tapped into what reading comprehension strategies the students were using in their heads. One afternoon during reading centers, I worked with groups of five students and read aloud a book about a group of friends going to a championship soccer game. With each group I asked them direct, easy-to-understand questions in order to better understand which reading strategies they are using mentally (without specifically naming the strategy itself).
1) When I read you this book, did you like to picture what’s happening in your head to help you understand?
2) When I read you this book, did you look at the pictures to guess what’s going to happen next?
3) When I read you this book, did you try and think about what the main idea was?
4) When I read you this book, did you think of questions in your head?
5) When I read you this book, did you think of a time in your life that you felt these same feelings? Or a time when you also played soccer or saw someone win
a championship game?
I put a tally mark next to the strategy associated with each question mark and my results closely reflected my observations during whole group read alouds. Here were my findings from most commonly used strategy to least commonly used strategy: Making connections, predicting, visualizing, questioning, determining importance. I chose to display this data in a bar graph in order to visually see which strategies the students use the most.
As a future teacher, I think collecting data like this is incredibly important because it shows what the students’ strengths and weaknesses are and how you can direct your teaching to best reach the students. Knowing which strategies are the most common and enjoyable for students will help me plan future Language Arts reading lessons accordingly. Furthermore, I believe it is important to practice “inquiry-based teaching” by taking on a researcher’s role as a teacher to better inform your teaching strategies. In order to do so, observation and interviews are necessary. In this data collection analysis, I combined a variety of strategies to obtain the data including a teacher interview, whole group observations, and directly questioning students about how they read during small group reading centers. Here is the final bar graph that I created to best display my findings:
Reflection: This artifact shows how I really narrowed in on one aspect of Language Arts- reading comprehension strategies. My goal was to discover which which strategies are the most common and enjoyable for students. After collecting this data, I used this information to help plan Language Arts lessons accordingly. This artifact is also an example of “inquiry-based teaching” by taking on a researcher’s role as a teacher to better inform your teaching strategies. In order to do so, observation and interviews are necessary. In this data collection analysis, I combined a variety of strategies to obtain the data including a teacher interview, whole group observations, and directly questioning students about how they read during small group reading centers.