...As we sit in the theatre’s lobby at the University of Illinois in Springfield, the nerves and tension begin to settle in all of us. Most were either playing cards or gossiping about the other shows. The rest of us were quietly thinking about the fate of our show. As our coach came out of the office, we headed outside. He holds up a small piece of paper and flips it over. We all start screaming, hugging each other. My greatest success is being the stage manager for a state winning theater program. “Hey, Tom you ready for the play this year?” My coach Mr. Wargin says as I walk into the little theatre. “Of course! It’s my senior year, it is going to be the best year for us, I promise!” As the other stage managers and I stand on the stage taking attendance and pass out the calendar of practices and events, Mr. Wargin tells us a game plan. “We meet every Tuesday and Thursday; occasionally we’ll have a Saturday where we work all day. We’ll use those Saturdays for when we are falling behind and need to finish big projects that we can’t finish during the school week. We provide lunch if you come, and it is greatly appreciated if you do.” He continues to say, “We have two sets to build, one for each play, and we have about a month and a half to complete both”. He explains that our contest play is “The Picnic” and we are going to build two houses, with faux grass, something we have never done before. Our other show, the group interpretation, is “A League of Their Own”. This show...
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...The student diversity is 2 Hispanics, 1 African-American, 1 East Indian, and 1 New Zealander (White but with an extreme accent). Three children were left-handed. OVERVIEW Two days a week in the morning, the children participate in a reading and writing block called “literacy and writing workshop.” The classroom is organized into five different levels with one group having one extra person; the levels are based on scoring of reading assessments. The groups are rotated so that each may spend 15 minutes cycles with either the teacher or Para-educator. The groups not with an instructor were to work on the “Daily-5” (explanation later) until their scheduled lesson. After the students finish their lesson, they are to fill the remainder of the workshop time working on “Daily-5.” This workshop is part of a regular routine. The students understand that after a reading a story with the teacher, they are verbally given a writing assignment. The assignment is usually to write a five sentence paragraph and color a picture related to the reading. READING ASSIGNMENT I observed Mrs. Guimond begin at 0915 with a group of five boys. It is a reading group that struggles with pronunciation and comprehension. The group individually takes turns reading a paragraph from a short story. The story is always 12 paragraphs long and has pictures that relate to the topic (it is designed for groups with six members). After each student reads his paragraph two questions are asked; one is to the...
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...[pic] JPPSS ELA COURSE GUIDE 2011-2012 ENGLISH I The JPPSS Instructional Sequence Guides are aligned with the LA Comprehensive Curriculum. JPPSS Implementation of Activities in the Classroom Incorporation of activities into lesson plans is critical to the successful implementation of the Louisiana Comprehensive Curriculum. The Comprehensive Curriculum indicates one way to align instruction with Louisiana standards, benchmarks, and grade-level expectations. The curriculum is aligned with state content standards, as defined by grade-level expectations (GLEs), and organized into coherent, time-bound units with sample activities and classroom assessments to guide teaching and learning. The units in the curriculum have been arranged so that the content to be assessed will be taught before the state testing dates. While teachers may substitute equivalent activities and assessments based on the instructional needs, learning styles, and interests of their students, the Comprehensive Curriculum should be a primary resource when planning instruction. Grade level expectations—not the textbook—should determine the content to be taught. Textbooks and other instructional materials should be used as resource in teaching the grade level expectations...
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...The course Reading and Writing across the curriculum was expectedly an eye opener for me. As per usual with courses taught by Dr. Saul and Mrs. Rock, I expected to be involved in activities which showed the importance of reading and writing across all subject matter in the curriculum. My first thoughts of reading and writing were that it was linked exclusively to Language Arts but this course has shown the importance of reading and writing throughout the curriculum. The first topic that intrigued me was Chall’s Stages of Reading Development. These six (6) stages show step by step the process of reading development a child undertakes straight up to adulthood. By having an understanding of these stages and the characteristics that children portray in each, a teacher can effectively cater to the needs of the children. For example, in the first stage, the Pre-Reading Stage, aged six (6) months to (6) years, children garner information via being read to by an adult, who responds to and warmly appreciates the child’s interest in books and reading and via play with books, pencils, paper and blocks. This stage creates a foundation for reading and writing as children identify letters and understand words they hear even though they can read few if any at all. Teachers or adults can let children choose books of interest and read them to them consistently to aid in retention of knowledge. Knowledge of Chall’s Stages of Reading Development is also immensely useful when dealing with children...
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...“No skill is more crucial to the future of a child, or to a democratic and prosperous society, than literacy” (The Literacy Company. 2016). This quote could not be truer than it is in today’s world and with today’s economy being as demanding as it is. Rafael Heller tells the readers of his article, “The Scope of the Adolescent Literacy Crisis,” that a two-year college education is almost necessary for a person to get a decent paying job (2016b). Recently, reading and writing professionally have become part of the job requirements and many young adults graduating from high school fail to have the literacy skills required to fulfill these requirements. As someone who has had difficulty in the past with professional reading and writing, and as...
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...Overview “Monsoon Flood” tells the dramatic fictional story of a young boy who is swept away in a flood and then rescued by an elephant. Told in the present tense and the first person, with vivid use of language, this is a story you may want to read aloud (or have students read aloud) for enjoyment and to prompt creative responses before doing any detailed examination of the text. This text includes: • some compound and complex sentences, which may consist of two or three clauses; • some words and phrases that are ambiguous or unfamiliar to the students, the meaning of which is supported by the context or clarified by photographs, illustrations, diagrams, and/or written explanations; • a straightforward text structure; • figurative language, such as metaphors, similes, or personification; • some abstract ideas that are clearly supported by concrete examples in the text or easily linked to the students’ prior knowledge; • some places where information and ideas are implicit and where students need to make inferences based on information that is easy to find because it is nearby in the text and there is little or no competing information. Reading standard, end of year 4 Options for curriculum contexts English (level 2, language features) • Show some understanding of how language features are used for effect within and across texts. The arts (level 2, dance, Developing Ideas) • Use the elements of dance in purposeful ways to respond...
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...Fahrenheit 451: Prompt One The public has not ceased reading, but, the appeal reading once had is beginning to diminish. In the past, people read more frequently. There were not a myriad of other things to fill ones pastimes. Reading is beginning to fade because society is letting it and replacing it with other forms of entertainment. Nowadays, people from older generations read a lot more than people from your generations reading. I think this is because the technology gap from generation to generation. Every age group becomes more obsessed and preoccupied by the current technologies. The more new forms of entertainment there are, the less people will read. Since technology is entertainment, children from more recent generations are going...
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...Curriculum Guides for Academic Interventions Sheila Klemann Grand Canyon University Abstract Curriculum Guides for Academic Interventions The following is a curriculum guide intended for special educators to teach reading and writing skills to primary students with EBD. Reading and writing are closely related, mutually supportive linguistic activities. Therefore, developing beginning reading skills through writing activities is an effective approach. Writing requires careful scrutiny of the sound and sequence in order to write words correctly and it is this cognitive process that enables the child to become proficient in the phonetic analysis skills that are the foundation of the reading process. This guide will include principles of effective instruction and some teaching strategies used to address the needs of students with EBD. At times it will refer to principles governing behavior that impact the outcomes of instruction. It will include some instructional lessons for teaching primary reading and writing, the steps to achieve the objectives and assessment procedures to insure the efficacy of interventions. Since there hasn’t been many scientifically based studies of EBD specific to these subjects (Yell, Meadows, Drasgow, & Shriner, 2009), the guide will show how a task analysis can be used to design an effective lesson. Teaching children with EBD is compounded by the fact that their behavior problems are often caused by...
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...responsible for doing this on their own. I tend to think like you, but students do need to develop responsibility. I’m sure the teacher doesn’t want to have parents commenting on absences that were not absences. At 8.40 a.m., the students head to Success Makers in the library (see description above). During this time, Mrs. Sinatro and I take the time to correct homework from the previous night. I am happy to be included in doing this task, even if it is small, because I know that it is something that will have to be done when I am a certified teacher. At 9:00 a.m., the students return to the classroom. At this time, they are asked to complete a previous assignment before moving on to their reading assignment. At 9:30 a.m., as planned, Mrs. Sinatro chooses four students to work with me in a novel reading group. Before we start, I ask all the students to read the title of the book and the back description, and predict what they think the book is going to be about. They all seem to...
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...it was not linked to the word. When a behaviour or skill seems to no longer require direct interaction, cognitive psychologists say it is automatized. Many behaviours can become automatized: typing, reading, writing to name just a few. To explore properties of automatized behaviours cognitive psychologists often put observers in a situation where an automatized response is in conflict with the desired behaviour. This allows researchers to test the behind-the-scenes properties of automatized behaviours by noting their influence on more easily measured behaviours. This demonstration explores a well-known example of this type of influence, the Stroop effect. Stroop (1935) noted that observers were slower to properly identify the colour of ink when the ink was used to produce colour names different from the ink. That is, observers were slower to identify red ink when it spelled the word blue. This is an interesting finding because observers are told to not pay any attention to the word names and simply report the colour of the ink. However, this seems to be a nearly impossible task, as the name of the word seems to interfere with the observer's ability to report the colour of the ink. A common explanation for the Stroop effect is that observers have automatized the process of reading. Thus, the colour names of the words are always processed very quickly, regardless of the colour of the ink. On the other hand, identifying colours is...
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...reading and studying focusing on print and online materials ISBN 1-256-09222-3 Keys to Effective Learning: Study Skills and Habits for Success, Sixth Edition, by Carol Carter, Joyce Bishop, and Sarah Lyman Kravits. Published by Allyn & Bacon. Copyright © 2011 by Pearson Education, Inc. c h a p t e r 7 hanh never had trouble keeping up with her high school reading assignments, but after four weeks of college she is already snowed under. With midterms coming in two weeks, she stays awake at night thinking about how much she has to learn. It seems as if all the reading she has done this term—particularly what she has read on the computer—has gone in one side of her brain and out the other, so she feels she has to start at the beginning. She has the sense that the way she is reading may be a problem, but it worked for her in the past, so why change now? In this chapter . . . you explore answers to the following questions: HOW can SQ3R help you own what you read? p. 190 WHAT improves reading comprehension? p. 200 HOW do you customize a text with highlighting and notes? p. 205 HOW can you read online materials effectively? p. 208 ISBN 1-256-09222-3 © Shutterstock Keys to Effective Learning: Study Skills and Habits for Success, Sixth Edition, by Carol Carter, Joyce Bishop, and Sarah Lyman Kravits. Published by Allyn & Bacon. Copyright © 2011 by Pearson Education, Inc. Habit for Success ask questions Questions are the backbone of learning. They help...
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...University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate School Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 6-1-2010 Effects of reading comprehension and fluency abilities on the N400 event-related potential Annie Hirt Nelson University of South Florida Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons Scholar Commons Citation Nelson, Annie Hirt, "Effects of reading comprehension and fluency abilities on the N400 event-related potential" (2010). Graduate School Theses and Dissertations. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/1721 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate School Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact scholarcommons@usf.edu. Effects of Reading Comprehension and Fluency Abilities on the N400 Event-Related Potential by Annie Hirt Nelson A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Childhood Education and Literacy Studies College of Education University of South Florida Major Professor: Mary Lou Morton, Ph.D. Jacqueline Hinckley, Ph.D. Jim King, Ed.D. Richard Marshall, Ph.D. Date of Approval: July 1, 2010 Keywords: syntax, semantics, ERP, N400, sentence structure, children, indexical hypothesis Copyright © 2010, Annie Hirt Nelson ...
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...essential when teaching a literacy class. I always have students to write down the before, during, and after strategy used in each lesson. For example, I use the KWL chart to access the student’s prior knowledge, what they want to learn as well as what they have learn. Next, I used a semantic strategy during the lesson assessing the student’s vocabulary growth. Finally, most importantly the after strategy “Ticket out the Door” students share on a sticky note what they have learned or answer to question related to the lesson. As a 5th grade basic social teacher I found that it is very important to use read aloud to keep the students energized and it also increase the student’s literacy growth. According to the article “The Importance of Reading Aloud for All Children a classroom that uses read aloud on a daily basic develops an increase in the student’s oral language. I used this to help students collaborate with each other. This is a...
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...able to make sense of as well as engage in advanced reading, writing, listening, and speaking and as educators we are challenged with the task of coming up with proper strategies to meet these needs of our students in all subject areas. There are a few strategies that I have used in the past to incorporate balanced literacy into classroom instruction. The first method I love incorporate is the read -aloud method. I often times read out loud to the classroom as well as in small groups so that I can model the correct strategies and behaviors of students. For example, I model reading behaviors, such as handling a book and reading from top to bottom and left to right as well as making sure I expose students to books with rhyming or predictable patterns for critical thinking and comprehension. From books, articles and even instructions I make sure that I read with enthusiasm, rhythm, and the proper intonation to keep students engaged and learning. A second strategy I have used is the shared reading strategy. This were I read along with the students so that students are able to discover new words and their meanings. While warming up to a book I usually engage my students by asking questions to prompt discussion. For example, if we are reading a book about a circus, I may ask “What do you think our new book is about?” “Who has been to the circus?” Using this particular strategy I am able to get students to actively participate in reading. They are ready to learn and some may even try to...
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...then identify one educational resource for each of those five categories. 1. Multimedia Knowledge Adventure – Reading Blaster (Knowledge Adventure, 2007-14) 2. Audio Lit2Go (FCIT, 2006-16) 3. Video PBS Learning Media (PBS & Ed. Foundation, 2016) 4. Maps Social Studies Online (Jefferson County Schools, 2016) 5. Visuals Skip Counting Posters (Multiples of 2-12) (Teachers Pay Teachers, 2015) B. Create a matrix that evaluates the effectiveness of each of the resources you selected in part A for each of the following categories: -early childhood -learning disabled -hearing impaired -gifted and talented -visually impaired -behaviorally challenged -English language learner Category | Materials/Resources | Early Childhood | Learning Disabled | Hearing Impaired | Gifted/Talented | Limited Sight | Behaviorally Challenged | ESLMulticultural | Multimedia | Knowledge Adventure –Reading Blaster | x | x | x | x | o | x | x | Audio | Lit2Go | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | Video | PBS Learning Media | x | x | o | x | x | x | x | Maps | Social Studies OnlineMaps | x | x | x | x | o | x | x | Visuals | Teachers Pay TeachersSkip Counting Posters | x | x | x | x | o | x | x | C1. Write a rationale in which you justify why each resource is or is not appropriate to support a diverse student population. Knowledge Adventure Reading Blaster There are many good things...
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