- Student Interview/ Reading Assessment & Analysis (Final Paper due 2/27): For this assignment, you will develop and carry out an interview and reading assessment with a student. First, using the readings and class discussion, develop an interview for an elementary student that will give you insight into what may help them engage in learning literacy. Your questions should reflect the knowledge you have gained in the course about student learning and literacy. Next, prepare a reading assessment for your student. You will then meet with your student to interview them, and assess their reading. After you interview and assess your student, write an analysis: illustrate your students’ interests, motivations, and reading characteristics and describe some potential instructional strategy to engage your student and improve their reading skills. Your analysis should reflect what you’ve read and learned to date of the final paper. You should conclude with how what you have learned has implications for your own practice. Papers generally range between 5-7 pages.
- Guided Reading Lesson Plan & Analysis (Lesson plan due 2/20; Final Paper due 3/12): For this assignment, you will be asked to design a complete guided reading lesson plan using a suggested format for a specific group for implementation during your elementary field experience (this is Part 1 of the Assignment). Subsequently, you will teach the guided reading lesson to a small group of students. The lesson should be approved and observed by your instructor. Once the guided reading lesson has taken place during the field experience using the approved guided reading lesson plan, each student will be required to analyze their own lesson and self-reflect (This is Part 2 of the assignment)
- Writing Assessment Analysis Paper (Paper due 4/2): For this assignment, you will work with a student to develop a writing sample and use the assessments we learn in class to analyze the work. You will provide a brief report (750 words) on: working with the student during the writing process, your experience doing the analysis, the outcomes of the analysis - describing the students’ writing strengths and challenges, based on what you learned from class and the readings - and suggestions of next steps for instruction.
- Digital Book Talks and Interactive Read Alouds (Video due 4/9; Paper due 4/20): Students will work in small groups to create a digital book talk video for three of the texts selected for their Annotated Bibliography projects. The digital book talks should be engaging to young children – like a commercial for the books (the video should be about 5 minutes long). Each student will share their digital book talk with a group of students and perform an interactive read aloud with one of the texts at their field experience. Students will be required to use the multi-media tools in the Apple iLife suite of software to create the video. This is part of the EDUCATE initiative that is being implemented in all Penn State Campuses with education programs.
- Students are also keeping a weekly journal of their reflections on teaching on a Penn State blog.
Here is the time frame in which students should be completing their projects in their classrooms:
1/30-2/10: Student Interviews and Reading Assessments
2/20-3/5: Guided Reading Instruction
3/21-4/2: Writing Assessments
4/9-4/18: Interactive Read Alouds & Digital Book Talks
