Franchesca'a+Recommendations

=Recommendations based on the Report of the National Literacy Panel= submitted by,Franchesca Chavez Techniques of delivering lessons and providing opportunities for students to construct learning leads to effective classrooms and schools. As suggested in the findings and recommendations of acticles presented in the Report of the National Literacy Panel, school change in literacy development amongst students is most effected by the teacher. Therefore I would like to share with you some of the teaching practices referenced in the articles that are also used within my school district. Instruction in my classroom is based on the theroy of //the gradual release of responsibility,// developed by Pearson and Gallagher (1983).

In this method of instruction students are scaffolded through many literacy based activities to finally achieve independence with the content. The first phase requires modeling or direct instruction, which can be accomplished through read alouds or think alouds. If your purpose is to teach inferences the two could be incorporated by reading to your students as you stop and begin to monitor your own comprehension aloud. Showing them explicitly how determined an inference about a character or other literary aspect. From that point shared practice is initiated and can be done through shared reading or writing. Together with students' assistance a smaller piece of text could be read together with the teacher's voice leading and with an explicit focus related to the modeled lesson. At this stage the teacher is still doing the majority of the work, so while reading you should indicate what part helps you infer about the character or story. Next, guded practice is delivered through guided reading or guided writing. Again, the same focus should be continued in this activity. Guided reading is usually done in small groups between 2-6 students and here the work is done by the students with the teacher's guidance. Finally, the students should be prepared for independent practice, which can be done in many forms that carry the same focus. In this example I would continue with independent reading of text to produce a written explanation of an inference possibly in the form of a journal entry.

Another type of activity that follows the gradual release of responsibilty well is reciprocal teaching. This strategy works well with expository texts and is completed in groups of 3-4. Students should be assigned roles like the teacher, writer, speaker, time or task keeper and be concentrating on four comprehension stratigies; predicting, clarifying, questioning, and summarizng. To begin you would model each comprehension strategy and role. Then include students in share reading texts and particpating in some roles and strategies. After that whole class sessions with students participating in all the roles as you guide. Last but not least the students can now independently work through text books in groups monitoring each others' comprehension. Making students active particpants in their learning is key to improving academic progress. All the above strategies are flexible depending on your group of students. Teacher judgement and its influence on students has found to be the most effective indicator of progress in a student.

For additional resources: http://pers.dadeschools.net/prodev/model_lesson_.htm http://home.earthlink.net/~jhholly/gradualrelease.htm http://www.justreadnow.com/strategies/reciprocal.htm http://reading.ecb.org/downloads/itb_GradualRelease.pdf http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7234435355880823218__