Lauren Bowman Professor Nottis EDUC 342 30 April 2013 Paper #3 From the assessment (part of the California

English-Language Arts Standards Test for third grade) and in talking with the teacher, I determined that Kailey sometimes struggles with vocabulary when reading passages because she is an ELL. This was supported by the questions she missed on my assessment. Both questions she missed necessitated students comprehension of vocabulary. After consulting our textbook, Teaching in Todays Inclusive Classroom I decided to implement a vocabulary lesson to help Kailey work on her vocab skills. My objective was to teach Kailey a few grade-appropriate vocab words while checking her understanding of synonyms and giving her tools to remember English words. I researched typical third-grade level vocabulary words and chose four adjectives that I would work on with Kailey (http://www.flocabulary.com/3rd-grade-vocabulary-word-list/). These words were clever, fortunate, gradual, and sensitive. I chose clever because Kailey had missed a question on the assessment that had asked her to provide a synonym for clever. Instead of choosing smart, she chose young. So, I started out by showing Kailey the list with all four words on it and asked her which words she recognized. She said she knew clever and sensitive but had never seen fortunate or gradual. I asked her what she thought clever and sensitive meant. She said that clever meant smart and sensitive had to do with feelings. So then I had her read the sentences that had gradual in context aloud. After she read it, I asked her what she thought gradual could mean after reading the sentences. She

thought it mean unsure. So I read the sentences out loud to her and asked her what she thought gradual meant. She was not sure so I scaffolded her with related questions such as when the leaves change color in the fall does it happen overnight? Do they go straight from green to brown? She then decided gradual seemed to mean slowly. Then I gave her the word web I had created. I had her write gradual in the center and then asked her what she thought the definition should be. She said slowly again. So I read her the definition from the dictionary and asked her to put it in her own words. She wrote in the definition box taking time. Then I asked her if she knew what a synonym is. She said it meant a similar word. So I asked her what she thought synonyms for gradual could be. She said slowly. Then I showed and told her the synonym that the dictionary had listed and from progressive she wrote progress. Next I asked her if she had ever looked at the roots of words before, or where English words came from. She said no which was surprising to me because I think that I learned a little about roots of words in elementary school. I explained that roots are where our words come from and often time they are from another language. The root of gradual is the Latin word gradus which means step. She wrote gradus means step in the root section. I asked her if she thought that the root origin made sense considering the definition. She said yes because going slowly could imply taking small steps. I then asked Kailey to draw a picture that would help her remember what gradual meant. She didnt know what to draw and I told her that it really didnt matter what she drew as long as it would help her know the meaning of gradual. She still didnt know what to do so I suggested drawing the leaves of the tree changing like the context sentences talked about or steps because of gradus. She drew steps in the illustration box. I took the word map and asked her what gradual meant and she was unsure.

So I had her read the context sentences again to me and asked her what gradual meant. This time she responded with slowly. I did the same process with fortunate and sensitive. She already had some knowledge of the word sensitive so I built off her prior knowledge by focusing on the emotional definition. For both fortunate and sensitive, after finishing the word map and I took it from her, she was able to tell me what the words meant without having to look at the word in context. It might have helped that she was familiar with sensitive in being able to recall the definition we had just discussed. And fortunate might have been easier because lucky is a fairly accessible definition/synonym. I did not have her create a word map for clever because we ran out of time and she knew the definition of it before even looking at it in context. In closing, I asked her how she felt about the four words we looked at and she said that she felt like she understood them after working with me. I hoped to also give her tools in the items of the word map to help her build her vocab in the future. I expected that Kailey would not know most of the words I showed her but that she would after word mapping and working with them. I expected her to be cooperative and responsive to my questions which she was. The teacher had told me that she works well one-onone or with partners so I expected that working with me would not be a problem for her. The formative assessment I used was asking Kailey after taking the word maps from her what the word she just worked with meant. She was able to tell me what 2 out of the 3 meant immediately. The other she remembered after looking at the word in context. As I mentioned previously, our text identifies vocabulary as being an area that ELLs have to continue to work in because it takes so many years for them to master academic English. Graphic organizers are helpful tools to use for students who have learning disabilities or who are

ELL but can also help all the other students too. The text describes word maps are a tool that is very helpful to increase comprehension. Since this was my goal in planning the lesson for Kailey, I decided that word mapping would be appropriate. I modified the word map suggested in the text to include the root of the word to try to add a skill to Kaileys toolbox for comprehension.

Reflection: From working with Kailey, I learned that working with ELL students, especially ones that are gifted, presents a unique challenge for the teacher to teach them the skills they need in a way that is not remedial or boring to them. I knew that she was bright and so I was frustrated when she didnt get something right because most of the time it was due to her lack of comprehension or not knowing certain words. I learned that differentiated assessment can be quite successful, especially when it can be implemented on a one-on-one basis. I learned that to adequately differentiate to a specific child takes a lot of critical analytic thought on the part of the teacher. The process makes sense to get to know a child, give an assessment to provide you with specific information about their needs, and then address those needs in a lesson. My strengths are being an analytical person with regard to my lessons that I implement. I always think about what I should change in the future to make it go more smoothly or to maximize student learning. I also am empathetic and compassionate towards students. I need to learn how to differentiate to help struggling learners who may have learning disabilities or may just not be the top of the class. I have had experience working with students like this and they are definitely present in elementary school classrooms. I also need to learn how to deal with

behavioral issues because I have not really had any experience working with that either. Something I would do differently would be to make my assessment more specific to test when Kailey has issues with vocabulary. Is it in general or worse or better when the vocab are in context?