These
last two and a half weeks I have had with my second graders has totally changed
how I viewed the elementary classroom. In the morning, they are so excited to
be at school, and my teacher said this probably because they come from really
traumatic backgrounds. Despite the rough home lives, the most particular
assessment that has done this alteration to my view is when the other
co-teacher and I assessed their comprehension of their high frequency words. I
attached is 300 of the top high frequency words with 100 per page. This means, they know the word
just by looking at it and not sounding the phonemes out before they say it. Apparently,
the kids are expected to know at least 125 before they move onto third grade. The
one that starts with “ball” is the one we tested. From what I saw, some of the
children who were English language learners had a higher success rate than the
English speakers. If anything, this is incredible! All of this being said, us
future educators have definitely to teach every child
they can be successful despite whatever possible challenges get in their way.
I think that it is a fun challenge for the students. I also work with some students who struggle with frequency words, some of them are learning them at a much quicker rate compared to the others, and there are some that learn them at a slower rate. I have found myself to be more appreciative and I can also take more pride in seeing the students struggle, that I get to work with pass the test.
ReplyDeleteOops! I typed mine as a whole other comment not directly replying to yours. Just look below for it. Ha ha!
DeleteOh, I completely agree about seeing the child struggle, Nick! Although I was only there for the last two weeks, it was such a beautiful moment to see all of the struggling children improve from the beginning of the year. That being said, I now can see why our daily activities during our literacy instruction are. One of the biggest objectives my teacher stresses is to have every individual student work on their high frequency words by saying it. After they know how to say it by just looking at it, she has them even spell them out kinesthetically. From what I have seen, this has improved their memorization a lot since they get to know eight to ten more words per week.
ReplyDelete