Report Evidence #3 RICA Domain #1/ Competency 1

TC Name: Sahra Camberos

RICA Domain: Planning, Organizing and Managing Reading Instruction Based on Ongoing Assessment

RICA Competency: Planning, Organizing and Managing Reading Instruction D.1, E.1

Grade Level: Kindergarten

                This isn’t a lesson but this is one tool that my cooperating teacher uses to make sure that students are reading outside the classroom under the supervision of parents/guardians. Our students are still at the beginning stages of recognizing sight words and letter recognition; therefore at this stage most students will be read to instead of actually doing the reading on their own. The teacher enrolled the students in a reading program entitled, “Book-It.” This is a program that gives children a free pizza from Pizza Hut for every 10 books they read.

                While this is a great incentive for children, my teacher requires that every two weeks 10 books be read to the students and kept track of in the reading log, which the teacher collects. This gives parents a role in their students learning to read because the reading log requires a parent signature.  For this reading log the teacher does not care which books are read for the first couple of months but as time goes by she increases the standard of what the kindergarteners should be reading. She also does not count pages; she’s more interested in the books they read instead of reading to a number page.

INSTRUCTIONAL SETTING: The teacher has a library that is used by the children daily if they finish their center work early. They also have comfy rugs and big pillows that they can lay on when sitting in the library corner. This gives the library a homey feeling encouraging them to finish their center work faster so they can spend time in the library. 

Report Evidence #2 RICA Domain #5/ Competency 13

TC Name: Sahra Camberos
RICA Domain: Comprehension
RICA Competency: Comprehension: Instruction and Assessment-Before Children Read, While Children Read, After Children Read
Grade Level: Kindergarten

For this lesson my cooperating teacher began to teach the class about comprehension through stories. The teacher began by holding up the book "The Gingerbread Man," and asking some introductory questions before diving into the story. For example she asked what the class thought the gingerbread man was doing? She waited for the children to think and then respond to her question. Most students answered that he was running away. She also asked "why do you think he's running?" Here she is getting them thinking about what the story could be about and helping them make inferences from the cover of the book about what the story will be about. While she reads the story, she reinforces what happened before in the story, what is currently going on in the story and asking what students will think will happen next in the story. this is an example of right there (literal) questions and think and search questions.This is helpful for EL's and lower ability students because they are constantly hearing the main point s in the story emphasized.
             Once the teacher has finished reading, she takes out her felt board and spreads out felt characters related to the story on the floor. She then uses her Popsicle name sticks to call students up one at a time to put the story in order using the felt characters. For instance, she asks, "what happened first in the story?" When the child picks up a certain felt piece she asks them why they picked that one and the student explains their reasoning. This continues until all the felt pieces are up on the board; this is an example of the children retelling the story orally, since they are not yet able to write well. This is known as a probed retell.
 INSTRUCTIONAL SETTING: 
For this activity the book of the Gingerbread Man was closed and there were no visual cues or signals as to what came at the beginning, middle or end of the story. However, as students put up felt pieces of the story on the board it helped other students recall what came next in the story through a visual.

Report Evidence #1 RICA Domain 2/ Competency 4

TC Name: Sahra Camberos
RICA Domain: Word Analysis
RICA Competency: Concepts about Print, Letter Recognition and the Alphabetic Principle 2.B.4
Grade Level: Kindergarten

INSTRUCTION:

 I observed my teacher educating her class about the importance of letter recognition. For the first three weeks of school my cooperating teacher has been doing a "letter of the day." This particular day the class focused on the letter D. The teacher first reads the class a book entitled, "My D Book." That provides visual representation of various items that young children can recognize that begin with the letter D. As she would pronounce a word that started with D, she would make sure she would clearly say the sound that D makes.

When she was done reading the book she asked the class if they could think of any words that started with D? She would then make the "duh" sound that D makes a couple of times so that the children could hear. She called on a few students to get their responses and if they responded with a word that did not start with D, she would tell them what letter it did start with and compare the sounds the letters made.

 Then using the "elmo" projector, the teacher would model what the children were expected to do on the D letter worksheet. This worksheet helps the children practice writing uppercase D's. There are 3 different size uppercase D's on the worksheet. The largest letter D's the teacher has the students go over in 3 crayons for each letter; this allows for more practice. The medium sized D's, the teacher demonstrated that the students had to fill in pencil. Then she modeled that the students would trace over the dotted small uppercase D's and in the bottom portion the students would write the uppercase D's free-hand.

The teacher would then pass out the worksheets and have the students go back to their desks to start working on them. As they would finish the teacher and myself would come around to check that the letter D's looked correct and that none were written way outside the lines or not touching the bottom/top of the line. If they had some letter D's that were not correct the students would fix them and then receive a star at the top of their paper.

INSTRUCTIONAL SETTING:

I observed that this classroom that there were many instances for visual support. For example, the teacher leaves the elmo projector on with her modeled worksheet visible for the students to reference to. She also has laminated ABC's, that border the front top wall of her room. She also has a letter tree right next the board that contains the letter the students are focusing on for the day, "D," along with a few pictures of words that begin with D; for instance, "dish," "dog," "doll."