Psmith0611's Blog

My Name is Patrick

Patrick — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 20:59:38 +0000

I am the oldest of two children. My brother’s name is Chase which is English in origin. My parents chose the name Patrick for several different reasons. First of all, my father’s parents were married on St. Patrick’s day and my Dad’s father is Irish, so my parents decided to go with the name Patrick. The name Patrick has origins in Irish, Latin, English, French and German. In Latin, the name means “nobleman.” In Ireland, the name comes from Saint Patrick and it was not used before the 17th century because it was considered to be too sacred for everyday use. It is now very common in Ireland and here in the United States as well, as there are over 600,000 people with the first name Patrick. I can say that I have only met a few people that share the same first name.

Internship Reflection Week #5

Patrick — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 01:28:43 +0000

It was another one day week at Glen Alpine Elementary School and I was kind of sad it was. I am really enjoying my time there and wish I could be in the classroom more often. Today, I helped Mrs. Edwards grade papers for part of the class and then did my last mathematical assessment for Dr. Schram. It felt good to finally get that done and over with. Brooke and I both went to Physical Education class with our class for the first time today. I have to say, I had a lot of fun watching and participating in P.E. with the students. It was good to finally see a Physical Education teacher participate with the class that he is teaching. I am used to seeing these teachers just tell their students what is going on and then watching the rest of the time. At lunch, I talked with the students about a wide variety of things. I really feel like I am becoming more and more attached to the students of Mrs. Edwards class. It is a shame that it is all over next Monday!

Internship Reflection Week #4

Patrick — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:27:31 +0000

This past week at Glen Alpine Elementary was another great one for me and I feel like I got to do a lot more in the classroom this week than I have been able to do up to this point. Monday morning, Mrs. Edwards asked me to give a spelling test to one of the girls in her homeroom after they all came back from their reading groups, and I agreed to do as she asked. There were twenty words that I had to give her, ten fourth grade level words and ten fifth grade level words. I explained to the student that I was not going to give her a sentence with each word, but she could ask me for one if it would help her and she could also ask me to repeat a word as many times as she needed as well. I gave her one word at a time and to my surprise, the student did not ask me to use one word in a sentence and only asked for a few words to be repeated. As I was giving her each word, I would look at how she was spelling, just to see what I could learn about her, just as I had done when we gave the entire class a spelling test, and I found myself using the things that we had learned in our own reading class this semester. After she had finished the spelling test, Mrs. Edwards started their class reading lesson for the day. The story was a non-fiction story about wildfires. She really focused on vocabulary, but she wanted her students to gain their knowledge on vocabulary they did not know by using context clues. It was very interesting to watch which ones in the class picked up the idea of context clues right away and others who struggled with it and will eventually need more help down the road.

Following the reading lesson, the class went downstairs for a science lesson with a retired high school teacher, who now goes around to each elementary school in Burke County and teaches different science units. Today’s lesson was on simple machines. The students came right in focused on the teacher right away, which came to me as quite a shock as some of them have a hard time focusing a majority of the time they are in the classroom. After a few minutes observing what this guy was doing with the students it was pretty apparent why it was so easy for the students to come in a focus in quickly. This guy was very friendly, an enthusiastic teacher, and loved to let the students do fun hands on activities that still applied to his lesson.

On Wednesday, Brooke and I came in and immediately helped Mrs. Edwards grade papers, and as we were doing so, she asked us if we would care to take a small group of her homeroom students and lead a reading lesson. I was happy to do so as we have not really been able to interact with the children in the classroom outside of what we had to do for our classes. I got to work with the above reading level students, and we read a non-fiction book about Yellowstone National Park. I read the story before I had to work with them so I knew what I was working with. When we started, Mrs. Edwards instructed me to have these students read to themselves and pull one child at a time and have them read one page to me. After I got each student, I was to go back and talk with the group about what they learned and then focus on the vocabulary within the story and work on context clues again. The students in my group were able to tell me everything about the book that I wanted them to and really worked well with the vocabulary and using context clues. I was very impressed with them, but I guess that is why they were the students labeled above reading level. The rest of the day after working with small groups, Brooke and I just observed from the back of the classroom.

Internship Reflection Week #3

Patrick — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:36:30 +0000

We were only able to go on Monday this week as Wednesday was Veterans Day and school holiday for the students of Glen Alpine Elementary. When we got there Monday morning, we immediately got to work with some of the students in Mrs. Edwards’s reading group by having individual students come to us and read. I only had time to read with two different students, and both of them read fairly well and I did not have to help them too much. Their grammar and pronunciations were very good, but both were not very speedy readers. After that, Mrs. Edwards had us grade some worksheets that the students had done the day before and we then started doing our diagnostic interviews that needed to be completed for our math class. We each got through two students and decided that was enough for the day and decided to just sit and observe. We got to finally see a social studies lesson, something that I was very happy about since I am a social studies concentration.

I was really impressed today with the two students that I pulled out for my diagnostic interviews. Each student seemed very sharp with their mathematic skills and seemed very comfortable in explaining their processes and why they did what they did when solving the problems I gave them. I figured it would have been like pulling teeth to get the students to talk and explain to me, but it went very smoothly.

Internship Reflection Week #2

Patrick — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:24:03 +0000

I really tried to pay attention this week to what Mrs. Edwards was teaching and doing during her reading and language arts time. This week, she was doing her running records with her reading group and then having her homeroom students sit down and give her a quick summary of what it was that they were reading. The running records that she was doing with her reading group were very similar to the passage readings that we gave our first graders for the project that we had to do. Mrs. Edwards had a book preselected and the children would read a section of that book to Mrs. Edwards. Mrs. Edwards would time the students to see how long it took them to read the selected passage and then kept track of the errors that the students made as well. This allowed Mrs. Edwards to gage what reading level each student was on.

During the language arts period, Mrs. Edwards read several poems about the Everglades to her students. During one of the poems, Mrs. Edwards had the students close their eyes and visualize what was going on during the poem. While reading another poem about the Everglades, Mrs. Edwards had the class come up with hand motions for some of the words that were within the poem and when the words were read in the poem, the students were to act out the designated hand motion for that word.

Brooke and I were also able to give our spelling test to Mrs. Edwards’ homeroom this week. We went ahead and graded our tests immediately after we gave it to get it out of the way. I was very surprised with the results and data that we gathered by giving the spelling test. There were four or five students that missed a total of two to three words while a few others spelled five or six words correct total. Overall, we found that most of the students were on a fourth to fifth grade reading level. Following the spelling test, we looked over a few of the students’ DARE essays and made corrections to them. This activity also illustrated some of the students spelling abilities as well as their grammar skills.

I learned a great deal during my time in the schools this week. I enjoyed putting to use several things that we talked about in class. I also found it interesting to see for myself things that we talked about in class as well. Overall, I felt that it was a very productive week.

Creating Fluent Readers

Patrick — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:02:36 +0000

1. What are the three dimensions of fluency? How can you assess each dimension?

Accuracy in Word Decoding – Calculate the percentage of words a reader can accurately decode on grade-level material. An accuracy level of 90 – 95% is usually considered adequate.

Automatic Processing – Measured by reading rate, have students read a grade level passage for 60 seconds and then calculate the number of words read correctly and then compare the scores with the target rates

Prosodic Reading – Listen to a student read a grade level passage and then judge the quality of the reading using a rubric that scores a student on the elements of expression and volume, phrasing, smoothness and pace

2. Rasinski refers to fluency as a “bridge” between decoding and comprehension. What does he mean by the “bridge” metaphor?

I believe that Rasinski is trying to say that reading fluency is the one thing that will connect the literary concepts of decoding and comprehension.

3. What instructional methods does Rasinski suggest for students with difficulties in automatic and prosodic reading?

Repeated readings and Assisted readings

4. Multidimensional Fluency Scale (MFS) is used to measure prosodic quality of oral reading. List components of the MFS and describe what each refers to (p. 49).

Expression and Volume – refers to how loud and how much expression a child uses when reading

Phrasing – refers to how much a student pays attention to sentence structure

Smoothness – refers to how fluent and smooth the student reads a particular passage

Pace – refers to how fast of slow a student reads

Internship Reflection Week #1

Patrick — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 04:37:24 +0000

Wednesday was a fun day at Glen Alpine. Brooke and I decided that we would take this day to get used to the setting and schedule of Ms. Edwards’ classroom. We both worked on getting to know each of the students and Ms. Edwards as well. We got to go around and have the kids read to us during their silent reading time which worked out well for the both of us as we worked on getting an idea of who we would pull out to do our reading activities with for class. We both even played with some of the children during recess as this helped us to get to know them a little better. One of the more interesting parts of the day was the program that the entire fifth grade got to go to. This program was about weather and the guest speaker was a female meteorologist from WBTV in Charlotte. We both got to sit in on this and I even learned some things that I did not know. Outside of that, we sat in with the class while they were in computer class and even sat with them at lunch. Overall, I thought it was a great day and Brooke and I have planned to start doing our assignments for our classes next week. Hopefully it will all go according to plan. I hope to at least knock out a good chunk of it anyway.

Book Review #15

Patrick — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:06:02 +0000

Title: There Once Was a Puffin

Author: Florence Page Jaques

Date of Publication: 2003

ISBN: 00735817715

Grade Level: 1^stGrade and 2^nd Grade

What is it about: The story is about a little Puffin that had an island all to himself. He ate fish for breakfast and used them for tea. Puffin started to get very lonely and began to cry. The fish came out of the sea and offered to be Puffin’s playmates if he promised not to eat them or use them for tea. So Puffin and the fish play and eat pancakes together.

Theme: You can find friends in the unlikeliest of places.

Other Uses: This would be a great book to illustrate rhymes and have children make rhymes of their own.

Book Review #14

Patrick — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:00:03 +0000

Title: Danny and the Dinosaur Go to Camp

Author: Syd Hoff

Date of Publication: 1996

ISBN: 0060264403

Grade Level: 1^stGrade and 2^nd Grade

What is it about: The story is about Danny and his pet dinosaur and their adventure to summer camp. The book talks about all the activities that Danny does at camp and that the dinosaur participates in along with Danny and the group.

Theme: I think this story shows how much fun kids can have at camp.

Other Uses: This would be a great book to read to children before summer, because it could show them how much fun they could have.

Book Review #13

Patrick — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:39:52 +0000

Title: Big Kicks

Author: Bob Kolar

Date of Publication: 2008

ISBN: 9780763633905

Grade Level: 2^nd Grade

What is it about: The story is about a huge bear named Biggie. The animals of the town come to Biggie and ask him to play in their soccer game. Biggie claims he has never played soccer before, but the animals beg and plea because the dog, who was a team member, came down with a case of the fleas. Biggie decides to play, but is not very good. Just as time runs out, Biggie scores the winning goal in a very odd way. The animals all befriend him and Biggie throws a party to celebrate.

Theme: I think this story can teach kids that even though they are not very good at something they can still have success at it.

Other Uses: This would be a great book to use in a science lesson when talking about animals because of the variety of animals seen in the story. Students could also write or draw a picture about a time when they thought they were not good at something, succeeded anyway.