Rennie 1 Elissa Rennie ENGL 1102 Hinnant 4/1/2014 Annotated Bibliography Salvat, Victoria.

"So You Think They Can't Write?." Virginia English Bulletin 62.1 (2012): 4857. Education Research Complete. Web. 1 Apr. 2014. In her article, Victoria Salvat is expressing her opinion on how important it is for kindergartens to learn and practice writing. The author discusses how some teachers believe that they should be able to learn through play. But throughout the article Salvat points out multiple times how important writing is to the fostering of the students reading skills. Also, she gives the readers multiple ways in which to teach writing so that the students become more interested in what they are writing about. Overall I found that Salvats article to be very helpful and informative. The author is able to express her own ideas about writing and how they relate with what she has read about and discussed with other teachers. For example, she believes that modeling to students about how their writing should look like is incredibly important for their own independent growth as writers. I agree with this because I am able to relate this to my own research. I was able to observe a teacher explain and give examples about their own writing activity for the day and then release the students to practice their writing on their own. This allowed for the students to be able to understand how the structure of their writing would look like and how to combine their words into a sentence on paper like they do when talking. I agree with Salvats statement that writing and reading are interconnect and that you cannot have one without the other. This is an important

Rennie 2 concept in kindergarten because it allows the students who have trouble in one area to use their skills from the other area to help improve with their learning experience. I saw this happening when the students would go to their teacher because they did not know how to spell a certain word, and they would learn to write by the teacher sounding out the word like they would when reading in a book. They would be able to use the sounds of the letters of the alphabet that they have learned to write the word the teacher was sounding out even if it was not spelled correctly. I found that towards the end of Salvats article it was not as helpful as the beginning because it did not relate to my research. Whereas the beginning of the article was about how teaching writing was important to kindergartens and the different ways you could teach it, the end of the article was about trying to get more teachers involved in the importance of teaching writing in kindergarten. It was also about how the author wanted to help teach the other teachers why writing was important and ways that they could teach it in their classrooms.

Pyle, Angela and Christopher DeLuca. "Assessment In The Kindergarten Classroom: An Empirical Study Of Teachers' Assessment Approaches." Early Childhood Education Journal 41.5 (2013): 373-380. Education Research Complete. Web. 1 Apr. 2014. This article by Pyle and DeLuca is about teachers trying to balance what needs to be taught because of the curriculum and how they want to teach to better prepare their students. The article used information gathered from the observation of three teachers to come up with three different teaching approaches relating to testing. These styles include developmental assessment approach, blended assessment approach, and assessment for learning approach. Overall I found that Pyle and DeLucas article relates very well to what I am trying to answer with my ethnography topic. The authors discuss that the three principles for assessment

Rennie 3 are that it is a continuous process, it should have multiple formats, and that it should be intergraded into the learning period. I agree with this because I was able to observe the teacher doing assessments with the students on several occasions. Whenever the students were being tested, it was always using a couple of different objects. For example, when the students were being tested on their adding skills, they could use their fingers and blocks to help with the adding of two numbers together. While reading about the different assessment approaches, I found that the blended assessment approach was the best suited for my observations. The authors of this article wrote about many teaching methods in which I had also observed while doing my research. These methods included whole group lessons and small group activities, the use of guided reading, and the use of multiple subjects being used when teaching a certain subject. For example, when the students are writing they are using skills that they have learned by observing their teacher and skills that they have gotten from their readings to help better improve their writing skills. While reading about the different assessments, I found that the developmental assessment approach and the assessment for learning approach did not go along with my research at all. In the developmental assessment approach, the teacher that was connected to it had decided to omit writing from her teaching. This does not connect well with my observations because the students throughout the day were constantly using their writing skills within the different subjects that they were being taught through sentences and spelling. In the assessment for learning approach, the teacher would allow the students to give themselves feedback on what they were being tested on. I disagree with this method because the students are just starting to learn how to do the work and do not know enough about what they did wrong to be able to correct themselves. I believe that this method would work better in a higher grade than in kindergarten.

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Freeman, Evelyn B., and J. Amos Hatch. "What Schools Expect Young Children To Know And Do: An Analysis Of Kindergarten Report Cards." Elementary School Journal 89.5 (1989): 594-605. Education Research Complete. Web. 1 Apr. 2014. This article by Freeman, Evelyn, and Hatch talks about how there is three different theories for child development. These theories are maturationism, behaviorism, and cognitive development. Their main focus was analyzing kindergarten report cards. They did this so that they could learn what the students are expected to know and how they learn and develop. Overall I found that this article was informative but not really related to the research that I have done. Throughout this article, I discovered that it was mainly about the report cards and not the work the students do to get the grades. There was a lot of information on the grading style of the work and which work gets what type of grade. In my research I am focusing on is the interaction between the teacher and students and how the students are learning, retaining, and comprehending the information they are given on multiple subjects. Even though the article was not very helpful, there are some key points that I do agree with that I have found in the article. I agree with the thought that the students are expected to master multiple skills. I saw this through my observations by the number of subjects they learn about throughout the day and how they are able to apply already learned skills to new information. For example, when writing they use how they learned to sound out letters from the alphabet to write a sentence. I also agree with the statement that report cards do not provide insight into what truly happens in the kindergarten classrooms. I believe that this is true because when you read a report card you only see if the student is learning and how well they are doing in the class. What you do not see is how much fun the student has when they are learning, how

Rennie 5 the teacher tries to get the whole class to participate, and how the teacher enjoys teaching like I did when I did my own observations in a kindergarten classroom.

Hye Young, Jung, and Stuart Reifel. "Promoting Children's Communication: A Kindergarten Teacher's Conception And Practice Of Effective Mathematics Instruction." Journal Of Research In Childhood Education 25.2 (2011): 194-210. Education Research Complete. Web. 1 Apr. 2014. The article by Hye, Jung, and Reifel is about how to get the students to better understand the math that they are learning. The main focus is how to use communication when teaching math to the students so that they can effectively communicate mathematical knowledge with each other. They did a study with a kindergarten teacher to show how she taught and communicated with the students through math. Overall I found this article was very informative and could possibly be applied to my research. In this article the authors talk about how communication is crucial for the development of the skills needed for math. I agree with this because math is a difficult subject to learn for anybody in any grade, and it requires an understanding of problem solving skills that help you think through the steps to find the right answer. For example, when I observed a math lesson the teacher read a problem to the class and then discussed with the class on how to solve the problem. The teacher then had the students tell back the problem through drawings and a question and answer session. After the teacher had the students draw each part of the problem she would have the class count each part of the drawing with her and then write the number down on the board for the students to help add the numbers together with her. I also agree that small group discussion can help enhance the students understanding of math. This will allow

Rennie 6 students to communicate with each other so that they can help each other with parts that they do not understand. This will also help them create better motivation for future group learning if they can experience effective communication skills.

Mardell, Ben, Melissa Rivard, and Mara Krechevsky. "The Power Of The Group In A Kindergarten Classroom." YC: Young Children 67.1 (2012): 12-19. Education Research Complete. Web. 7 Apr. 2014. This article by Mardell, Rivard, and Krechevsky is about the students learning more through groups. The authors of this article came up with four interconnected teaching methods that will help promote group learning among the students. The used a group of kindergartens and the concept of the interconnected teaching methods to show how affective group learning is to the students education. They showed this through the students working on a class project about the Boston Marathon. Overall I found that this article by Mardell, Rivard, and Krechevsky had some really good key points on communication and group learning. The authors state that when the students are treated as partners in the learning process their learning abilities are able to grow and not be stunted. I agree with what the authors of this article are telling their audience. I agree with them because starting to grow a childs ability to effectively communicate, identify and solve problems, and be able to learn from one another is an important skill to have as they grow older. While observing I was able to see this starting to form in the kindergarten classroom that I was in. For example, when learning about information books the teacher would use pictures, words, and a real life example to explain what the students need to learn about the information books. The students would then have to be able to recall what they were taught and communicate back

Rennie 7 to the teacher what they had learned and be able to apply it to their own examples. In the article it states that making learning visible allows for the teacher to be able to teach to an individual students needs. I believe that this is true to the teaching of a kindergarten classroom. I believe this because each students learns differently from the other. Some students learn better with visuals, some with words, and some with a combination of the both. I was able to see multiple examples of making learning visible while I was observing. For example, during the students guided reading time they had multiple tasks that they used for learning. For each task they were learning about their sight words and beginning sounds. Some students got to use the word wall and magnets, some got to use pictures, and some had to listen and read about the words and beginning sounds. These multiple ways to teach the students the same thing to the students not only helped with memorization, but with comprehending what they were learning. Therefore, if one task was confusing and hard for the students to learn with, then they had another task that taught the same thing to them, but just in a different way that made it easier from them to understand what they were learning.